Fun Freebie: My Birdy Valentines

Some little birds for all the lovelies in your life. You can download a sheet of them from my Fun Freebies Flickr set & print your own. How sweet!

Digi-Doodle: Nanners To Go!

This silly drawing was inspired by some Richard Scarry books I just bought for my collection. Love his work, which is always full of busy little animals working, raising families & otherwise being productive citizens. It made me wonder, if this guy had a job, what would it be? A banana delivery driver, of course!

P.s.
I decided to change the name of this series from "A Design A Day" to "Digi-Doodles." Trying to do one a day turned out to be a little bit over-ambitious. I'm still going to stick with this challenge, but it will be more like every other day, or perhaps every 3 days, or maybe every 4 ... whatever I can muster. : )

Care to share some of your own doodles? Post them on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link in the comments below. They can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Digi-Doodle: Monkey Face

Inspired by a vintage monkey mug that I keep my pens & pencils in.

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Digi-Doodle: Alligator Tortoise

This one's another exercise in adding patterns to a scanned-in sketch. I'm really enjoying that right now. This sketch is a portrait of our Leopard Tortoise, Marvin. I thought the alligator skin pattern on his shell was a cool twist.

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Digi-Doodle: Earthy & His Tiny Kite

How can an earthworm fly a kite, you ask? Well obviously, as the illustration shows, he just wraps it around his body in lieu of holding it in a hand (which he would if he could, but alas, he has none). Considering the scale of an earthworm, this kite must be pretty dang tiny, and therefore will probably not catch enough wind to blow away or lift Earthy off the ground.

But maybe because he is so light, being an earthworm, this tiny kite could in fact lift him? I don't know; physics is not my strong suit. Feel free to muse about the likelihood of an earth worm flying a kite in the comments below. ; )

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Digi-Doodle: Patterned Elephant

I'm a bit obsessed with applying patterns & textures to things using Illustrator tools right now. There's a pattern called "elephant," so of course I had to try that out! It's the one I used for the elephant's skin, plus I applied a transparent green overlay to it.

This illustration was inspired by a dot-to-dot version of Elsa the Elephant that I'm working on right now for my kids' activity book. Stay tuned for more on that new item!

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Digi-Doodle: Crazy Canna

Inspired by sites such as Illustration Friday & iHanna's Creative Space, I've decided to challenge myself to do a little digital illustration each day. Just a quick, purely for fun, no-pressure little doodle; a way to feed my brain & stimulate my creativity. Sometimes these little doodle-y designs may lead to a bigger project, but often they will not (although subconsciously they may start some synapses a-firing in my brain that lead to other ideas that lead to a project down the road). In any case, I just want to have fun with it, not over-think it & just do it!

For this first design, I started by scanning in an old sketch of one of my all-time favorite flowers, a canna. I then used Adobe Illustrator to turn the drawing into a vector image & add colors & patterns. Boldly polka-dotted leaves - sure, why not?!

Care to join me in my "A Design A Day" challenge? Do your own doodle, post it on your blog, then leave a link to it in the comments below. It can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!