Another update

I just wanted to let everyone know, my few followers and anyone else who comes across this site, that I haven't stopped creating my doodles every day despite them not getting posted here. Now that school is over it shouldn't be too hard to get them all up to scanning quality since I won't be so damn busy. I have about a dozen ready that I will scan in tomorrow (later today technically), and I will start getting more ready after I finish today's, which I plan to do now since I woke up and can't fall back asleep. I really hope to be caught up sometime next week, and to stay caught up since this whole catching up thing is a real pain,

Still going strong!

Despite the lack of posting and scanning there has been no lack of doodling. I worked on finally getting the doodles I've done this month ready to scan. If I darken one page every day I should be done by the end of the week, and that is taking into account that by then there will be one more page than there is right now due to the doodles I do between now and then. So hopefully there will be a barrage of doodles for you on Saturday or Sunday, possibly sooner since that page every day thing was just an example of a timetable, I think I'll get it done faster than that but I'm not making any promises. I have noticed that the 'hopefully' scenarios haven't exactly come to fruition this month. I haven't even been able to get to the arcade to play DDR, due to the combination of health and being busy with school and family. So that's it for now, just wanted to let you know that I haven't given up or anything, just having trouble with getting the doodles to where you can enjoy them too.

Sorry

Still didn't get around to getting those doodles filled out. I'm thinking of just scanning in what I've got so far and worry about quality later. Anyway I've been trying to simplify the designs a little bit, lately only using two or three lines. Mom thinks I should do the alphabet, like calligraphy. Not sure how that would work with the asymmetrical letters though. Also thinking of other ways to mix it up while staying in the rules I've made for myself. Also thinking about what to do next, got some ideas for 365 snakes, cause snakes are awesome ;-D.

A short update

Sorry I didn't get around to scanning last weekend, I had a sprained thumb that made it difficult to put enough pressure on the pencil to get good lines. I will work on getting all (or most) of my doodles taken care of this weekend. I also have a nice diatribe about my health that I will write soon for anyone who cares. Have a good day.

Swirly doodle #52

I realy like the way the top of this one form some kind of unraveled  four stranded braid. To me that is the coolest part of the way this turned out in the end, though I definitely like the spiky bits at the bottom as well. Don't know what else to say about this one so here it is.

Swirly doodle #51

Yesterdays was one that's been in my head for a while: stating with the opposing three-pointed bits. The problem was figuring out what to do from there. I don't think it turned out horribly, and I like the figure eight in the center. I think it could have been better though... oh well it's still okay. It was tough however, for some reason it was very hard to get it not to look lopsided, and I still think it does a bit, which isn't helped by the fact that it was drawn slightly off the vertical axis of the sketch book. Oh well... again. Whatever, enough of my babble, here it is.

Swirly doodle #50

And here's today's. This one took a long time to get even close to looking right. This is my first attempt at a pinwheel type design, and boy was it difficult. It was my first and may also be my last. It depends on how I feel on other milestone doodles (100, 150 etc). I'm very happy with how it turned out though, I almost left it as just the two crossing football/almonds and the part coming off of them, but I added the part where the points meet in the center, which I think looks pretty good, though I could have left it alone, and I almost did. Oh well, I like it, even if the parts meeting in the center kind of look like a swastika when you follow them outward... I also just noticed, if you look at it from a distance it looks like a hashtag, only tilted the wrong direction.

Swirly doodle #49

From yesterday, November 2nd. Angry face with wacky hairdo, or horns. That bottom right triangular shape is a little smaller than the one on the left, made symmetry that much harder for everything else following that starting shape.

Swirly doodle #48

From November 1st, I think it's some sort of alien bug. This is the first time I used those oval shapes separate from each other like that, I really like how it turned out. This one also has a little more width to it, unlike most which end up being taller than they are wide.

Swirly doodle #47

This one is dedicated to Lilalena, I really like her stargazing project so this one started out as a (slightly disproportionate) five-pointed star. I like to think of it as a mutated pentagram in honor of Halloween. Muwahahaha ;P

Some thoughts about the new project

Thanks to the input I received I will be picking topics 2 weeks to a month in advance, just in case I need time to think about how to make things work out. Also I've decided based on research into the types of pages you get by clicking random page, that I'm going to stick to nouns that reflect things or ideas... too often you get obscure people or places that are just impractical or lame to try to base a piece on. So I will click random page until I get something that is not a person or place. But I will still be challenged I believe by the limitations of the prompts. I still haven't made up my mind when to start the project, but if I had to guess, I would say very soon, before it gets too cold for the outdoors prompts... we'll see.

Swirly doodle #46

I thought when I finished this one that it looked kind of like a spaceship... later I realized that it also looks somewhat phallic. Oh well, I guess these things happen sometimes... Well now I caught up for the past week, I am going to try extra hard to get the one for the 31st up before October is over so it will be under the October heading in the archive cause I would prefer the doodles from a particular month to go under their month's heading.

Swirly doodle #45

So this one is from yesterday, the 29th. If you dismiss the big hangy part at the bottom and the horn looking things at the top, the central part looks like a bat, which was not done intentionally for halloween, but it's a neat coincidence anyway.

Swirly doodle #44

And this one is from the 28th. I guess this could be another arrow (see #2), pointing downwards, other than that, I don't really think it's anything, just cool lookin' hehe. I still need to darken #45 (Oct 29th), and do one for today, so I'll be back later to do those. I think due to my schedule that for now I'm going to be doing the light versions of doodles every day, then come the weekend I will work on darkening them for quality scans and post them. I really wanted to post every day as I did these, but that's just not going to work out for the time being.

Swirly doodle #43

From the 27th. This looks like some sort of strange bicycle. It's the demon bike from hell in the spirit of Halloween... i guess. The bicycle thing is kind of a liberal interpretation i think because it's radial, so maybe if you ignore one of the sides of pointy bits... meh, close enough.

Swirly doodle #42

Ah 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything (according to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). This one looks like either another helmet, or the face mask of one of those masked mexican wrestlers. I forget what they're called but I know they have a specific word or phrase for them.

Swirly doodle #41

This is from the 25th, it doesn't look much like anything to me, but I like the little heart in the middle there.

Swirly doodle #40

Oh, 'tis always fun to play catch up. Here is the doodle from October 24th, which obviously looks like a butterfly. This never happens on purpose, my view while I'm doing these is too narrow so I never see these likenesses until I'm done and step back to look at the final product. Well I guess there were exceptions, like my playing card designs...

Some updates on things

I know I didn't scan yesterday's doodle in yet, it needs to be darkened first, I'll do that when I do today's.

The Bigger, better news is about the next project I intend to do. First is a primer on what it is. The project is an exercise in creative problem solving: I am taking the prompts from Noah's book and combining them with a subject to be determined by clicking the "random page" link on Wikipedia. It sounds pretty fun to me. The good news about the prompts is that they have no dates on them, I thought they were specifically dated, and my OCD would have made it impossible for me to 1) not do the prompts on the dates given, 2) not do them in order starting on January 1st. The fact that all they say is Day 1, Day 2, etc, gives me some freedom from myself. Also looking through the prompts I saw some that require going outside to find things, which in Wisconsin need to not be done with snow on the ground. Though now that I think about it those things could be collected at any point and kept somewhere until the day they are needed, except that means any organic material needs to already be dead when collected... Aw hell, like I said, I'll just make sure I start this project at a date where the outdoor things can be done in reasonable weather.

Anyway, some of the prompts need to be modified or interpreted in ways to work with my resources and desires for an art project. In other words, for a prompt that says, for example, write a ten word love story, bonus: illustrate it, I'll be illustrating a love story based on the random subject. This is part of the whole problem solving thing. How do I make the prompts work, bend them to still be relevant (if they need bending at all),so I can use them for a visual arts project. Also how can I use the random subjects indirectly? For example getting a page like 1982 World Series I could use inspiration from one of the teams involved in combination with the prompt and make something about beer (the Brewers were one of the teams in that WS).

So that's what's going on today. I do need help from anyone who may read this though, I want an opinion. Should I make a list of random subjects, as in click the random page link 365 times and write down everything I get so I can think ahead a little bit. Or should I wait until, say, the night before to find out what my subject will be each day? So find the subjects either one year or one day in advance, let me know what you think and give me your reasoning.

Swirly doodle #39

Here's another radial one I did today while watching House. Not that that has anything to do with it, but I thought I'd throw that in anyway. Can't say it looks much like anything, though the radial ones tend to be more on the abstract side. Meh, what can ya do? They were meant to be abstract in the first place, looking like things is usually coincidence.

Swirly doodle #38

This is one of those rare ones where due to the lack of lines crossing in the center I find it works better to have opposing sides of the design symmetrically do the opposite when it comes to going either over or under itself. It's symmetrical in shape, which is what counts for me.

Swirly doodle #37

This one was based on an idea I had where the loops form a chain, unfortunately that turned out to be a little too clustered and twisted. It just didn't look good with more than two loops like I have here. So I only did the two loops intertwined. I like it though, so no worries.

Swirly doodle #36

And finally the one I did today. This looks like some kind of fancy-pants oriental style helmet/face mask. Kind of reminds me of ones I remember from Lord of the Rings, I think maybe on the savage human dudes...

Swirly doodle #35

I see a tulip, or some sort of flower bud/bulb. The points at the bottom ruin that a little, but it's still tulip shaped to me, more or less.

Swirly doodle #34

The exploding volcano... yes, no, kind of? Well that's what I think anyway, what about you? please feel free to comment on any doodle, tell me what you think it looks like.

Swirly doodle #33

I really like this one, I don't know why this one got more complicated... where the hell did I get the time? Oh well, no matter. It looks like an insect of some sort, and that's pretty cool.

Swirly doodle #32

Alright, exams are over for now, no more all-nighters for a bit, it's time to play catch up. I have been doing doodles every day still (simpler ones due to time constraints, the aforementioned exams being the cause of that), just not getting them darkened to scan well, so I caught up on that today after doing today's doodle. I kind of like the pointy nature of this one; two lines, yet elegant.

Swirly doodle #31

Mom wanted one that looked like an infinity symbol... it's vertical though so it's more like an eight, but what was I supposed to do, I explained to her how these work with my almond-shaped base. Artistic license I guess. Also this marks the one month anniversary of the start of this project. So far so good and going strong. I've made up my mind that I will start the second 366 project on January 1st, since that is sort of a requirement for the next one, at least it is in my mind. I'll reveal more details when it gets closer to time to start.

Swirly doodle #30

This one looks like some sort of jellyfish or octopus or squid, something like that, to me. I was going for a little more horizontal length since I was noticing that most of them are longer in the vertical direction.

Swirly doodle #29

And finally here's the one that I actually did today. I was a little stressed for time on this one, and was distracted by the baseball game (we actually won today! Yippee!), so I could have done more with it, but I think it's decent anyway. And since what I think is what counts around here I guess you'll just have to live with it, so there ;-P

Swirly doodle #28

This one took longer to make, as most of my radial doodles do. The idea was based around those center parallel lines that cross each other at the sides of the base there before moving on separately. Definitely enjoyed doing this one.

Swirly doodle #27

This is the smallest one I've done so far. I intended to do more with it, but I got this far and everything I tried to add just made it look ugly. I figured this cute little one was good enough for one day.

Swirly doodle #26

Alright time to start playing catch up with the scanning, starting with #26, from October 10th. This one I especially like the way those two points come together on the sides near the bottom. I think that really turned out neat.

Posting delays

Sorry I haven't scanned in the last few doodles yet. I have been keeping up with making them I just have been distracted with other things *cough*postseasonbaseball*cough*. Anyway, tomorrow should be a good day to get caught up on scanning, so expect a flurry of doodles tomorrow/today, whatever you want to call it. Maybe I should just use the date and say the 13th, Thursday. There.

Swirly doodle #25

Here's a smaller simple one I did in about an hour and a half, since I wanted time to do this one, darken it for a good scan, and get my spades doodle from yesterday darkened as well. All of this had to be done in the four hours I had after getting home from the awesome Brewers win in game 1 of the NLCS against the Cardinals. I suppose some of it could have been worked on before leaving for the game, or even while I was at the stadium before the game started, (I usually arrive early to avoid traffic and crowding to make sure I don't miss any of the game that I've paid for to attend) but I just didn't feel like it. So this one's a little simpler, but I like it, though that bottom half circle part is a little crooked compared to the one on the top. Oh well, as I've said before this is partially an exercise in being satisfied with things even if they aren't perfect. Anyway, here it is.

Swirly doodle #24

Look, this one was completed at 11:40pm, but it's not ready to scan and I just don't feel like taking the time to do that right now. I don't care if nobody else believes me that I did one before midnight, I wouldn't be able to count the project as being legit if I didn't and I would scrap it to start anew. I wouldn't lie to myself is basically what I'm saying, I'm not that proud. So I'll edit this post sometime tomorrow with a nice scan of my Spades doodle, probably at the same time I post #25. See ya then, after the Brewers hopefully win Game 1 of the NLCS! Woot!
EDIT: Here's the doodle.

Swirly doodle #23

I can't believe it, we actually won and are going on to the NLCS against the Cardinals. This is about the best outcome we could have hoped for.
Here's the third in the card suit series: Clubs. The right, uh, leaf part is smaller than the left one, but it still turned out nice I think. Also the top looks a little funky. I would've changed it but I was running out of time so I decided that it was okay how it was. Whatever it still looks like clubs, more or less, so mission accomplished.

Baseball

Well, we've unfortunately come down to the wire, if the Brewers manage to suck today like they did in Arizona then their season will be over. I'm really shocked that they did so poorly in both of those games, at least from a pitching standpoint. I was really hoping not to be going to a game today, but alas, here we are. I just have a feeling that it's over, I don't want to jinx it by saying that, but I think it's true regardless. We have a history of buckling under pressure, I know Ryan Braun said he lives for those pressure moments in games, but most of the rest of the team seem to have trouble when it really counts. They expand the strike zone too much and try too hard to hit those big home runs. They get too tense and make bad swings at bad pitches (or god ones, depending on whose side you're on). I've noticed this trend especially from Rickie Weeks. This entire postseason he's been doing this, and it's only worked out once. It's a shame since he's normally a pretty decent hitter, but whenever he's in those pressure situations he almost always seems to fail. I really hope I'm wrong about them losing today's game, I really do, but somehow I think this is the end of Brewers baseball this year. Also if Prince does not sign with Milwaukee, which looks more and more likely, it will be the end of an era.

Swirly doodle #22

It's done, but I haven't darkened the lines for a good scan, and I'm way too tired to do it right now. So here's a crappy scan instead (for now). By the way this is the second in my card suits series: Diamonds.
 EDIT: Re-scan

Swirly doodle #21

As promised, here is the first in a series of four based on the suits in a deck of cards. Quite obviously, this one is hearts. Looks to me like it got a titch lopsided, but like I mentioned once before, the bigger ones tend to do that.

Swirly doodle #20

Simple one today, got a late start on it. Nothing else to say really.

Swirly doodle #19

I don't feel like writing a bunch of stuff about this one today, had a nasty fever earlier, going to bed now. Here's the picture.

Swirly doodle #18

I was going to keep doing stuff to this one, but I like the way it looks now so I think it's good, not to mention my eyes were starting to cloud over from sleepiness. Also keep it up Brewers 2-0 in the NLDS against the Diamondbacks... hell yeah!
After I finish this piece of paper, which is two more doodles, I will do a series of four based on the suits of cards. I did one in chemistry my freshman year of college that coincidentally looked like it could be spades. I will be doing an original design for spades but that first one gave me the idea. So that will be doodles #21-24.

Swirly doodle #17

This one got a little lopsided on me, which considering its size is a little unusual since it's typically the larger ones that get lopsided. That's okay though, part of this project for me is an exercise in perfection, in the sense that I can't spend hours and hours perfecting something that has to be finished in a 24 hour period. So they aren't all going to be absolutely perfectly symmetrical and I'm okay with that.
Actually looking at it again it doesn't seem that bad, it looked pretty bad when I was right up in it while working on it. Which is also odd since they usually look worse when I look at them from a distance. Whatever, it works, it's done, time for bed.

Swirly doodle #16

And September is over, four full sheets of paper front and back are complete. I am actually really having fun with this so far, we'll see if that keeps up or not.
Two things have occurred to me since starting this project, both pointed out to me by other people. One is that these designs are very much like the tattoos that seem to be so popular among young adults, you know the "tribal" style ones. I suppose that's true enough, so if anyone wants to use one as a tattoo design I guess that's cool. I know I put copyrights on all of these but I'm not exactly going to hold anyone to it. What can I realistically do? How would I even know if someone had taken the design without permission? If it floats your boat than by all means go for it.
Second is that it would be much easier to replicate the symmetry if I used graphing paper instead of a simple sketch pad. That's part of what makes this fun and somewhat of a challenge though, trying to get that symmetry freehanded. So I will continue to use plain white paper for these. And without further ado here is #16.

Swirly doodle #15

Back to something simpler. I like this one quite a bit. I'm so tired, felt like crap today so I stayed home from school. Feeling a little off again now, gotta get a good night's sleep, that should help immensely. I'm not terribly happy that Game 1 of the NLDS in Milwaukee starts at 1:07pm, since I specifically picked my season seats on the other side of the stadium so I wouldn't be in the sun for day games. Even if they couldn't have put everyone in the exact seats they had as seat holders it would have been nice for them to at least try to put people in the same general location... Anyway here's the doodle.

Scanner part deux

Doodles should be better quality from now on, as I found a better way to scan them, it just requires that I make the lines a bit darker to begin with, which means they will take a little more time. Although I may finish a doodle before the midnight deadline, the darkening process for scanning may take a bit longer so that may cause delays in posting.

Swirly doodle #14

Did this one mostly between classes today. I like this one quite a bit, but it turned out a bit light. It'll get fixed later like all the rest.
Side note: Home field advantage and best single season record ever for the Brewers! Yay!

Swirly doodle #13

Stupid Diamondbacks, just go away and let us have home field advantage already, sheesh...
Anyway, here's #13 for you. Sorry it's late I was waiting to see how the aforementioned Diamondbacks did in their game, since it was kind of important.

Swirly doodle #12

Finally did one ahead of schedule instead of last minute. I think there's a part in the center there that kind of reminds me of Darth Vader's helmet, only the chin part is pointy. Heh, still neat.

Just a Thought

Looking back, really the only doodle that got a little too messy/complicated was #5, the rest have been just complex enough to be interesting. I've also noticed that the first ones were generally larger, with a larger base (that oval/almond shape in the middle is the base for all the doodles), again the exception being #5. Tomorrow's doodle (today, technically since it is the 26th at time of posting) will be an attempt at getting back to that. I really don't understand how they kept getting smaller but I think I'm going to try to be a little more consistent with the base size.

Actually, no I'm not going to be more consistent. That's just stupid. It's going to be hard enough to make 366 of the damn things without them becoming same-y, so anything to help them be a little more diverse is probably a good thing.

Meh, whatever, I'll probably just do what I've been doing: start drawing and see where it takes me.

Swirly doodle #11

Started this one while at the Brewers game today (awesome game BTW), I think it looks a bit like a frog.
Ribbit.

Swirly doodle #10

Between feeling unmotivated today and deciding that some of the doodles were a little complicated I made this very simple one in about 20 minutes. It seem more like the base for a better one but it was 11:00 when I started this one, so too bad.

Blah.

Swirly doodle #9

Here's 9. Late post because I was watching the Brewers WIN THE DIVISION!!! WOOOO!!!

Also, it seems that this is the smallest one yet. Hm...

Swirly doodle #8

Ugly see through on this one guys. It'll get cleaned up later like the rest of them. At least you can see what I did today. EDIT: Fixed this one up so it looks better. :D

So my day started off crappy, had a real hard time waking up. I wanted to go to the arcade today when I was up yesterday, but didn't feel like it upon getting up today. Went to school, which was alright, came home and was going to take a nap, but I still had ITG on the brain and I wasn't sleepy anymore after being up for so long anyway. So I went to the arcade for a few hours after all, finally saw Dave there. Anyway that meant I wasn't home until after 7:00pm so I didn't get to make the awesome doodle I have in my had because that one will take more time to get right. So you get this, which isn't bad... it just isn't the one I really wanted to make today.

Swirly doodle #7

Holy crap I did it... a whole week. Since this one s early I'm going to start going back to clean up the images. I'm going to go back over the pencil drawings to make the lines a bit crisper and darker, then re-scan them and go in with the eraser tool in paint to make it so only the lines I want are left. None of that weird fuzzy crap around the outside and no see through of the drawing on the other side of the page... HMPH!

Uh, right sorry, here's #7!

Swirly doodle #6

6! One more and it'll have been a whole week! only 51 more like it to go! Well, here's to hoping.

Swirly doodle #5

Here's #5. Good on me for even getting this far. I think due to my scanner issues I'm going to go back and clean up the ones I've done so far, as well as cleaning the images before posting. This may lead to some being posted after midnight on any given day even if the doodle was done the day before.

Scanner

So it looks like this scanner is able to see through to the backside of each page thanks to that damned scanning light being so bright. This is causing some of the drawings to look a bit muddied up thanks to any drawings on the other side. I'm not going to waste paper just to resolve this, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. Just letting you know that I am indeed aware of this slight blemish.

Swirly doodle #4

This one is a little small I guess, but it's a little more intricate as well so... compromise!

Swirly doodle #3

I've been up tonight with insomnia so I did #3 already, since I'll be at the arcade at Anime Fan Zone today I figured I would post this one a little earlier. It is technically the 17th now so I might as well right? It was also the 17th when I started and finished this piece so I didn't cheat or anything.