I managed to draw something every day for this first week of October. Which is already a great success!
You can follow along on my Instagram, but I’ll try to do weekly roundups here on the blog as well. The thing is, I’m also very pregnant, which means we’re having a baby this month!
I might not be able to draw or post anything for a while after she pops out 🙂 So that naturally takes the pressure off the challenge, which is probably a good thing. I’m going to try to draw every day until baby time, though. So far it’s been fun.
Here are my first seven #inktober drawings, some more “inspired” than others 😛
Some stuff involving food and animals happened in the house this week…
The heatwave + my pregnancy brain makes me do weird things and not remember I did them! But they apparently like to visit.
Neighbour Cat knows she doesn’t live in our house (I think). So she walked out the door willingly with a look that said “Oh hello Neighbour Humans, I was just stopping by. See you!”.
The frog, however, took a while to get to leave the basement. It escaped from my hands the first time I grabbed it, jumped onto the table and then hid under a closet. But in the end, I managed to get him into a bucket and ran out into the garden before he did another wild jump for freedom.
He didn’t seem to believe one bit that I was trying to help, that I would do my best not to squish him, and that living outside is much better for a frog.
I met this friendly, little cat on a walk recently and decided to draw/paint it with watercolour markers.
Cats everywhere
We definitely live in a cat town. I see new cats around the house and garden and on walks very often. And I only rarely see people with dogs.
I grew up with cats and later a dog, and I really miss having pets!
Since there will soon be a little monkey living in the house (who’s currently growing in my belly), we don’t plan to get any pets ourselves at the moment.
However, with the neighbourhood cats – not to mention the squirrels, frogs, birds and the hedgehog (I saw it again!) – it’s almost like having pets 🙂
New drawing materials
As you might have noticed, I’ve been drawing a lot of digital art this summer. But it’s also made me want to draw more traditional stuff and learn new techniques.
The cat drawing is based on a photo I snapped quickly, you cannot rely on the patience of a cat. A couple of days later I sat down and made a quick sketch and added some colour with my Winsor & Newton watercolour markers + water and a small brush. And finally I did the line art.
I haven’t used these markers in a long time and don’t know if I did it the “right” way. I also, for some reason, used this strange stonepaper that I had. It worked out fine, but I think I’ll try watercolour or mixed media paper next time.
Has anyone tried drawing on stonepaper – and if so – what drawing tools do you use on it?
I’m loving birds at the moment, apparently 😀 Maybe it’s a moving-into-a-house-with-a-garden thing. Today I made a redrawing in Gimp of a crow from the autumn of 2019. Here’s the result:
He seems to be quite content with his new look.
We actually have a gang of young crows in the garden at the moment who party early in the mornings!
There’s a flat roof above our bedroom, and in the beginning I thought a cat or other bigger animal was running around up there. But it turns out it was a bunch of crows jumping around eating cherries from our trees and laughing. There might not be any cherries left for us humans to eat later in summer.
But what the heck, I love having birds in the garden. How can you not – look at that cute, feathery face!
The old crow
The original version of the drawing was based on a crow I saw in the park when we lived in the city.
If you’ve been following for a while, you might remember that I made a 1-minute video of the drawing process:
I also drew the original digitally using my Wacom tablet + Adobe Illustrator. I still use the same tablet btw. I have an Intuos Art which is one of the smaller, cheaper drawing tablets. I don’t know if they still make that model, but I’m really happy with it. It took maybe a year to get properly comfortable drawing with it, and I’m definitely still improving.
Redrawing drawings
I think I’ll do more redrawings during my summer staycation. It’s also something I’ve done a couple of times before in drawing videos – check them out here:
I can recommend redrawing an older drawing, if you – like me – sometimes struggle to think of something to draw, but have creative motivation and the time to practice a new technique. It’s really fun!
I surprised myself by putting two new designs up on my shop this week! I didn’t really plan it, but I’m really happy with them. They’re both cute animals, but in very different drawing styles.
This lazy Sunday cat in a window sill I drew last Sunday while sitting in bed looking at the rain outside (my absolute favourite Sunday activity!).
I liked the drawing so much that I decided to make it available as a print and greeting card:
And I also think it deserved to be on a mug – especially great for slow Sundays 🙂
Lazy cat, plants and coffee = a perfect weekend.
Unfortunately I don’t have a cat – but there’s a very friendly neighbour cat who visits often to get tummy rubs. But he stays outside (mostly!).
Squirrel snacks
The second new design is based on an old doodle that I made years ago. Meet Banana Squirrel:
*munch munch
I have a new found love for squirrels, because we have one in our garden (because we live in a house now!!), and he stops by every morning and runs around looking for acorns from last season buried in the lawn.
Happy yellow designs
I think Banana Squirrel looks perfectly fine on his own, just chilling and eating a banana.
But the yellow background really makes for a happy design, don’t you agree?
And then if you multiply him it gets kind of ridiculous, but I had to do it 😀
So many Banana Squirrels. Possibly too many.
If you’re curious about my thoughts on turning doodles into product designs, you can check out this blog post from november 2019.
Have a great day and thanks for following my silly doodle escapades!
After a very busy and exciting work week, I got home yesterday afternoon, slept from 5 to 7 p.m. on the couch, woke up and drew this:
Which, I guess, represents how I was feeling. You know, kind of mlem, but also moo.
I think it also means my brain is now on Christmas mode! I’m now questioning what a deer has to do with Christmas. Or did I draw a reindeer? Definitely not a moose, they’re snouts are more horse-like. Yes, I had this discussion with my BF 😀
Snow = Christmas brain
Yesterday morning, I walked to the bus early in the morning, and it was snowing (halp!) very windy and pitch black. Later in the day, the sun came out and it was the most beautiful, sunny and chilly November day. A crazy change!
I think starting the day with a bit of snow and a bent umbrella (haaalp!) definitely activated those Christmas sensors in my brain. I woke up today thinking about gingerbread cookies and candles and gift ideas.
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.
I’ve been busy at my new job (yay!) and therefore haven’t been drawing a lot lately. So here are two older drawings that I never got around to post.
In December and January I made portraits of two of the dogs in my family. This first one was a Christmas present for my boyfriend’s sister, and it’s a portrait of her dog, Bob:
This second portrait is of my parents’ dog Buster, and it was a birthday present for my dad:
I made both drawings in Adobe Illustrator using my Wacom drawing tablet and printed them on nice paper. I looked at photos for reference while drawing and made a couple of sketches on paper, which I often do with digital drawings, especially portraits where the smallest details make a difference.
Both doggos were a bit tricky to draw. For instance, I had trouble making the black lines look natural in Bob’s white, fluffy fur – but I’m quite happy with how it turned out.
Buster’s brown, shiny coat also caused a bit of distress, because it catches the light in a cool way. I was very out of my comfort zone, and that drawing turned into more of a digital painting and ended up with many, many layers of colour before I was happy with the result.
Both dogs are lucky to live in very dog-loving families and are blissfully ignorant that they’re now models and both have fur that’s very difficult to draw.
wordsanddoodles 