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Ever since i drew the first 'Cuddly the Cuttlefish' my girlfriend, Leonie has been obsessed with cartoon cuttlefish. It was meant to be a one-off exercise, i kinda picked a random subject: the cuttlefish, and i drew it. The first few i drew from reference pictures (gotta love google images) were fairly realistic, but it leant itself to a nice cartoonization (if i may use that term) so i went ahead and made the original 'Cuddly' below.

This week both Leonie and I got a cold, nothing life threatening, but many many tissues were used. So, after repeated requests at drawing more cuttlefish, the cold became the impetus for the most recent Cuddly. (or should it be Cuttly?

And just for giggles: this is the sketchwork behind the 'finished' piece. (if you could call it finished, since it really is just a sketch in and of itself). All this was done on the wacom pad, in illustrator (cs2, dont have 3 yet) with the simplest round brush, 3 point diameter, and a 2 point pressure variation. I have sorta come to like that setting for most everything. (after much tweaking. it gives me a nice range of sizes, and allows for some nice flowing strokes, but without going too big). Since i mostly like just using pencils on paper when i am going analog, i find this nice minimal setting to be similar in simplicity to pencils. I rarely use anything else on the wacom (when drawing in any case, once the piece is drawn, then i might go back and fiddle with stroke weights and go in a micro-manage the points, but for the initial drawing, all 3-point round brush for me)

Here is todays sketch, it is Cuddly the Cuttlefish! The original pencil sketch is there, and the digital re-draw. I dont use live trace or anything like that (although i have in the past, and it is really cool.) Instead i place the jpg of the pencil sketch into illustrator, then trace it with the paintbrush to get the outline right. With the wacom i can use the pressure and get some nice organic outlines.

For the colors i went to this cool site, and typed in 'fish' into the palette search and found a zillion nice sea-color-palettes.

After drawing 'twist' for illustration friday, i got quite caught up in the micro-doodling as background shading/texture idea. I think that next i am going to make one that is big enough to be my background image.

Also, i find that doodling like this is a great way to warm up. Somewhere i read, or heard that it takes 15 minutes to fully 'switch gears' in your brain. So, when i sit down to draw something, i have to doodle and do warm-up stuff for 15 minutes before i start producing stuff that is remotely decent. Anecdotally, i have found that doing this background, the first large chunk of shapes were just squares and triangles and circles, then suddenly i whipped out a little flower in a pot, then a little house, and so on.

If you are familiar with the Meisner Method of acting, i think that these texture-doodles are a similar form for myself as an illustrator. (if youa re not familiar, or need a badly-explained refresher: the idea is to get out of your 'head' while acting and get into the 'moment'. Ie stop thinking about what you are supposed to be 'pretending' to do, and just do it. This is much much harder than it sounds. some of the 'acting' exercises that you do to get into this 'in the moment' state is to pair up and do really really basic things (like repeat everything the other person says, and they do the same, which amounts to saying the same thing over and over again). at some point you will stop repeating and start saying other things and be 'in the moment' (this is possibly the worst explanation of this excercise ever, but i have done it and it is very cool once you get into it) ) Anyhow, similarly, with this strange rote sketching technique after awhile i just spontaneously draw something that is not a square a circle or a triangle. and i draw it quick, almost before i can think about it, and then usually it is pretty groovy.

The same thing happened with the twisty bits of 'twist'. I was just oging along drawing spirals and twisty lines when all of a sudded i busted out a twistly little face. After that i was sort of looking for inspiration in the shapes i was producing and when something came out that looked like an ear, or a nose, or a coffee cup, or bird, or Cthulu, or whatever, i would quickly fill in the other attributes. It is actually amazingly fun to be drawing simple shapes and all of a sudden just bust out some little masterpiece.

The other great thing i love about these micro-sketches is their simplicity. I dont have time to over think the forms, and just a few lines to convey the image. It is great fun.

These are some of the doodles that are in the 'Twist' image. Each one took me less than 10 seconds to draw (which is why they are so rough) but some of them turned out kinda cute, so i thought i would put them up.

I was doodling the other day and came up with a new concept for the Fight Me! Logo. Nobody asked for it, but i liked the idea so i went ahead and mocked it into a logo-esque form. I like it.