Doodles

Although predominantly containing a multitude of photographs, the occasional short story and the odd video, Creative Splurges is a vessel for anything creative I sit down and do.

For some reason, although the AutoDesk Sketchpad app has been on both my iPad and iPhone for months, today is the first day I really sat down and used it. I guess the catalyst was finding some old doodles under the bed whilst having a clear out a couple of days ago that reminded me how much I loved to draw (and the frustration of finding some old unfinished comics and finding myself screaming “What happens next?!”).

When I bought my iPad back in March, I also bought a stylus with it, with the distinct intention of using it to draw. It proved to be marginally fiddlier than I had hoped (and certainly not much like using a real pencil and paper) and I never really took it up. For some reason, using it today felt a hell of a lot more natural.

Firstly, I sat and tried to draw something specific. It was supposed to be a penguin.

My wife complained about him being blue, which is why I added the annotations at the bottom.

Having tried that, and not having the best of success, I decided to try my hand at tracing. This is a technique I learnt at university – simply import a photograph into your graphics package of choice – be it Gimp, a cracked version of Photoshop or AutoDesk Sketchbook – add a new, blank layer. Draw around the photo using the new layer, then delete the original photo layer, and you’re left with what can sometimes be a nice result.

This is a tracing of an old photograph of Corfe Castle taken years ago on an original iPhone. I quite like the result, even if it is a little ill-defined.

After that, I decided to do something I used to do many years ago, and just doodle – fill up whatever white space I could with a random drawing of something. I think I picked it up from Charles Shultz when I read his autobiography.

I might try checking out how good my scanner is (prediction: it’s probably not very good) and scan in some of my old drawings, and make some From the Vaults posts.