The Forty Fifth Doodle

People love having a crafty fag don't they. I'm not a big fan, but I like drawing smokers. Mainly cause they don't move too much when they're smoking, so I can have a look at them and do a quick drawing. Like a weird art perv.

As a non smoker, smokers irritate me. And not just because I don't like smoking. It's the social aspect that annoys me. 'Oh Ruth can you stay in here alone and look after all our bags, cheers', 10 minutes later everyone returns and they've book a holiday to Bermuda together. You often find yourself totally excluded.

Thankfully now, my non-smoking peers seem to outweigh the smoking ones. Out of my best mates only one or two does it, and thankfully my man doesn't smoke. Nice to have non-smokey smooches.

It's an odd one ain't it. 

The Thirty Fifth Doodle

I think it's really good to revisit old ideas, sit and look at them, and think about how you would do them now.

I reckon it's a great way to see a) if you've improved at all, b) see how your style has developed and changed and c) see how or IF you'd do anything differently. Basically, it's sort of like time travel, only less scientific. And you can't go back to Medieval times and watch a joust, as awesome as that would be.

The Eighteenth Doodle

So I have started doing an illustration/doodle journal. It is fabulous. I would have a sketchbook and draw while on my travels before, but not like this. This is more like a visual diary, so lots of it is filled with my inane babble. But I like that.

This is a page from a lovely sunny day sat by the canal in Camden. I got a bit excited about the nice weather, clearly.

The Seventeenth Doodle

I do enjoy wacking a bit o' text in there sometimes with my life drawings, just to give a bit of the story I'm seeing while I draw. It's like popping your thoughts of this person into the picture too.

This old dude was sat across from me, innocently munching his lunch while I drew him. I'm like a sketching ninja - mwahahaha.

I then got home and worked on the colours to flesh him out a bit. I like him. So I shall reward myself with a biscuit.

The Sixteenth Doodle

I love to try and quickly capture someone while they're there in front of you, just bein' alive.

This was one of the market traders in Camden early one morning, having a break while setting up his stall. They all seem to smoke, though this may be my selective memory. Maybe it helps.

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.