This Plant Did Not Come Out Looking Like The Photo On The Seed Packet.

This is a new variant of Scrabble I'm working on which is fairly mean to its players.  Rare letters are no longer rare, point values are rendered mostly meaningless, and you have to make valid plays without actually seeing any of the words on the board. Please click over and share your thoughts, I'd love some input on this.  Would it actually be any fun to play this way?

I’d recently come to the conclusion that I needed to do more regular artwork to keep the brain juices going, even if only one quick doodle per day.  To this end, I began privately doodling some of my friends’ Twitter userpics.

I’d done a few and realized that the best thing to do with my growing collection of userpic doodles would be to start posting them on their own dedicated Twitter account, and throw the general Twitter public into the mix.  Hence, twitter.com/RobDrawsYourPic.

Now friends, acquaintances, luminaries, and total strangers are all finding themselves receiving my unsolicited mutations of their avatars, and I’ve even fulfilled some requests.  It’s a good excuse to not only get some sort of drawing done every day, but to try out some different styles.

So far folks on the tweetybirds seem to be digging it, or at least taking it in stride.  A couple of people have even changed their userpic to my version, which is entirely wild.  I’m sure I’ll creep someone out eventually, though.

Images are scaled down here; hit twitter.com/RobDrawsYourPic and the subjects’ Twitter accounts for the bigger versions.  Original userpics remain the property of their owners.

I did a rotten thing.

WARNING: Spoilers for the Doctor Who episode "Day of the Moon" ahead.

I really liked the nanorecorders from the episode.  I started wondering how cosplayers and such might emulate the special effect of the nanorecorder in a live setting, and thought of the UV-reactive invisible ink used in things like hand-stamps at concert venues and nightclubs.  This is a quick-and-dirty sketch of how such an idea might be put to work.

If you manage to make this effect work, please let me know!

Daily doodle number four is a quick sketch of the main character from La Linea (”The Line”), an Italian cartoon which as a child I thought was the greatest thing ever.  Now, as an adult, I still think it’s the greatest thing ever; this little long-suffering gibberish-spouting cartoonist-pestering guy is just as wonderful to watch today as he was when I was a toddler.

Search for “La Linea” on your video site of choice to watch any of his excellent shorts.

I didn’t want to draw David Bowie today.  I don’t feel capable of accurately portraying anything close to what his work has done for me over the course of my entire life.  My drawing hand had other ideas, no other drawings would work until I got this onto the screen.

I haven’t felt this personally screwed up over the passing of an artist I’d never met since Freddie Mercury in 1991.

I subtly altered a scene from the Blake's 7 episode "Bounty."  I wonder if you can spot what I changed.

A charming and familiar-looking Renaissance lady I digital-painted, with Leonardo's original open in another window.

My Mystery Science Theater 3000 computer monitor, circa 2003.

Materials:

Clunky old-school beige CRT monitor

Sharpie marker (black)

Desire to have all one's computer activity heckled

A true story starring myself, my cats, and nypl.