Delicious Apple

This is a doodle - I think. Does it count as a doodle if I set out to doodle it intentionally? It started as a drawing of an apple while on a mind numbing conference call at work, then words and shapes were added, and then I cross hatched while sitting in front of the boob tube. It's a departure from my usual drawn-from-life stuff, probably inspired by all the great psychadelic illustrations that I'm seeing around the web. I'll probably paint this eventually, but right now I have 7,489,698 projects going on. It will have to wait.

Speaking of projects, back to work!

...Does it count as work if I enjoy it?

Views from the 16th Floor

My office is located on prime real estate in Santa Monica: Pacific Coast Highway and some sand separate us from the ocean. It's pretty ridiculous when you enter the main reception area: Floor to ceiling windows line the entire west (ocean) facing walls, and you see blue sea for miles (or just a mile, depending on the smog that day). The other sides of the building look out over the city - north to Malibu and Pacific Palisades, East towards Brentwood and Santa Monica (and on a clear day, towards Big Bear), and South towards Venice - and I find these views to be much more interesting. While waiting for a job to print in our production room, I grabbed a few scraps of paper and doodled some of those views and thought I would share them with you. This is another one that would be cool if I had paint on hand because the colors make a big difference. Maybe I should start bringing my gouache set to work :)

Busy Gato

I have been quite busy and will remain busy the rest of the week. Here's a small sketch to whet your appetite.

Nashville • Louisville • DC

I'm headed out East to visit My Biggest Fan's family in Nashville, my own fam damily in Louisville, and to attend a dear friend's wedding in Washington D.C. It's going to be an action packed 10 days. My excitement leaked out of my pen through planner doodles. The planner that I use - and have consistently used since high school - is the August to August Calendar. There are no other planners that make me feel all warm and cozy inside.

There probably won't be any posts until I return. I bet I could post from anywhere if I had an iPhone ... stupid iPhone is so stupidly awesome.

Happy Memorial Day!

Doodling

Just when I didn't think I could love NPR any more, they go and write a story that validates my doodling behavior.

class time doodles

I have been a busy bee (busy cat?) but have been slacking on my blog updates. I'm taking a class at UCLA which is keeping me busy, I'm redesigning my website, and I have been doodling and working on random small projects. Oh yeah, and I have that pesky full time job. For your viewing pleasure, here are a few sketchbook doodles I did in class the other night.

Post-it note art

I had a hankering for drawing at work one day so I started drawing some random stuff. Here are some examples. I drew the elephant like 15 times - each time i just did it in a few seconds. Lesson learned: elephants are hard to draw.

lotion

I have been a slacker lately. The project I referred to below came to fruition in full force resulting in some very focused art-making and very little sleep. Once I was finished recovering from that, i went on a fabulous vacation to Silver Bay. While on vacation, I found myself moving about a lot and did not have much time for drawing. I took lots of photos that I plan to work from in the future, but I sadly did no drawing from life. Since my return, I have been playing catch-up on sleep, e-mails, laundry, and all the other joys of life. This is a quick sketch I did one afternoon of my favorite lotion from the Body Shop.

Speaking of the super secret project, I have been asked not to show the artwork until the end of September, so all of my faithful readers will have to be patient. It turned out pretty cool (despite the fact that I spilled neon green ink ALL OVER IT at midnight the night before it was due). I can't wait to share it with you all.

New postcards featuring the Fertility piece are going in the mail tomorrow. If you aren't already on my mailing list and would like to be, e-mail me with your snail mail address and I'll add you.

doodles

I have been slacking in the blogging department this week. I am moving TONIGHT into my new apartment, so my free time has been spent packing, cleaning, organizing, making piles for Goodwill, etc. My paintbrushes are packed in one of the gazillion boxes I packed this weekend, so I haven't finished my latest watercolor. But I have been doodling so I thought I would share a little collage of those.

The top left is a landscape drawn after seeing a beautiful shot of some castle in Italy on PBS (I wish I remember which one, but I had just turned the TV on). The man next to it is the host of "The Power of Art" which I caught a few minutes of last night, also on PBS. I sketched a quick outline while he was on screen and then just made the rest up. The man to the far right was a funny little man I shared an elevator with. I went back to my desk and tried to draw him from memory, a challenging thing to do, but oh-so-good for your mind. The bigger drawing is of David's coworker, Monica, playing some MarioCart on a Nintendo 64. Also a quick sketch - she moved her head like an owl while playing which made it difficult to capture her likeness! Then the birds were just randomly sketched from something I saw on TV.

I'm unpacking my first load of stuff tonight - hopefully I'll have a little bit of time to finish my little watercolor!

More highlighter art.

My day job involves designing brochures for big properties like hotels and office buildings for a real estate investment banking company. While sketching layout thumbnails at work, this girl magically appeared. Then the highlighters joined in the fun.

Not much sketching going on tonight - I'm feeling a little under the weather and I'm running around tying up loose ends of various projects. But I have a lot of fun stuff planned for tomorrow night!

April 30, 2007

InDesign class doodles. I swear I was paying attention to the teacher too.