Dots and Hearts.

Still drawing hearts.  Four of them.  I like shading things with the dot method.  I remember learning how to do this in my art classes in high school.  The cool thing is that my youngest son is taking now and told me that he was learning this  in class.  How cool is it to discuss art with your kid, I ask you?  VERY.

I was going to leave the hearts white and ZenT the insides.  Then I thought I'd get brave and again, test my dotting technique to lighten the areas under the hearts on 'top.'  I do need to slow down when placing the dots, as you can get very carried away and place a smudge instead of a dot.  Again, the pens I'm using allow me to really play with texture.  Not bad for a two-hour piece.

At first, I only dot-shaded the bottom.  Then, I decided to get crazy and do the top.  Why be normal, right?  Every piece I do is a learning experience... and a FUN one.

Until pen and paper meet again,

Peace

Hearts Abound

Every year around this time, at least for the past ten years or so, I get the itch.  The tattoo itch.  I take out my sketchbook, and doodle.  I have tried and tried to come up with a clever design that included hearts.  I am a Valentine Baby.  Surely that deserves a really interesting tattoo, right?  Sure.  I just can't seem to come up with anything clever or anything that would warrant inking my body permanently.  I get angry at myself, too.  Surely I can come up with something, after all;  this is my day.  I've seen  clever Valen-birthday... birthentine's Day ideas in the lovely cards I receive... and have kept.  I feel as if I've failed myself.  I even drew up some candy "Conversation Hearts" with all of my families' initials.  Yeah, yeah. 

I have not been feeling well lately, and decided to just lay around.  I started thinking about hearts again.  I was determined this time to come up with something, or at the very least, an idea to tweak.  I began sketching large hearts.  I tried joining them.  Then I tried sketching some with a border... hmm... I kept going.  I liked what I saw.  Then, it hit me:  Chain them together.  Yeah!  So I started over.  It was easier than I thought.  Before I knew it, I had sketched out a really neat design.  I thought about "Zentangling" it;  including lines and shapes within the inner part of the hearts.  I chose not to, but decided to color each heart.  It was nice.  Still it lacked something.  Shading.  I began with the darks, shading the areas 'under' the 'overpasses.'  Happy with that, I then added the highlights.  It was done.  Looking at it now, I still may Zentangle it.  If anything, this has inspired me to create my tattoo idea using this design, only using 4 hearts instead of the 8 I drew here:

I was not going for perfection.  I was going for whimsy and I think I caught that.  I'm pleased. 

Until next time,

Doodle on!