And most of the time, imperfection is the way to see the balance of life. It's where you see and understand the most beautiful lesson that we will carry upto the end of our existence.
I don't normally paint trees. So I was surprised when my daily doodling produced this loose interpretation of the tree in my garden. I quite like it. Doodles are magical.
Sometimes I lurk around RedditGetsDrawn and doodle the people there. This has ink, watercolor, acrylic, and then more ink. I don't know when to leave well enough alone.
The Ford Taurus was the most boring car I could think of. This selection of doodles are all just ink on paper, applied with a brush. The black circle behind the cats was Sharpie. I had a design back there, decided I super-hated-it, and then screwed the whole thing up. Ah well. The cats are still okay.
Annuals are encouraged to seed in the less formal beds in our large garden.
We tend them, photograph them, and I draw and paint them. This is a colored pencil (Prismacolor) drawing of one of our seedling poppies. It was an odd form. Not exactly a single, nor a double and lacked the common cross markings in the throat.
I’m often asked about my Bic pen drawings and how I do them. It starts with a good foundational drawing, the ballpoint pen part is just trying to colour within the lines. I try to do my best to explain the process, but the best way to show my progress is by posting my efforts to master pen drawings over the span of 3 or so years. I have been doodling/drawing with ballpoint pens as far back as I can remember - they were cheap, readily available and always lying around the house. It wasn’t until I was bored during a particularly long team meeting-conference call (around 2016-17) that I started to think about the possibilities of ballpoint pens as serious portrait illustration tools. My first experiments with full colour ink portrait drawings were rather crude, but that’s the point of learning new techniques—as long as the curiosity and the love of drawing is there, you can transfer that skill and passion into any medium. Remember, the most exquisite drawings and paintings you see didn’t materialise fully formed, they started out as failed experiments. Failure after failure after failure. It’s important to remember this when you get discouraged (I've failed spectacularly over the years). The only difference between the accomplished artist and the beginner is hundreds of hours of practice. Talent can only get you so far. It’s the hard work that you do behind the scenes that makes your work look effortless. Keep doodling. Keep learning. Stay curious.
Here we have some very fancy European history folks, a creature that might be a dummy, and Harry Potter as a nervous waiter who can't remember if you got diet or regular soda. Because, let's face it, Harry was never THAT good at magic.
