These past months have been overwhelming, to say the least. I hope more people have come to the realisation that we all want and deserve a life with lots of hugs and comfy clothes.
And that it means we still need to fight politically for every human’s right to safety and happiness ❤
I haven’t really been able to focus on drawing or writing anything great, but I didn’t want to stay silent. So here’s one of my usual silly doodles, I hope it can spread a bit of love and positivity.
Corona hair is here, guys. I had a lot of fun drawing these people from my imagination. Do they look like anyone you know?
Hair everywhere!
I definitely could use a haircut sometime soon, myself. My BF has no issue – he’s been cutting his own hair for the last 15 years.
In all seriousness, though, I feel very fortunate to live in a place where COVID-19 is under control right now and things are starting to open up again.
Normal life ish
In Denmark we’re allowed to meet with friends and family as long as we keep a safe distance and good hand hygiene. I’ve also been going into the office again several times these last weeks, even though we’re all still mostly working from home.
It’s kind of scary to move out into the world more, but it’s also been very nice to have something that feels like normal life again. I hope you all get to experience that very soon, wherever you are in the world.
Cleaning out come crap drawers meant facing 3 previous versions of myself… So I doodled them!
Let’s be real, my BF cleaned out drawers. And I had fun looking at my old ID cards from uni/ work and not really helping clean.
I was also planning this (frankly quite narcissistic) drawing:
I’m seriously wondering what my next hair fase will be…
Hair “styles”
I almost fell into the trap of “OH NOOO MY HAIR – I look weird!” But let’s talk nicely about our present and past selves in 2020, guys! So, here are some observations:
11 years ago, before starting uni, I basically didn’t have hair, or eyebrows! 20-year-old me in the start of 2009 also didn’t know I needed glasses yet. That one probably looks the least like me now. But I did love the short hair.
Luckily there weren’t any photos in this pile of my inevitable mullet fase I went through afterwards to grow my hair out… I luckily have that in my passport photo, so only a few people need to see that…
Sorry, I got a BIT negative there! The mullet was fine, just not… great 😀
The me from 2013 had bangs (that always swooped a bit) and studied abroad in York. Good times!
Selfie identity
The third picture from 2015 was taken at work on my first day at my first job after uni. Yay happy, sweaty me ❤
That last one is also the only one taken by a professional photographer. The other two are selfies. In 2009 they were still just called “more or less random photos you took of yourself”, I guess?
A cozy November evening a couple of weeks ago, I had an urge to sit on the floor and draw some doodles. So I did. The result was a lot of drawings – and I finally got around to editing this video with three of them:
I like doodling without sketching out what I’m drawing first. It means I don’t really know what I’m making until it’s finished.
For instance, I didn’t really know what activities I was going to have the three November people do until in the middle of drawing them.
Doodle body positivity
Sometimes the result isn’t fantastic and the proportions of some of the bodies and faces I draw turn out weird. But that’s part of the fun, I think. At least that’s what I tell myself while I edit these videos and rewatch the stuff I don’t like over and over 😀
The speed of the video is at 400 %. So it was a lot more calming to draw in normal speed than what it looks like. I had lots of thinking breaks. But those would probably be a bit boring to watch. However, I did make this video a bit longer than the other recent ones I’ve uploaded. Let me know if this format is fun to watch, or if you fell asleep half-way through.
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It’s getting colder and darker in Denmark at the moment. The perfect season for doodling some colourful Winter people:
Winter time is doodle time!
I don’t mind the cold and the grey landscape so much, but the dark is starting to get to my brain a bit. Everytime I take a nap or go to bed at night, it goes “Oh well, time to hibernate for 6 months”.
So doodling helps me stay awake for a bit after dinner so I don’t go to bed at 8 p.m. 😀 And adding colour feels great.
I haven’t actually seen any of these Winter people IRL; they are drawn from imagination like most of my doodle people.
Except for the yellow wellies! I recently got similar ones myself, and they contribute to adding some colour to these grey days. I’ve even worn them out to eat because I like them so much.
I finally bought new headphones. They don’t even need to be plugged in, look!
Okay, I know bluetooth isn’t a new thing, but I’ve been needing proper headphones for, like, years. I’ve been using the little earbud type ones that came with a smartphone, and didn’t really fit my ears or have great sound. And now that I have a commute I really need some good ones to block out the bus noise. And for the office when I need to focus on some writing or web editing.
I feel bad every time I buy new stuff, especially lately! I’m very sad about the state of the environment and want to live as sustainably as I possibly can. But I realised it doesn’t mean that I should never buy something that I need.
So now I’m going to look at this doodle for a bit and try to convince myself that I really needed these headphones.
Maybe I’m not making much sense! I had a crazy busy, but very fun week at work with different projects.
You might not believe it based on my ramblings on this blog, but I started teaching English as a second language! It’s an evening class for adults once a week, and it’s soooo much fun, and my students are super motivated to learn.
I learn a lot about the English language too! My mum says teaching is the best way to learn, which is very wise and definitely true for me at the moment.
Doodling daily
I tend to stop doodling when I get busy with work, but I want to change that. Especially since Inktober is coming up next week! I participated in the drawing challenge last year – see my drawings here:
I really want to do it again this year. It was really fun to draw something every day for a month, and only a bit stressful 😀 Last year, I had just quit my old job, so I didn’t even have to juggle a day job and drawing every day – and it was still a challenge. But we’ll see if I can manage – I’m going to try!
*Fun fact: My new headphones aren’t actually as big as I made them in the drawing 😀 But my smile is!
Confession: I don’t read books! It’s one of the things I would like to do, but find really hard. I read a lot online, and I love words and all things linguistic.
However, sitting down with a book has become strange and difficult lately (well, probably for about ten years, so it’s not a very recent development).
Not a realistic depiction of me.
I’m not one of those people who think that technology is generally bad and that it grabs our attention in an unhealthy way all the time.
I use technology to connect with my loved ones, and I’m grateful for my interweb, my podcasts and all the youtubers I follow and – hello – this blog! I actually drew the doodle for this post while watching Youtube 😀
And – for the record – I don’t think you have to read books to be cool or smart or a good person.
Buuuut, I do think that reading books started dwindling for me after I got a smartphone sometime in the early 2010s. And it’s something I miss, because it’s a different way to relax than being on a screen. And because screens are very connected to work, because I work with digital communication things.
I used to love books when I was a kid and a teen, but somehow the big ol’ internet became my only source of reading material. And also I think years of studying kind of took away the magic of reading and made me think of it as a chore.
Okay, I read a bit
Except comics. I love comics and still read them on paper ❤
I also love the library and go there a lot, bring home books, forget to return them, get fines, pay fines, get more books, etc.
It’s also not completely true that I don’t read books. This year I’ve really tried for the first time in a while, and I actually managed to finish two (!) relatively short books, a novel and a conversation type book – both in Danish. So I guess I do read a bit, but it’s hard for me to stay concentrated for more than 5-10 minutes when reading a paper book.
Visualisation
… Sounds a lot more fancy than ‘doodling stuff’.
Like with the lemon water vs. coffee doodle from last month, I’m trying a bit to visualize myself reading and enjoying it. I think that’s why I drew this doodle, but I didn’t really think about it until after. I don’t know if these soulsearching doodles should be my new thing 😀
What I do think should be my new things, are:
not shaming myself for not reading enough books
grabbing a book and reading for at least 10 minutes today (without my phone within reach!).
Fun facts:
When I started writing this post, I went to look in my pile of library books and scared the crap out of a spider who was living a quiet life in between the books and the bedroom wall. Literally living proof that I don’t read.
I don’t own a chair like the one in the doodle, I just sit in my couch or at the dining room table.
The crumpled up bits of tissue paper lying around in the drawing are accurate, however. I leave a trail of them wherever I go, and it drives my bf nuts. I’m trying to switch to something more eco-friendly to wipe pasta sauce off myself and mop up the coffee I spill, so now I’m sometimes using kitchen cloths instead.
You get some interesting tidbits about my life when you read all the way to the end, huh?! 😀
Since you’re here at the bottom of the page, you must be quite the fan. If you want to support me, you’re very welcome to check out my products on Redbubble or:
Walking home from a coffee date with my roommate from uni (shoutout to her – we still call each other “roomie” even though it’s been many years since we lived together and were always late for class, and she probably won’t read this, because she’s not a very big social media person but very present in real life, which I find very cool, but anyway!) – I walked past two girls having a very friendly and mild-mannered argument.
They could have been a couple, but the argument almost sounded too friendly to be a partner argument – for instance, I didn’t hear the sentence “you always [something something]” 😀
The fun thing is that it took me a while to figure out what they were talking about. Walking by, I heard one of them say:
“If one of them has to die, it should be that one…”
(I didn’t eavesdrop on purpose, you guys! Really! I was walking normally minding my own business. Anyway!)
I then figured out from the next words that I caught in passing that they were talking about plants, both rooting (hehehehehe!) for a specific plant to stay in the apartment.
Also, I didn’t really look at them, because I’m not THAT creepy, so I made up their looks in the doodle.
So, I’ve been longing to get a dog for ages. However, it’s not very practical to have a dog in our apartment where it would be alone for several hours of the day.
Also, I might have a new favourite animal…
Last week, we went on a trip to a beautiful part of Denmark to mountainbike and hike (The purple blobs in the comic are supposed to be heather – Everything was purple and green!).
There were lots of sheep and goats hanging out in the hills. This particular teen lamb was extra cute and ran up to us to check us out. And then he/she just stood there for a while. Such a precious moment!
I’m not saying a sheep would be easier than a dog to have in our apartment. But I’m allowed to dream. Maybe we should get a dog and a sheep and they could be best friends?***
If you think this post has been too cute and happy and nice so far, I also got really excited when I saw a worm crossing a poop mountain in the middle of the road:
You’re welcome!
***Minutes later: I googled a bit and found this article from the Telegraph. So I guess that plan is settled.
When I’d started I just couldn’t stop drawing people at the beach. Here are some more:
The apprehensive guy with the bucket hat is a different version of the guy in the yellow bathing suit in my first beach doodle post. And he’s basically me at the beach when I haven’t gone for a while. I don’t want to get nipped by a crab!
Also, did you watch my drawing video of my other beach doodles? I’m definitely better at drawing doodles than I am at editing videos, but I also have about 20 years more experience with the former 😀
I’m working on some other non-beach doodles, so they’ll hopefully be up soon.
wordsanddoodles 