https://www.doodlersanonymous.com Art, Draw, Doodle, Create - Daily Inspiration Wed, 23 Nov 2022 12:58:59 -0500 https://www.doodlersanonymous.com en https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2688/submit-your-work-draw-your-trueselfie-challenge/ Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:28:00 -0400 Serina Ward https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2688/submit-your-work-draw-your-trueselfie-challenge/

Let’s celebrate diversity! The newest challenge over at Doodle Addicts is to draw yourself, whether it be a spot-on representation or a more creative and interpretative self-portrait - every selfie is welcome. The only requirement, you may ask? Using crayons as the primary medium. Inspired by Crayola’s new line of products, “Colors of the World.” This new set of 24 skin tone crayons have been formulated to better represent people around the world. The new collection will be accompanied by colored pencils and markers with an upcoming release date. Everyone is welcome to participate and upload their selfie (US and International), but make sure to read the submission guidelines to ensure you qualify to be entered to win the grand prize! *Challenge ends November 9th at 03:00 PM EDT. See complete rules and submit work on the official challenge page.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2687/cardboard-art/ Fri, 15 May 2020 12:00:00 -0400 Serina Ward https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2687/cardboard-art/

We've all been home for weeks, and that most likely means that there have been a ton of online orders placed and packages received. You may have not thought of it before, but cardboard boxes are a great medium to draw on and make crafts with. Cardboard art has actually been around for quite some time, and it's a hugely versatile medium that can be used for anything from drawing on to creating sculptures with. One of the best aspects of utilizing cardboard for creating art is the unintentional, but beneficial, environmental impact, by re-using something that can now serve a secondary purpose and not just end up in the landfill.  In honor of the various ways cardboard can be used as an art form, we wanted to showcase some of our favorite pieces. Keep scrolling to check them out! A breakfast spread created with cardboard by Marie-Laure Pham Cardboard used as an illustration medium by Okat Cardboard faces by Amaiaarrazola Cardboard artwork by Dave Silkerk Dragon illustration on cardboard by Charlotte Reynold Cardboard illustration by Reem Altwaim Cardboard art by Jordan Fretz Cardboard illustration by Wenyi

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2686/free-coloring-pages-for-all/ Mon, 30 Mar 2020 11:33:00 -0400 Serina Ward https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2686/free-coloring-pages-for-all/

We’re always looking for ways to encourage our community to stay inspired, so we’re excited to announce our newest activity for the community, #ColorInQuarantine! For the first time ever we’re releasing individual pages from our Doodlers Anonymous coloring books in the hopes that it will offer a way to stay creative and expressive while not focusing on your own personal work. We will be releasing one page in PDF format per day, to be found on the Doodle Addicts website as a blog post at 11AM daily. Each page was designed by an artist within our community, so this is a great way to discover new artists, indulge your own artistry, and put your imagination to the test. You can find all of the downloadable coloring pages here, be sure to check the page often as it will be continously updated with new pages Monday - Friday! Happy coloring!    

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2685/submit-your-work-today-quarantined-quarters-drawing-challenge/ Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:51:00 -0400 Serina Ward https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2685/submit-your-work-today-quarantined-quarters-drawing-challenge/

It's time for another drawing challenge!  With our new Quarantined Quarters Drawing Challenge, we’re inviting all of you quarantined Doodle Addicts to illustrate what this act of social distancing looks like to you. Whether that be drawing the room you’re in, the hobby you’re no longer neglecting, the view from your window, or a table full of your supplies - it’s completely up to you! We encourage you to find the silver lining in this situation and doodle it out. Don’t forget to share your inspiration in the caption so we can all read through and feel a little more connected while we stay physically apart. We're awarding one winner a $25 gift card. Challenge ends on April 1st at 3:00PM EST. See complete rules and submit your work on the official challenge page. 

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2450/the-ultimate-gift-guide-for-the-doodle-artist/ Wed, 27 Nov 2019 09:00:00 -0400 Lauren Konopacki https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2450/the-ultimate-gift-guide-for-the-doodle-artist/

The Doodlers Anonymous team has hand-picked gifts that the artist in your life will love. Put down the bath products, step away from the socks section and give them something thoughtful that they'll actually enjoy! These gifts are guaranteed to get those creative juices flowing and spark a new sense of inspiration. Happy shopping and drop a hint below if there is anything awesome we might have missed! In some cases, DA may collect a small free from any sales from the links on this page. COMMON LOON Stencils We're throwin' it back to the good old days to those stencils we all knew and loved as kids. Each Common Loon set contains a different theme which was inspired from a different world. Bring on the nostalgia and let's get creative! Price: $9.00 Surprise Yourself by Lisa Currie Make every day a new beginning with this bundle of DIY adventures to encourage you to learn, create and grow. Shake up your normal routine with fresh eyes and a playful mission with Surprise Yourself by Lisa Currie! Price: $10.20 JetPens Brush Pen Sampler JetPens.com put together a sample pack of their top felt and synthetic hair brush pens that range from extra fine tips to medium tips, allowing you the freedom to experiment with precise, thin lines or thicker, brushier strokes. They have so many different sample packs no matter what your favorite tool is! Price: $25.60 Doodle Duvet Cover Transform your bedroom into a masterpiece with zero pressure. Sketch, draw, doodle, write a poem, leave a note, and throw it in the wash to design it all over again! It even includes 10 dual-tip machine washable fabric markers -- sweet deal! Price: $79.95 (queen) Sharpie Art Workshop In this book by Timothy Goodman he explores Sharpie writing products, the materials and supplies that can be used to enhance or modify them, and the range of creative techniques and effects that can be achieved. What a wonderful way to re-inspire the creative in your life to reimagine a tool that might easily be forgotten.  Price: Starting at $11.99 3Doodler 3Doodler offers 3 different choices of the world’s first and best-selling 3D printing pens. Compact & easy to use, the pen extrudes heated plastic that cools almost instantly into a solid, stable structure. From fine art, to DIY, maker projects, creating scale models or decorative items, the possibilities are limitless! Price: starting at $82.95   Doodlers Anonymous Coloring Book 2-Pack These coloring books feature the one-of-a-kind doodles and drawings of over 100 artists from around the globe - some fresh novices, others seasoned veterans, all of whom share a love for the hand-drawn. Price: $15.00 Wacom Bamboo Slate Smartpad With rising demand for artists to be working digitally, sometimes you just miss that feeling of a good old fashioned pencil on paper! With the Wacom Bamboo Slate Smartpad, you can doodle naturally with pen on any paper and instantly digitize your designs and sketches with the push of a button.  Price: starting at $99.95 Jumbo Street Pastels Say goodbye to sidewalk chalk because these specially formulated pastels are designed for rugged street terrain. This formulation is super vibrant and allows for blending, producing even wear and less crumbling. You can even use it in your sketchbook to create textured, bold lines. Price: Starting from $2.49 Special Edition Sharpies Bold and sharp, brilliant and vivid, Sharpie markers can be found anywhere, and used on virtually any surface making it a go-to medium for creatives of all stripes. Give em' something they'll love with these limited edition classics! Price: $17.49 FiftyThree Digital Stylus Pencil If you are someone who loves doodling on your iPad, Pencil by FiftyThree is the most natural and expressive way to create. With surface pressure, erase, blend, and adaptive palm rejection, you'll forget that you aren't drawing on paper! Price: Starting from $29.99 Pentel Aquash Water Brush The Pentel Aquash Water Brush is my personal favorite tool when it comes to effortlessly creating beautiful effects in my sketchbook. Fill barrel with water and blend watercolors, or fill with your favorite ink and enjoy the endless possibilities and total control of a waterbrush. Price: starting at $4.57 for a pack of 3 Faber-Castell Polychromos Colored Pencils Color that special someone's world this holiday season with a gift that is simple, but essential for artists. This 5 star, Faber-Castell set of 60 colored pencils has every shade you need and more! If you're not looking to spend as much, the next best thing is the Caran d'Ache Fancolor Color Pencils. Price: starting at $73.50 (Faber Castell) / $5.39 - $49.95 (Caran d'Ache) Doodle Addict Sketchbook This 100% recycled pocket-sized sketchbook, is ideal for ink doodles, sharpie mark-ups, stickers, paint, rubber stamping, and much more. Price: $5.95 Doodle Theory: Create Amazing Doodles with Hundreds of Starter Squiggles We all know that doodling boosts creative thinking, confidence, and memory retention, so exercise your brain with this addictively entertaining drawing pad filled with lines & squiggles that kick-start the doodling process, and forces you to think outside of the box. I guess it really just comes down to 'what do you see?' Price: $8.81 Mini Tree Pencils Revamp the workspace (without breaking the bank) with these natural colored pencils (or regular pencils) that look like they came straight out of the forest. No two pencils are exactly the same and each have their own rustic look and feel. Price: starting at $4.00 per pack We want to know what you think! Know of a product that should be on the list? Leave a comment below for the product you think are must-haves for a doodler and we'll pick some of your suggestions to include in future updates to our our guide.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2684/submit-your-work-draw-your-fear-challenge/ Wed, 30 Oct 2019 10:11:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2684/submit-your-work-draw-your-fear-challenge/

It’s officially the spookiest time of year, chock-full of ghouls, goblins, monsters under the bed, and the ever-feared Pumpkin Spice Latte.  All jokes aside, we’re challenging all of you artists, designers, fear factor veterans, and scaredy cats to take on your deepest (or most shallow) fears to draw something you’re scared of. Whether that’s spiders, zombies, heights, confined spaces, or just your dentist - jump right in and illustrate that thing that makes your skin crawl. No fear is too big or small, and whether it be real, imagined, a one-off occasion, or your everyday nightmares we encourage you to doodle it out and share the story of your fear in the caption. We're awarding one winner a $25 gift card. Challenge ends on November 6th at 3:00PM EST. See complete rules and submit your work on the official challenge page. 

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2683/the-dark-eerie-and-beautiful-creations-of-adam-riches/ Wed, 02 Oct 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2683/the-dark-eerie-and-beautiful-creations-of-adam-riches/

When I think about Adam Riches, I think about nightmares, the shadows, faces obscured and darkness revealed. These are all things Riches evokes, often through the use of nothing but a ballpoint pen on paper. Capable of great detail, Adam Riches has amassed a social media following that stretches into the hundreds of thousands. People flock to see the darkness as only Riches can reveal it to be. Signature to Adam Riches’ style and the darkness he conveys is the simplicity with which he’s able to produce it, a process you can occasionally see first hand in videos posted to his Instagram. In these you are treated to the movements of Riches’ choice of color for his signature ballpoint pen as he seemingly scribbles out looseshapes of discordant lines. From there he builds within that loose structure with more dense shading, crafting an eerie face drawn directly from the surreal discordant shadows which preceded it. Riches shows impressive versatility in his ability to create shape from the shade with varying levels of detail as some of his figures retain the more scribbled quality of their origin, looking like vacant skulls with darkened features. Others are more detailed, taking on the shadow of a man with hair and lips that appears to be looking at you from the under world. It’s easy to imagine Riches has seen the river Styx itself. Whether you’re a lover of art and the power of simple techniques or are just drawn to the darker side of life, Adam Riches is your artist.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2682/this-artist-creates-incredible-sketchbook-sized-replicas-of-gothic-architecture/ Tue, 24 Sep 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2682/this-artist-creates-incredible-sketchbook-sized-replicas-of-gothic-architecture/

Alex Pantela is an incredibly talented artist from Leeds who focuses on patience and attention to detail. Truly, his shop for artwork is even called The Store of Detailed Drawings. And that’s exactly what you’ll find there, immaculate handdrawings of Gothic, Renaissance and Victorian architecture that gets every detail right. That’s because Pantela is willing to take his time. Although his pieces are sketchbook sized, Pantela puts up to twenty hours into his drawings, making sure to catch every last inch of the architecture he’s recreating on paper. Throughout Alex Pantela’s Instagram, you can see his work as it goes through stages of sketch and levels of detail until, in many cases, you get to see the finished product held up to the real thing and marvel at the uncanny resemblance shown to scale. Pantela’s black and white pieces are all finished in black ink and feature deft shading contrasted with the bold features of his subject. It’s amazing to see Pantela’s hand holding an exact miniature drawing of Westminster Abbey directly in front of the real Westminster Abbey as it pokes out over the sketchbook. Alex Pantela does this for many landmarks including Barcelona Cathedral, King’s College and Arco de Triunfo. He works in large, building scale as well as capturing the finer details of a building by focusing solely on a door handle or the ornamental iron work across a window. His ability to draw things as they are, strives towards the Platonic ideal of representation. Not only can I imagine having his skills, I can hardly imagine having his focus. It’s amazing, the kind of art that makes you look at the details of the world around you with fresh eyes.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2680/how-native-art-folklore-and-fruit-mesh-together-in-madalina-andronics-incredible-illustrations/ Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2680/how-native-art-folklore-and-fruit-mesh-together-in-madalina-andronics-incredible-illustrations/

Madalina Andronic is a Romanian illustrator now working out of Italy. With an MA in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts, Andronic draws inspiration for her work from native art, folklore, love and travels. Looking at her pieces, it’s easy to see why she has had the opportunity to work for clients from around the world while having nine books published in Romania, the UK and the United States. Andronic’s artistic output has a magical feel with many of her illustrations incorporating fruit, food and aspects of nature in completely unexpected ways. Her most recent series of pieces, posted as ‘C'est deja les vacances 2019’, show just how far Andronic has come as an artist while tantalizing us with ideas of where she may go inthe future. The entire series is Summer through and through in Andronic’s signature style. The first piece evokes the magical merging of nature we often see in her work with a bed of flowers appearing where the spokes of a bicycle wheel should be while it’s rider flies by with one hand on the handles and the other holding the top of a bathing suit streaming in the wind. It evokes the freedom and fun of summer perfectly while acting as a perfect introduction to the rest of the series’ scenes of summer fun. It’s filled with oversized fruit, like a strawberry resting on a woman’s bare back and butt, a woman with close-cropped hair straddling an enormous pomegranate opened in a suggestive feminine manner and a burly man with green line flora tattoos, wearing a beret and carrying a gigantic lemon under one of his arms. They’re bright, vibrant scenes of one of the best times of year, often capturing the spirit of the feminine in classic ways that still feel fresh under Andronic’s touch. Whether you’re looking for a new print, a shirt or a tote, Madalina Andronic’s work is the perfect way to commemorate the summer of 2019 in style.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2681/a-look-inside-of-lauren-rodriguezs-sketchbook/ Mon, 16 Sep 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2681/a-look-inside-of-lauren-rodriguezs-sketchbook/

Lauren Rodriguez is a unique artist working out of Los Angeles, California in the United States. With her Behance portfolio, Rodriguez reveals her unique process of creating and experimenting with art through her sketchbook. Acting as both an exploration of her skills as an artist and a journal, Lauren Rodriguez fights a tendency to get bored with drawing the same things over and over by reflecting on and documenting her own real-world interactions/experiences in her sketchbook. The look inside that she provides with her scans are a compelling view into what makes Rodriguez an exciting artist to watch. When you look at her sketchbook, it becomes immediately clear that Rodriguez is a fan of anime and master of the anime style. She uses this aesthetic to do her artistic journaling in full scenes that would look right at home in a book of manga. I love her entry from January 6th where she reflects on her time trying new recipes. We see a fully prepared chickpea cutlet (which received an A-plus from the artist as a meal) while a girl on the top of the page leans her head into a phone screen. Rodriguez provides a smaller scene projecting from the screen showing a game character fishing, a depiction of Rodriguez’s obsession with Stardew Valley at the time. Another entry, from July 31st, documents another great meal, coconut fried rice with edamame, frying up in a pan at the top of the page next to a list of ingredients in the dish. Underneath it is a hilarious looking cat figure in an orange ruffled shirt and party hat next to a caption saying that Rodriguez went back to the store just to buy it for an early Halloween decoration. It’s good cheeky fun, giving you wonderful insight into Rodriguez as a person while showing off her flair with inks and paint. I for one would love to see these books released as a whole, I can only imagine the fun one would have flipping through her sketchbook endlessly, learning the story of her year.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2679/these-quirky-characters-are-guaranteed-to-make-you-chuckle/ Wed, 11 Sep 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2679/these-quirky-characters-are-guaranteed-to-make-you-chuckle/

Blad Moran is a freelance artist out of Kiev, Ukraine. Focused on work as a concept artist and character designer, Moran’s work has garnered her tens of thousands of followers on Instagram with her quirky, distinctive style. Moran’s signature is in her faces. The way she illustrates the dynamic ways people can convey emotion through facial expressions. One of my favorite expressions in life is one that Moran’s characters display frequently, angsty displeasure. Many of Blad Moran’s characters are shown in varying states of displeasure with a lot of these on display in her sketchtober posts on Behance. Take entry twenty-one for instance, paired with the caption, “When you sprouted over the summer”, Moran’s humor shines through in this sketch of a dance team with young girls where one of the girls has sprouted up to twice the size of the rest of the team. Amongst the four girls are four totally unique faces of disgust, disappointment, despondence and displeasure. Moran doesn’t waste any part of the piece, contorting lips, eyes, cheeks, everything a person uses to convey emotion and Blad is a master with them. You can see this level of expertise across all of her work running through the entire range of emotions. And no matter what mood you’re looking for, with Blad Moran, it’s almost guaranteed to make you chuckle.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2676/these-matchbook-pups-are-cheeky-representations-of-the-complicated-personalities-of-humans/ Fri, 06 Sep 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2676/these-matchbook-pups-are-cheeky-representations-of-the-complicated-personalities-of-humans/

Ravi Zupa’s work is specially built to “Strike Your Fancy." Eschewing digital processes, this completely self-taught artist produces everything by hand. Using oil-based intaglio ink and a unique woodblock printing process, Zupa aims to bring together “seemingly unrelated images in search of something universal” in his “Strike Your Fancy” matchbook series. In his first series of artful matchbooks, Zupa featured a collection of cats getting drunk at the bar. Naturally, with his latest series, the artist has taken the next step, moving from the feline to their natural frenemy, dogs. Here, Zupa presents his pups as cheeky representations of the “complicated personalities of us humans,” the self-important, the moody, the defiant in all of us. One of the genius parts of this series are the way the artist pairs dog breeds to the human expression he aims to send up. Uses the resting faces of their demeanor and temperament to reflect the absurdity of the human species. Take the golden retriever matchbook. Zupa depicts a retriever standing with a serious look, holding a drink in one paw while sucking on a pipe hanging from its mouth. The matchbook reads,“My thoughts are so profound,” while we see the self-serious look of a golden retrieverand how it mirrors the professorial absurdity of the classic intellectual. Another favorite is the classic pug. One of the few dogs Zupa dressed in human wardrobe, we see a tan/black pug in a white-collared shirt and tweed vest. The wounded, always ready to pout and cry face of a pug is captioned with, “If I’m honest I want people to feel sorry forme.” We’ve all encountered these kinds of people in our lives, the woe is me quality we can instantly recognize. It’s true of all of Zupa’s dogs. The cheeky human insight rings true, perfectly expressed through the dogs we all know and love.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2677/this-artist-is-using-elaborate-line-work-to-call-forth-your-inner-child/ Tue, 03 Sep 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2677/this-artist-is-using-elaborate-line-work-to-call-forth-your-inner-child/

Years ago, Luis Coelho had taken a long creative break. Looking to get back into the process of creating, Coelho revisited material he had been exposed to as a child. This exploration led him back to a love of pens and the things one can construct through the mass collection of simple pen lines. Harboring this rediscovered love, Coelho asked his two nieces to decide what animals they wanted to see appear out of these lines on fresh pieces of paper, telling them that the animals would guard their dreams and lead them out of nightmares whenever they needed. In that moment, Coelho found his style in his desire to “breed sweetness," focusing on creating renderings of animals for children and the inner child in all of us, leading to a popularity with people of all ages. Luis Coelho speculates that because of the dream guarding mission statement his work was birthed from, that all his animals take on an out of dreams-like quality and I’d have to agree. Take ‘Floofle’ for example. Under the banner of his Purr.In.Ink it’s natural that many of Coelho’s illustrations are of cats and ‘Floofle’ is the quintessential Coelho cat. Countless little ink lines coalesce into a black and white bundle of fur with stringy frayed whiskers playing from its face. Coelho expertly shades through the intensity of his line work to build the subtle impressions of the cat’s front legs. Floofle seems to exist in and appear from a dream-like shadow that permeates even the best of dreams. It’s adorable like all his felines but don’t discount his other critters like ‘Papami.' Papami is a sugar glider where the line work is simultaneously denser while done with a lighter touch. The shape is more defined to show the gliders body stretching into wavy points as it takes excitable flight. Its ears are like miniature bunny ears while a lightly lined patch by the glider’s eye shows like a rosy cheeked fairy tale creature. It makes me want to leap in the air and hug every animal I see. Luis Coelho’s creations never fail to delight and tickle the cute animal needs in all of us. After seeing his work, I know it’ll live on in my imagination and I can’t wait for the day that Floofle comes to bat away the darkness in my dreams.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2678/the-zodiac-project-incredible-stippled-drawings-of-astrological-signs-by-sayali-horambe/ Fri, 30 Aug 2019 15:30:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2678/the-zodiac-project-incredible-stippled-drawings-of-astrological-signs-by-sayali-horambe/

Sayali Horambe has been passionate about art and drawing from a very young age. Now fully within her powers as an artist, Horambe is an incredibly skilled practitioner of stippling. Through the use of ink dots and immense patience, Horambe has turned her attention towards astrology with ‘The Zodiac Project.’ She took time in designing this year long project to do research on the accepted traits of the zodiac signs while gathering facts talking to people who actually belong to the signs. With her conceptualization complete, Horambe moved to stippling the essence of each sign “in the form of a beautiful lady.” The completed works of the project are absolutely breathtaking. It’s almost impossible to imagine the amount of effort that had to go into building each piece through only the use of ink dots. As an Aquarius, I was quick to search for my sign and my jaw immediately dropped. Aquarians are known to be introspective thinkers and here I feel seen by Horambe’s Aquarian woman. The beautiful subject has tree branches growing through her long flowing hair. A jug falls out from her ear spilling a stream of water with the cosmos flowing through it while the woman looks at the viewer with eyes that at once draw you in and push you away. The beauty of the mysterious thinker whose head is always somewhere in the stars.  Without knowing much more other than my own sign, I wanted to highlight another piece  on the grounds of just how cool it is. For that, I turn to Virgo. Here, Horambe has stippled a woman with a long look in her eyes while a disembodied hand tugs at the hair on the top of her head. Another hand comes out from the hair falling around her shoulders with a key at the tip of its fingers. The lock is no where to be seen. What does it open? No way to know. This puzzle of a woman is reflected by the jigsaw puzzle pieces that make up the subject’s skin. It’s enticing, drawing you into the mystery of this woman whose mouth is the head of a flower. It makes you want to know Virgo. Even more, it makes you want to know Sayali Horambe.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2675/a-world-full-of-silly-monsters-and-dorky-villains/ Wed, 31 Jul 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2675/a-world-full-of-silly-monsters-and-dorky-villains/

Craig Gleason, founder of the Bad Guys Club, is an artist out of Arizona with over a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. With a large selection of rad shirts and prints available for purchase, you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t check out the wares of this silly monster obsessed illustrator. Gleason’s work is dominated with monster love, populated with gads of unique, silly creations. There’s a feeling that these guys are the dorks and less evil inclined of the monster world. Take the monster he posted on June 2 for instance. A green haired beast bodied monster with long arms and legs stares off to the side with their polygonal head. Body of a man killer with the head of a dork. It’s wearing brown pants up high like a nerd with cuffs ending above their shin. What a nerd. Or there’s the guy from May 27. He looks like a gleeful psychopath with his bald head, eye patch and grey skin with bleeding scars. And yet, he’s holding a dainty yellow hat in his black gloved hands and a red trench coat with yellow-red plaid pants. The kind of psychopath who is always going to be a D-list villain, a guy you can laugh at. Because that’s what’s central to Gleason’s style. The humor. And that sense of lightness, the silly monster-loving is most purely expressed by the cactus lady also from May 27. Just a classic cartoon cactus, anthropomorphized, doing a jig in red cowboy boots. Wearing undies and a little vest with an organic bra. She’s got flowers for eyes, she’s dancing, she’s happy to be alive. And Craig Gleason’s work can make you feel that way to. Happy to be alive. Alive in a world where people are thinking of and drawing this kind of stuff. It’s a beautiful world.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2673/an-artist-is-bringing-ancient-myths-and-legends-to-modern-times/ Mon, 29 Jul 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2673/an-artist-is-bringing-ancient-myths-and-legends-to-modern-times/

Adam Burn is a digital artist with a new take on old characters from myths and legends. Burn found his artistic muse when he started a new project a few years back. Taking the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as his inspiration, he started redesigning them as fully formed characters along with their corresponding harbingers. Using it as a learning experience, Burn developed his style through new techniques, producing works that garnered lots of attention as he exhibited them at comic conventions in their finished form. Due to the enthusiastic response to his work, Adam Burn now has a budding Patreon that allows patrons to witness how an image comes together from reference to finished product. When you look at the original, Four Horsemen series, it’s easy to see how these redesigns became essential to his brand. In Burn’s Horsemen series, each of the four Horsemen as accompanied by their harbinger. To elucidate his work, I’ll focus on one of the sets, Conquest, as they each follow a similar pattern. With each set we first get the Harbinger, in this case the Harbinger of Conquest. Each of the four Harbingers comes in a supernatural, humanistic, female form. They’re each surrounded by displays of their powers/abilities. Here we have the Harbinger of Conquest holding a sharpened spear. She’s adorned in a form fitting, golden, metallic looking armor while her lower body descends into a cloud of smoke. In all of his pieces, Burn shows off his ability to throw light and shadow into every crevice of his images. The Harbinger of Conquest has a flaring ring of golden light bursting out around her, fading into shimmery golden curls. This ring returns in spades in the image of the Conquest Horsemen who appears floating in mid air with golden rings of light intersecting each other, radiating off of the body and head of the creature. Like all of Burn’s Horsemen, Conquest gives off an aweing sense of power. It has four arms that look at once muscular and decaying. Black cloth tatters impressively sway off of the character giving Burn the chance to show his proficiency with depth of field, blurring the focus of a piece of cloth swaying out at the viewer. The level and skill of detail give the impression that the image itself contains Apocalyptic powers. All of his pieces do. It’s the kind of tease that makes you want to become a Patron. He’ll be working on ancient gods of Egypt, starting with Anubis and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2667/the-bright-bold-and-quirky-illustrations-of-iris-cintron/ Fri, 26 Jul 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2667/the-bright-bold-and-quirky-illustrations-of-iris-cintron/

Iris Cintron is a freelance illustrator and designer working in Puerto Rico. Driven by a love of color and shape, Iris draws inspiration for her work from novels, comics, nature and day to day life. I was thrilled when I stumbled upon her work on Instagram where I was drawn (pun intended) in by her takes of some classic characters like Carmen Sandiego and Batgirl. What made me stick around was the flair of Cintron’s aesthetic; color and shape indeed. What I love about Iris Cintron is just how versatile she is as an artist. Her character work is reminiscent of Darwyn Cooke with less angles and anyone who reminds me of Darwyn Cooke is a winner in my books. When you look deeper into her portfolio though, you discover a love for the surreal, a more abstract bent. It wasn’t until Cintron’s mermaid streak, mermay, that she merged these interests, building a run of mermaid characters contorted into bizarre, twisty postures ornamented with colorful tail designs and heads of big bold hair. A favorite of mine came out on Day 7 of mermaid week. Under her pseudonym Sirimme, Cintron posted an illustration of a macaroni-and-cheese-skinned mermaid. Here the tail is accentuated by splotches of read with clouds of white and a smattering of black, some of the white and black coming out in her skin. The eyes are a signature of the series, huge round kaleidoscope swirls of color, a sort of plum in this case which gives the character an almost cult-like sense of joy. In other pieces, like Day 5, it presents a confused fear. Turns out kaleidoscope eyes can be just as expressive as our everyday norm eyes. Back to Day 7 and another signature of the series I’ve mentioned, the hair. A tweedy plume of blue, like Bettie Paige on one side and loosed, pulled away by the waters on the other. It feels classic and active and odd all at the same time. Everything in these pieces feels classic and new, an unrecognized recognizability with swirls of color that just hit somewhere inside. It’s an interesting appeal that keeps me coming back, looking forward to seeing what Iris Cintron will create next.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2672/mike-estefan-is-a-doodler-extraordinaire/ Fri, 19 Jul 2019 13:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2672/mike-estefan-is-a-doodler-extraordinaire/

Mike Estefan is an illustrator, painter, graphic designer and bedroom composer. This jack of all trades has his work on Band Camp, Soundcloud and Instagram while carrying a robust Etsy store. Estefan’s work is filled with an interest in multi-culturalism, the supernatural and the surreal. Recently, Mike Estefan has taken all of his artistic inspirations and mashed them all together, creating watercolor and ink paintings that are now up for sale from Weridhaus Warehouse. In his past work, Estefan has shown a penchant for a more doodled, animated style in his artwork. At times it reminds me of the more unsettling bits from Ahh Real Monsters or Spongebob Squarepants when he’s drying out. Estefan’s recent release of watercolors puts this style on display in full force. The pieces feel like collages of the artists imagination, densely populated by strange faces and characters. Or showing his interest in the artwork of past cultures. Dousing ink dot drawings of totems and masks in a shade of yellow, both suggesting their place ago place in history and the bright eternal energy one feels when looking upon these items. His other watercolors can perhaps be thought to be the mirroring of the totems and monoliths in Estefan’s mind. His most recent piece at the time of this writing is a series of faces, melding to fit the frame of a dour balding man with thin lips and a potato head above the words Low Life. His head is surrounded by log shaped otters, sinister roosters, smiling three-eyed aliens and a Snoopy look-alike named Buddy. Booger green is spattered in places all around the ink line drawings, pooling in a sickly puddle at the bottom. It’s uncomfortable, overwhelming and compellingly hilarious all at once. Whether you’re getting the strangely powerful or simply just the powerful, everything Mike Estefan does is worth a look.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2674/paintings-of-women-submerged-in-water/ Mon, 08 Jul 2019 10:00:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2674/paintings-of-women-submerged-in-water/

Isabel Emrich is a painter who has been working and studying in California. With a number of high-profile exhibitions and print features, she has shown herself as an artist to look out for. Nothing made this more apparent than her “Refracting Beauty,” show at Skidmore Contemporary Art. The series, “Refracting Beauty,” showcased a large volume of works Emrich had done of woman submerged in water. Throughout the series the viewer is given a strong impression of the interaction between water, light and motion. This relationship manifests in a number of ways. In the piece, My Future Confidence, we get a sense of the beauty of the water. Emrich uses bold brush strokes, mingling yellows, oranges, greens and purples to create a surreal rainbow effect in front of a woman whose body is submerged beneath the colors. The viewer sees only the subjects head, up to her eyes, practically removing her from the chaotically beautiful swirl as she looks off the side, out of frame. In another piece, Learning from the Past, we see this from the other side. A woman is submerged just below the surface of the water wearing a crown of flowers. The colors once again swirl in the surface of the water, now above the subject. Meanwhile the contemplative woman we face, eyes closed, has a similar effect occurring across her face. Varying shades of blue and pink crisscross over her cheeks, lending her somber, ethereal beauty. This is the aesthetic that I find most moving in Emrich’s work. While some of her pieces are more straightforward, women trailing bubbles while they swim through rich, blue-green waters, I keep coming back to her for the bold colors, the impressionistic swirls and the perspective. Here’s hoping that her Future Confidence becomes her present confidence because she’s got the goods.

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]]> https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2669/the-skillful-drawings-of-captartbook/ Fri, 05 Jul 2019 10:27:00 -0400 Hugo Seijas https://www.doodlersanonymous.com/post/2669/the-skillful-drawings-of-captartbook/

Captartbook is an artist of great talent and detail. Not much is Googleable about Captartbook. On their Instagram page they exclaim on their two passions, sailing and drawing. Captartbook’s social media sticks strictly to the drawing (unless you dive deep, discover a few pictures of a boat) and so we are left only with their art. Other than the mystery, it’s the art which draws one to Captartbook’s output. Their approach to art eschews the current popularity of minimalism, favoring a deeply labored level of detail that punches you in the gut upon first glance. Many of their pieces are uncolored works of ink or pencil. Captartbook’s choices of subject and stylistic quirks evoke an evolution of drawings you sometimes find in paperback copies of classic novels. Their most recent post at the time of this writing features a pirate-looking, grizzled man with a big gray beard and a monkey hanging off the side of his head. It’s a portrait done in ink, using classic technique on a subject of days gone by. Presenting this in 2019, Captartbook updates the classic idea in a more sinister way. The eyes of the monkey are black almond shaped holes, unlike the man’s who has whites and intent drawn in, accusing/threatening, it’s a choice. There’s a void in the eyes of the simian friend and the artist has captioned the piece with, “Who is the real owner?” It feels of another time and provocative at the same time by way of the artist. They compel you to reconsider things in a new way. Take the next post even. An ink drawing of Atrani, Italy. It’s another display of technical mastery on the part of Captartbook, rendering an old European Coastal town. A place we typically think of as being sunny and gorgeous now takes on an underlying darkness in its beauty. It’s still gorgeous but now also feels like it could stand in for the setting of Dracula. All of Captartbook’s work takes on this sort of feel; classic, beautiful and dark. It’s part of their mystery, one I intend to watch unfold through the only path available to us. Their art!

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