Dinosaur Room

Original computer illustration drawn to scale

Since I had my daughter & quit my day job in November, 2009, I'd been searching for other ways to express myself creatively. When she was about 5 months old, I started designing her room. I designed a large dinosaur mural on the computer that would cover one of her walls. The plan was to do the one wall and the window. I ended up painting a 360° mural around her room of an entire cartoon prehistoric scene, in addition to the large orange dinosaur, I added an extra large prehistoric flower and a distant volcano & misc. other foliage. It took weeks to complete since I only had her nap times to work on it, but I think the effort was well worth it.

To make the window into a tree, I bought brown blinds & painted the window frame brown. Then, I had to make the leaves for a valance. I decided to use wool felt since I figured it could be cut to shape and not require much sewing. I also thought it would drape similar to actual palm leaves the best. I chose two green colors, one for the leafy part and one for the stalk. The stalk was sewn up the middle of the leaf to create a long pocket & I filled it with poly-fil. Then I put heavy wire in the pocket to support the leaf and get it to arc out from the wall. 

To attach the leaves to the window, I bent the end of the wire in a bit of a 'z'  shape to hook over the curtain rod & rest under the frame at the top of the window. I was so proud of myself and thrilled with the result. Mostly because this is the first sewing project I've done since Jr. High.

I had all these odd drop off pieces from cutting out the leaves. I barely had to think about what to do. I'd make fat, plush blades of grass to sit at the bottom of the tree, of course. Lilah and her brother Jack like to play with these fun, odd shaped pillows.

Lilah in her prehistoric scene

The distant volcano

I used the grid technique to transfer the dinosaur to the wall but the remainder of the room was free-handed shortly before I began painting. 

Another view of the volcano

Entry door to the room with fantasy foliage

While my babies had no choice in their room theme, I think any child would love to play and sleep in this room. While the colors are bright & bold, when you stand in the room, the green & blue is incredibly calming and the happiness of the illustrations are simply, fun.

I used Benjamin Moore Aura paints so I wouldn't need a primer. It was so worth the added expense. It was low odor. I did need 2 coats which was wonderful compared to my previous experience with bold color. I purchased 1 quart each of Peony, Citrus Blast, Mystical Grape & Jade Green. I got 1 gallon each of my custom blue & custom green for the sky & grass. The guys at the Westmont store did a great job color matching to the Disney color palette, (Sonic Boom Green & Buzz Blaster Blue) which really matched my original colors from my computer illustration. The brown was some left over paint also from Benjamin Moore but I'm not 100% sure of the color name, I think it was Clydesdale Brown. The black was Liquitex Acrylic, Mars Black.

It was fun designing this room. I still have ideas for some sewing projects but my inexperience & lack of time keep holding me back. I've designed a couple of wall quilts I hope to make some day. But, I've never quilted or done any applique.

I also wanted to create a custom cushion for the rocker. But again, super amateur. Luckily the babies are still very little, and maybe this theme will last a few more years, or at least until I get my projects complete.

The Shirt

Here is The Shirt.
The Shirt is not just a version of a sketch book, it is a bit of a diary of my 20's. There are things that I actually remember from the time, just looking at the individual doodles. And there are things that I am able to interpret now, kinda like examining a weird dream.

There are various themes that reoccur. Voyeurism being a prominent one. Eyes peering, sometimes direct, sometimes peeking from behind a hand or other object. I suppose I am both watching and, in my head anyway, being watched, therefore uncomfortable in my skin.  That whimsical uncomfortableness occurs a lot throughout, seen best through the facial expressions of most of the monsters. They all make a sort of deer in headlights look. And they seem to not really know what's going on. I felt that way a lot then, and occasionally do now as well. I am approaching my 40th birthday this year and while I know I'm older & wiser, I still harbor a lot of who I was then.

The weekend I drew the scorpion (center, just off the pocket) was when the birth of the name Doodle Babble occurred. It wasn't long after I turned 25 & I was visiting a friend for the weekend while he was away at college. He had to work during the days so I sat, doodled & wrote bad 'boy who hurt me' poetry. It was in one of those crappy poems, the term Doodle Babble was first used. I remember this because I rarely draw stuff I see, and in that day sitting alone in my friend's trailer, watching 'the bug channel'... and I was creatively stuck. I felt I had no excuse not to draw but nothing was happening. Being bored of the terrible poetry, I decided to draw that scorpion simply because I saw one on TV.

Original drawing of the Beach Scene below - The Shirt: Left sleeve

Doodle Babble comes from my subconscious. As I created The Shirt, when existing lines didn't spark new lines, I would deliberately smear ink smudges on the blank areas of the fabric to inspire myself to make something out of the supposed mistakes. Making something from nothing and without a plan. Sometimes I could simply stare at the blank fibers and see lines, shapes or paths I'd want to draw. As I'd draw, tangible objects would emerge. Figures like monsters, aliens, plant-like doo-dads. Sometimes a scene would emerge.

I've started to make a few of The Shirt drawings into actual paintings.

The Beach Scene - Oil on canvas

I took a couple of oil painting classes at the Art Institute of Chicago as non-credit a few years ago. I wasn't sure what from The Shirt I'd paint but I wanted to do something. I chose the Beach Scene because of the cute weirdness of it. Other than using some smudges to create these little characters, I don't remember actually drawing this scene on the shirt. I can't remember when, why, where, anything about it's creation. I like it though. And so does my sister. She said she wanted it so it hangs in her home.

Shame, did not originate on the shirt but I copied her there from one of my small scrap paper sketches. She was inspired by my first long-term boyfriend of whom I cheated on & the first boyfriend who dumped me. He dumped me because he didn't love me anymore. I cheated on him because I didn't think he cared much about me anyway. I always felt like he thought he could do better, cheating on him helped to prove that right. I wanted ownership in the failure, I couldn't bear simply being unlovable.

Shame - Acrylic on canvas

She became a painting not long before my 25th birthday. It was a new boy who inspired me to put her to paint. I had my first corporate job & a hard crush on a coworker. He simply paid attention to me. And he was artistic & aloof. I wanted to be around him as much as possible, I wanted to be like him. He was an active actor & musician. I should be an active artist then. So, I painted. I was ashamed of my crush. Everyday I went to work with a knot in my gut. Then there she was... My Shame. Nearly a year later that crush got used to me hanging around & told me he wanted me to be his girlfriend. For his birthday, I gave him this painting as well as another one because he was the one to inspire me to paint them. A huge slight to the man who inspired the original sketch, but I was trying desperately to move forward. He reluctantly accepted the gift under the condition that if I ever felt I needed the paintings back, I could have them. He broke up with me about 6 weeks later, right before my 26th birthday. I asked for them both back a couple of years later. I felt he didn't deserve them anymore & probably never deserved them & he should have been honest with me from the start. I had hoped to stay friends at least & it turns out he was a shitty friend too. Shame on me. Now my Shame is with me where she belongs.

The Shirt continues to be an inspiration for future projects for me. I have another oil painting sitting around waiting to be worked on. I started it in 2001. Life just keeps getting in the way of my art!

Inspiration

I've noticed artists of all mediums speak of what inspires them. Many times it's nature, or music, or other works of art... movies or stories or moments in life.
I, however, am inspired by line & shape. To get things started when I was working on 'The Shirt', I would use some of the blank space to clean my leaky pen. From the smudges, I'd create shapes. Sometimes those shapes would lead to something tangible, like a monster or some sort of alien foliage.
For Spoonflower's Hand Drawn fabric of the week contest, I created Subconscious Garden. I started it with a bean shape, inspired by some woman's shirt pattern at the park. I'm not sure about how I thought 'bean' since her shirt was a large scale paisley print but I did.

This bean led me into all the other lines. At first I started to think seed pod of something floral, then it became butterfly, then more likely a moth.

This is the finished drawing that I scanned for the pattern. I rolled the paper on some plastic material I had to create the repeat drawing from top to bottom.

I mirrored it left to right to complete the surface design. And then, I noticed the psychedelic skull-flower faces. Even the cyclops sticking out his tongue between the moth's antennae. Now the moth has the illusion it's wings are flapping. I dig it and so did the Spoonflower crowd. In the end, it placed 37th out of 500 entries with 213 votes for Subconscious Garden - A 'Color Me' Fabric. It will be available soon for purchase, the order is processing.

Urban Bouquet

In January of 2012, Spoonflower hosted a design contest with a graffiti theme. I knew I had a graffiti-like squiggle somewhere that I could maybe use to make a design. It was on The Shirt, of course, right up under the arm pit. A filler design, but still a design. Somehow, it immediately seemed floral to me. I tried to keep the 's' shape in tact but quickly realized it had to go.

I was having problems inventing a flower and I remembered I had taken photos months ago of a bouquet of flowers I got in the fall (Thanksgiving, maybe?) from my mother-in-law.

I duped & rotated that little squiggle to create the middles of the flowers. I removed the inner lines, scaled & rotated them in 2 or more layers to create the petals. I stylized the middle of the flowers with large radiating circles that I think give the design that 'urban' appeal. The final touch was adding the heavy black offset drop shadow. I think this added a bit of dimension & made it more graffiti-y. 

 

Then, I arranged the repeat. It turns out, even this process is a bit subconscious for me. I'm sure there's a formula, or trick, or something for this step but for now I eye-ball it to make it work. It's probably the long way of doing things but it works. I evenly distributed the flowers so the same colors don't touch, creating balance within the design. As I examine what I did, it seems I scattered about 4-6 of each flower within the repeating area. In retrospect, I suppose I did apply a bit of a mathematical strategy, just not in a preconceived, calculated way. 

As for the contest, I placed 15th out of 157 entries with 254 votes for UrbanBouquet. My highest ranking entry so far! While I've gotten more votes on other designs, this design is still generating viewers that are marking it as a 'favorite'. And I've even sold a swatch to a customer who says she has plans for curtains! I hope she doesn't change her mind.

Birth of Sea Creatures

I am fueled by tangents. I offshoot so much I think I may have ADHD. As I try to write this post, it is becoming more difficult to organize my process. But I'm trying. Please bear with me while I get my bearings.

This doodle was created with Spoonflower fabric in mind to become a mirror repeat. Then a Spoonflower contest came about for Ditsy Sea Creatures. While doing my research, I found these little 'spores' also appeared similar to some microscopic jellyfish. So I created a new drawing in ink.

 

Since I am more familiar with Illustrator, I auto traced the scan & created my repeat. Below is the final entry for that Ditsy Sea Creatures contest at Spoonflower.

SeaCreatures ended up placing 29th out of 214 entries with 310 votes.

The next contest after Sea Creatures was one for Jellyfish so, I created a pink version of the ditsy to make a coordinate. I used Illustrator to create a sort of 'mod' jelly.

GeoJelly4 came in 70th out of 226 entries with 156 votes. It uses rounded square elements from another previous design shown below.  As a design, I like the GeoJelly but as a fabric pattern, I think it's a big fail. The details of the tentacally-goo are too fine. So, the Jelly has to be quite large to appreciate them, thus making it impractical for fabric application. I'm willing to be wrong. Maybe it would work well on a dress?

These mod squares were created years ago as a concept that never got used for some business card ideas. Here I duped them & arranged them in a repeat for fabric which I hope to someday make into pillows. I like to re-purpose & reuse ideas all the time. Constant reinvention. And I can be a bit lazy. So I use my creativity to make my processes more simple & pick up elements here & there to create new. But only from my own work, of course.

So, what's my point?
Well, years ago, I made some retro square design that I later used to make a repeat for some future 'mod' pillows, which led me to make a square-y mod jellyfish that ties in with a more recent random hand drawn thing that I felt sorta looked like microscopic sea creatures and made it all work in an effort to enter a contest or 2. All done in the hopes of someday establishing myself as a 'real' artist. Good thing I hung onto that old file & old idea.

Getting Started

So, I think I need to do some blogging about my art.
Mostly in an attempt to make myself more artsy.
I named this blog Doodle Babble because that is what I describe my art as... Doodle Babble. Sometimes it's incoherent scribblings, sometimes it's deeply cryptic, meaningful stuff all via wiggly lines, mostly from subconscious origins.
It all started with a stain on a white t-shirt in my early 20's. I thought I'd simply cover up the stain with some doodles. I got my rapidograph pen because the tip was very fine and the ink read 'waterproof' on it's label and started drawing. It took years to complete, but many long stretches of time passed without touching it. My commitment to my art was somewhat fleeting. I was easily distracted by life.

I am currently in the process of properly digitizing all of the drawing from 'The Shirt'. Eventually, I hope to create an official repeat pattern of it to share with the world on Spoonflower.
The Shirt became an interesting study of my growth as an artist since it spanned so many years to complete. I began in the lower center of the front of the shirt & worked my way up, out & over the shoulders & around the sleeves to the back. It was my main sketchbook. I carried it everywhere when I was binge drawing, kinda like a security blanket. The drawings got looser & on occasion, more meaningful as time went on.

Drawing on a t-shirt with a rapidograph pen is very time consuming & meditative. While the ink flows nicely, you do have to use a bit of a pointilistic approach since the tip gets caught in the weave of the fibers, ya can't just 'draw'. Like a slow motion tattoo gun, with a single needle. This obstacle forced me to have to go over my line work repeatedly to smooth out any edges to make things look crisp. I now use a similar technique even when I draw on paper. I prefer the organic, variable thickness in my lines.

This untitled drawing shows how repeatedly going over the lines gives that variable thickness. I think it gives the line work movement. I created this to be used as a mirrored repeat pattern on Spoonflower for fabric. Until I can come up with a better name, it's Curves.