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Draw-a-day December

Friends of friends/folks on the internet decided that December would be a month of drawing and posting a picture every day! I decided I would partake in this adventure.

First off, let me say that I have been Classically Trained in Art by a) at one time being a little girl who was pretty interested in drawing and stuff and b) by taking a drawing class at a community college with my dad when I was 13.  I've also drawn stuff like illustrations for Adam's thesis proposal, t-shirt designs, and a game here and there.  Basically... I can draw, I like drawing, I just don't do it very often.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaflurbaleen/sets/72157625510520630/
Anyway, at the end of December, I had drawn something for every day of the month! Click above for a link to the flickr set. For whatever reason, (its raw awesomeness, I suppose) my most haphazard and final drawing is the one with the most views:

Last drawing of the year!

My favorite is probably this one of my friend Mkehrt shooting a lasergun (aka. detachable part of a vacuum cleaner at QFC at 1am on a trip to buy christmas lights in february, which they actually had):

10/31 mkehrt shoots doom vacuum gun

I also drew what I think is a nice portrait of myself:

11/31 - self portrait kathleen

There were also lots of pictures of my cats or other animals, and objects lying around or things that had really happened that day. Very few of the drawings were just raw brain imaginings.

The most interesting thing was how I'd find myself at a party at 11:55pm, needing to draw something, and be able to draw it on my android phone with any one of multiple drawing applications (including one of my own). And then how I'd actively seek out other nifty drawing programs to use at a more leisurely pace next time. Here's a list of the 'mediums' my drawings were in:
  • pencil
  • pen
  • sharpie
  • Photoshop (w/ tablet)
  • Illustrator (w/ tablet)
  • Sketch-a-bit (android) 
  • Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile (android) 
  • various Harmony offshoots on the web, android, and ipad
  • chalk on a table at a restaurant
The two things that I learned were:
  1. This guy John (who incidentally was at TIGJam! and draws really neat, shadowy, black and white art) described what he does in Photoshop: He uses the paintbrush tool with a hard edge and size controlled by stylus pressure. To erase, he just swaps the color of the brush to white instead of black, which can be done just by pressing the X key or mapping it to a button on the stylus. I tried this technique on the self-portrait above (and some other drawings) with much success, even though I was also cheating by tracing a photo. It's like drawing with an erasable, smell-free sharpie!
  2. The most satisfying android app for drawing something quickly is probably Sketcher, the android version of Harmony. (If you didn't click the above link, click this one now and try it out on the web! http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/) You draw any strokes you want and it adds extra lines or shading in strategic places and spruces up your drawing. It's hard to get exactly what you want, but most of what it generates is pretty cool. Sketch-a-bit just takes too much control and patience if you want to make something high quality. Likewise, the Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile is rather involved and I haven't made it far enough past the learning curve to be able to sketch something neat with it at a party. 
Closing image, the one I drew at the party with Sketcher of a guy named Pete with a knife through his head!

3/31: sketcher knife-head

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