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.