When the one-line doodles become the finished project: interlaced birds

When the one-line doodles become the finished project: interlaced birds

This week’s project comes with a reminder to myself that simplicity is fine. Even though my intention this year is to create more elaborate images, it doesn’t mean I have to transform simple ideas into complicated projects just for the sake of creating something “elaborate”. I’m generally not very good with quick and simple, only the kind of simple that requires hours of work. I know I have to work on that!

You may remember that last week’s cat pattern was inspired by a a series of quick drawings made without lifting the pen from the paper until finished, a warm-up exercise for the class the Year of the Spark. I used a refined version of those drawings for the pattern, but guess what: this week, it’s about birds instead of cats, and more importantly, the quick doodles are the finished project. No refined versions. It would have been quick and simple, if I had skipped the step where I complicate things before simplifying them again.

Here’s a framed poster mockup featuring my image, because my quest for more simplicity is not incompatible with my growing affection for fancy mockups.

Mockup Scene Creator

 

 

About the process

In the middle of the one-liners session, I came up with a bird that caught my attention:

the-idea-of-a-bird

 

As soon as I saw it, I thought about drawing several variations to create an overlay, just like I did in the drawing #23 of my 2014 daily drawing experiment:

birds-2014

 

So later on, I quickly doodled more one-line birds, scanned them, and created this quick assemblage:

première-esquisse

And I actually liked it. But here’s where silly me found it too simple. I’ll spare you those painful steps, but I tried to create full shapes instead of the wire-like ones, re-drew the birds several times, etc., before coming back to something very close to the initial sketch. Just a little color, just a little texture, but the same simple idea I had from the start. Oh well.

The finished image (with blue lines instead of gray)

intricate-pious-blue

 

(Mockup by place.to)