I have a hard time just sitting and doing one thing at once–if I am watching TV I am usually sketching my cartoons or reading at the same time, and when I’m on the phone (and I am on the phone a lot because my best friend lives across the country!) I am usually surfing the net or doodling or working on my cartoons while we chat. 

I’ve found that I can skim things and get the gist of it while talking on the phone.  I can draw.  I can scan my cartoons into the computer and fix mistakes.  I can ink my cartoons.  I can color the Sunday strips while I talk, no problem.  I cannot, however, type well (must use a different part of the brain for that one) without paying attention.  I cannot totally comprehend complicated things I’m reading without saying, “hold on a second” and reading it quickly before resuming my conversation.  I certainly can’t write unless I’m paying attention with my whole mind.  So a lot of the time when I’m on the phone, I just doodle.  I like to be doing something with my hands, I find it really relaxing, and (more often than not) I actually like the stuff I’ve doodled.

I should keep a skectch book.  I always love to look through other artists’ sketchbooks.  They are always amazing and wonderful and yet I’ve never kept one.  I doodle and sketch on scraps of paper.  On napkins.  On envelopes.  On the backs of my Bristol board pads.  Where ever I find a clean spot of paper after the phone rings. 

There’s a scene in “Fatal Attraction” where Michael Douglas has broken into Glenn Close’s home and is desperately searching for something to use to discredit her.  He looks though her desk and comes across a piece of paper with mad scribblings on it.  He just stares at it and stuffs it back in the desk, but I thought it was a very real moment.  That’s what my own desk looks like.  That’s the thing I love most about that movie.  The characters seemed very real.

The picture of Eve that is on the front of my sales kit started out as a phone doodle.  When I was finished I realized that I liked that picture of her better than any other one I’d ever drawn, so I drew the rest of the cover to fit around that sketch.  It looked like she was walking so I stuck them on the beach, etc.  I still think it’s a good picture of her.  Too bad I didn’t have such a happy accident with Manny because I’ve always loathed the way he looks on the front cover of my kit (his neck is too dang long–he looks like a giraffe! and the perspective is off and, and… oh well.  It is what it is, but at least Eve looks great!)  Here’s the front of my kit so you can see what I’m talking about.

Sales kit Clear Blue Water

Here are some other quick sketches I’ve done that I saved for different reasons.  Some are more finished than others, but I like them all.  I have cleaned up a couple because the drawings spilled over onto things I don’t care to have reproduced, but otherwise they are just doodles.  I have no idea why I’m putting them here except that I’ve found that I enjoy looking at this sort of thing from other people.  Enjoy!

mermaid and penguin

I just drew this sketch a few days ago.  It’s loose and weird.  It had a bunch of scribble scrabble doodle writing around it, but because I tend to mindlessly doodle my children’s names over and over again, I erased those before reproducing it.

Dame in repose

 This is one of my favorite doodles ever.  She’s so hideous and I love her ginormous hips!

Jazz hands!

…Some days seem made for doing jazz hands.

melting away

I don’t know what this means.  It kind of reminds me of a series of icecream cones melting in the sun.  Who knows, really.

So there.  Now you really KNOW me.  I’ve bared my scribblings, my crumpled up papers and you have some insight into our fire hazard…  We can barely get the doors closed around all my little scraps of paper!