The Fifteenth Doodle

Oh my, deep down I still love skateboarding/bmxing/surfing/snowboarding. I am useless at all of them, yet adore watching them. I did go surfing in Australia which was fab, but after a nasty fall in the shallows have suffered with the ghost of a torn back muscle ever since. Awesome.

So I am clearly meant to sit and watch these people, and draw them. Which I love.

Though sometimes egos get in the way. I have often been treated like a 'groupie' by those doing said extreme sport, which makes me furious. The same happens if I'm doing any sort of musical/band pictures.

Errrr don't flatter yourself mate. I am a talented and independent lady in my own right, and I am not here to whimper over you and draw attention to myself in order to ensnare a skater/guitarist boyf. No spanks.

I draw, and I love to watch things that inspire me. Too bad the people who do it can often (not always, but often) be so narrow minded.

The Fourteenth Doodle

If this lady decided to step on your face, you'd be DEAD. Don't piss her off.

(I'm talking about the imaginative lady who own these feet, not me. I can barely walk in trainers, never mind huge killer heels)

Heels do genuinely intrigue and scare me at the same time. I think they can be super fierce, and tres sexy (yep, I am well multicultural). Yet seeing ladies totter through the tube and wobble down the street in the rain makes me think, 'oh love, just wear flats. You look like a loony'. Who are we trying to impress? Men? Each other?

I, thankfully, wear either trainers (obvs cool ones, like Vans or Cons), flip flops or pumps. Or boots. Heels - a) make me feel too tall against my ridiculously small friends, b) make me walk like a transvestite, and lets be honest, I aint the most girly girl so someone may actually think I'm a tranny in training, and c) they are way more effort than it's worth.

Also, this 'oh, they elongate your legs and make them look thinner and longer' is total balls. They do not do this when you have annoyingly muscular legs like mine - they accentuate it. Hideous.

As the legendary Caitlin Moran said, what else totters along looking like high heels? A pigs trotters.

The Thirteenth Doodle

'Watching Red' has definitely come from my obsessive love of fairy tales. I did a Little Red Riding Hood style painting last year and really enjoyed it, so wanted to try the same subject again in my developed style.

Got to admit I really enjoyed doing it. I wasn't quite sure what the end result would be like, but I was pretty blimmin' happy. It did take a while, but that was mostly me being fussy, and I liked experimenting with all the various pen thicknesses (oh my god I am such a geek).

If you look very closely at his eyes you can see a flicker of a reflection of a red cloak - she is clearly going to get eaten very soon.

The Twelfth Doodle

I have become one of those irritating people who sit in cafes and draw everyone around them. I'm sure some people don't mind, but some people get wellllll funny about it. Eek.

So I doodled this guy reading his book, I figured he couldn't see me so he wouldn't get all freaked about it. And it's not like anyone would look and go 'My god, that's Jeremy, from accounting! He said he was sick in bed that day!'. No.

I added the colour later when I got home, but kept it very loose, sort of like the sketch. Quite pleased with him.

Life drawing is crucial, very good practise. So even if it annoys you, I'm going to carry on doing it. Nah!

The Eleventh Doodle

Ok, so you may look at this drawing and go 'What the farrrrrrk is that?'. Well, that's because I haven't told you yet.

Basically I know a web developer who was like 'babez can you design some shizzle for ma site' and I was like 'yeh babez no probz'.

We don't talk like that.

This is the second part of a two step illustration, one in which we see this girl in the present, and one in some bizzare future (if you can't tell, this is the futuristic drawing. No one has a robot arm like that yet). You can then switch between the two to see the change, she will do code and all sorts to make that happen.

So I've had lots of fun with this mini project, and I am excited to see the final thing!

The Tenth Doodle

Carcassone. Possibly my ideal, achingly beautiful and historical city. As a history geek, this is a sort of Mecca for me.

This is from a photo took while there, and I enjoyed playing around with a 'scenery' sort of illustration. I wanted the colours to be just so, to reflect that aged feel, the stone that has been there so long. Then the colours on the figure of me were deliberately bold, almost a jolt against the natural background. I am but a blip, and the city will be there long after I am gone.

Goodness, I am philosophical aren't I.

The Ninth Doodle

As a lady who has recently suffered a wee bit of heartbreak, I have found myself doodling certain animals to express my...grrrr. A lion couldn't be more apt. I literally feel if someone came a bit too close at the minute I may bite them. Plus the lion embodies all we aim to be; strength, courage, power, beauty.

That'd be nice wouldn't it.

This started as a line drawing, but I then painted it and felt that it worked much better with the grey inks. Add a bit of tawny to the mane and she felt done. Growwwwwwl.

The Eighth Doodle

Derren Brown. He boggles my mind. I saw a live show of his once, and ever since I have mourned that I am not a man who happens to be his type. Just my luck.

I had loads of fun with this picture, drew him a few times to figure out what worked. The wolf was sort of organic, I was writing out words associated with him such as 'he's not human!' and 'devil' (good things too of course, such as 'amazing' and 'love it') but it got me thinking about witchcraft and magic and views throughout history of those who seemed to have such powers. You were considered 'other-worldly', somehow connected with nature. Wolves are facinating, mysterious and dangerous creatures which I felt embodied these superstitious feelings quite nicely. I wanted him almost invisible, there yet not. (How deep, yeh)

The blue was a little by accident, but I liked it. Red and black is a little cliched, the cold blue seems to fit somehow. Hurrah!

The Seventh Doodle

So this lady rambled past me when I was suppin' me tea in my Camden cafe. I did a very messy pencil drawing of her, then used a bit o' tracing paper to do her again in a single line pen. Really quite like her, I have a weird attraction to not taking the pen off the paper; it's like saying 'Yeh? YEH?! Think you can do it without flinching?!'.

It's like playing chicken in art with yourself. Rock 'n roll.

The Sixth Doodle

The Raven. Oh my, I think I have an odd thing about these dark birds, and crows too. They have this odd, macabre mystery that I love, and I'm not even an emo. (Seriously, I couldn't write a poem even if I tried.)

This particular design took me a little while, I enjoyed experimenting with him and trying some different approaches. As soon as I added the background I was like, 'BOOM, there you are!' (FYI, I don't care that I'm not cool enough to carry off BOOM, I'm doing it anyway, 'cause Chazz Michael Michaels is my idol.)

The Fifth Doodle

Nom nom. I simply can't cope at lunchtime without ketchup. Unless, you know, I'm eating a curry or something. I find it very theraputic to sit and doodle away in the caf on my lunchbreak, though I have found some people get very weirded out by it. I may only do a 10 or 30 second sketch of someone, and they catch me looking at them for a split second and you can see them thinking 'Why is she looking at me? Is there something on my head? Have I got mayo on my cheek? Does she keep checking me out?! IS SHE GOING TO MUG ME?!!' Hilarious.

The Fourth Doodle

So I have never done anything even remotely fashion orientated (including in my wardrobe), so this is very good practise! I did some research on catwalks and models and clothes (all stuff I am clueless on up to now) and developed this fairly usual pose for my own drawing. I then added some Ruthie crazy to it, keeping the lines ragged and free, and the colours wild and imperfect. I quite liked the end result, something in the 'norm' camp, but with my big messy stamp all over it. Bon!