Daily Post – Random Swirls

This is not a Magic Eye. There is no secret hidden shape.

I know that I said yesterday that I would have more work on the invitation upcoming, and I will . . . just, not today. I need to work on the invite at home with my tablet and pen to finalize the drawings that will be on the front and inside and I just didn’t get a chance last night. Anyway, instead of more glimpses at the invitation I am posting a picture of some of the random swirls that I like to doodle when I am thinking. When I was in high school and when I first went to college, I would fill notebooks with these swirls. I used them as a way to zone out but also focus at the same time. See, when I draw them, I just sort of let the pen go where it wants, and I zone out on whatever is going on around me. But, I also try to not let the shapes get too big or let them touch each other, and that’s where I have to focus. I tend to start at the bottom left corner and work my way up to the right. These swirls seem to help me clear my mind when I am having creator’s block or when I just don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been doodling them for about 15-20 years now and I can’t think of a week that’s gone by since I started that I haven’t doodled some of these shapes at least once. Sometimes I fill a whole 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper with them and sometimes I only doodle 10-15 shapes before getting my head back into whatever it is I should be doing. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does something like this to help get the creative juices flowing or to get one’s mind clear. Am I?

Daily Post – Bear Experiment

Ellipse Bear aka Lipsy

For today’s daily post I wanted to experiment with trying to create an image using just one shape. I’d never done anything like this before and I think, even though I could get this to look better, I did a decent job on this one. The biggest problems I see with it is that right now it seems a little flat, and I wasn’t able to get the eyes to look the way I wanted them to look. I think if I went back in and played with some of the colors, added some shading to the image, I would probably be much happier with it. As an experiment, I found it to be fun and challenging.  Next time I think I’ll try to create something using only rectangles. By the way, there are 23 different ellipses in this bear image.