Doodle Swap Round 3

I participated in the third round of The Doodle Swap Project. Again, the theme was open, and while that sounds great to have the freedom to do whatever I want, it is a bit intimidating. I thought about a couple of different directions before deciding to do an idea that had been bouncing around my head. I've been thinking of these silly two-word rhymes all summer and this was the perfect chance to illustrate a few.

I sketched out the images and inked them with my awesome Faber-Castell Pitt Pens (ah, I LOVE these pens!). This time I broke out my Dr. Martin's watercolors that had been gathering dust on my shelf. I had a blast! I had forgotten how much fun and how easy it was to work with these colors. Now I need to do more watercolors...

Below are a few of my Doodle Swap cards, or you can see the entire set on Flickr.

You can view all of the doodles for round three on The Doodle Swap Flickr page.

'

Doodle Swap #2

The first Doodle Swap between members of the HOW Design Forum (aka HOWies) was so much fun that I couldn't pass on doing round 2! The trick was working about a few other projects that were all due at that same time.

Fortunately, one project gave me the inspiration for my doodles for round 2 and my interpretations of 4 classic monster movie creatues was born! I did 4 versions each of Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, and the Mummy, and 2 versions of The Phantom of the Opera (doodle below) (1 for me and 1 for a lucky recipient! :)

Each doodle was done by hand (no retracing or other tricks here) with loving care, or at least by hand.... :P

I tried the smooth vellum artist cards this time and while the colored pencils did work better on them, I still feel as I've not gotten what I'd envisioned outta them. Next round I may try just black and white using my Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens (which ROCK, btw! :)

Doodle Swap Blog.

Doodle Swap Flickr.

Doodle Swap

A friend of mine from the HOW Design Forum, Mary, came up with a brilliant idea to do a "doodle swap" on Artist Trading Cards. She described it as: "The Doodle Swap Project is an organized swap of original, trading-card-sized art between artists, designers and illustrators."

It sounded like fun so I signed up. I decided to go with an old standby that I tend to doodle: robots and sci-fi. I just had to give my new Faber-Castel Artist pens a workout, so I figured this would be a great way to use 'em. I tried to stay true to the art of doodling and I warmed up first and then drew directly on the final cards with the pens. I decided to add color with my favorite medium, colored pencil. Alas, the textured vellum was not very forgiving so for the sake of keeping the pen lines visible, I just put a light coating on. Next time I want to give the smooth ATC cards a crack, I think that will work better with the color pencils.

I did a total of nine images, you can view them all on my Flickr. I'm enjoying receiving the cards from my fellow designers in the mail, it's like a mini Christmas with each one that arrives!

You can view the entire Doodle Swap Project on Flickr here.

Below, from my Doodle Swap, "Hello HAL"...