DecDoodle Mouse Poinsettia

My CLmooc friends are participating in a December Art Challenge and two prompts this week are “Poinsettia” and “Mouse.”

Poinsettia

Sarah Honeychurch posted this image on Twitter:

I was so glad because all I could think of when I saw the prompt was “all those leaves– how will I draw all those leaves?”  Her image helped me imagine how to do that, and with my new shadowing skills, I was able to create an image similar to hers and apply these techniques to “all those leaves!” Ha.

I used the Autodesk Sketchbook app for this, which was a challenge because I haven’t used the app in a while, and I’d forgotten some of the pens and brushes I’d always used, but I did discover the airbrush to help me add the shadows. After finishing, I wish I’d used a larger canvas and increased the DPI because I like the effect created with the airbrushing and the background dots in this app. The app is free for mobile and desktop.

Mouse

For this I also used the Sketchbook app. It’s very easy and does include many brushes for effects, including this plaid background. It has many features such as layers, blending, opacity, alpha lock. I enjoy knowing how to work around techniques in several apps — because each one has its benefits.

Drawing real creatures is a struggle for me, but I’ve learned to start with the basic shapes– to look at images of the object and find the common shape that makes, in the case– the mouse— a mouse. So, I first drew in the ellipse body, he ellipse head, and — you guessed it, the round ears. It’s a rough sketch which I filled in to create my rough mouse.

And what could a mouse do? Eat the berries from the wreath I’d made earlier this fall in ProCreate– I export it as a png and imported here. Clever me and silly mouse.

On Flickr

Poinsettia

Mouse   with more shadowing

Check out our December Art Challenge  and join in!  Share your doodles on Twitter with #DecDoodle and #CLmooc or in the comments below.   Have fun!