SVG Doodles

June 8, 2022 at 3:04 pm (PT) in Art

I quit my job at Google a year ago because I was too stressed from trying to get work done with little kids at home.

During my past year of semi-retirement, I finally started playing around with Inkscape more seriously. A couple of pieces:

I also made SVG versions of a bunch of my ambigrams and added some simple animations.

Ink doodles (2014–2018)

March 1, 2020 at 7:51 pm (PT) in Art

More ink doodles from 2014 through 2018. These were done with a Pilot G-2 0.38mm gel pen. While I like how I can make tiny writing with Pilot Hi-Tec C pens, I find the G-2 0.38mm pens to be more practical: they create lines fine enough for my taste, but they’re not so fine that I have issues with the tips clogging. It also helps that they’re easier to find in typical office supply stores and are cheaper.

I do like using ink, but I’m even more conservative drawing in it (i.e., I draw even more disembodied heads than usual). (Maybe someday I’ll get a knack for inking over pencil.) Beyond the typically similar content, I noticed that I unintentionally used much of the same layout in these two sheets for the placement of dragon heads, orc heads, smoke, and background practice.

Ink doodles (2014) thumbnail Ink doodles (2017) thumbnail

Whiteboard doodles

August 11, 2013 at 10:19 pm (PT) in Art

Various whiteboard doodles I made at VMware with dry-erase markers.

"Sheit Happens" thumbnail
2005. One of my coworkers was working on a project named “EIT” that got killed when some deal fell apart, and he asked me to scrawl this on his whiteboard. I’m not really sure why I bothered to sign this.

Ducks in danger thumbnail
2008. This started off with a magnetic stick figure holding some duck magnets, and my office-mate Christine and I gradually drew different things that he was rescuing them from. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but Christine attached wings to the back of the stick figure and crafted him a giant broadsword.

"Bye, cwu" thumbnail
2009. When my office-mate Christine (Wu) left to attend graduate school at CMU.

"Bye, Christian" thumbnail
2013. When my office-mate Christian left.

"Bye, David" thumbnail
2013. When my coworker David left. Christian and David left on the same day (they both left to focus on their startup). I made Christian’s first, and I was too tired afterward to spend much time on David’s (sorry, David). I made a lame attempt at jazzing it up a bit by adding a second color.

NaNoDrawMo 2012 doodles, part 2

November 30, 2012 at 1:56 pm (PT) in Art

The second half of my NaNoDrawMo 2012 doodles. This includes my first attempt at doing a realistic drawing in almost 9 years. I probably should just stick to lettering.

NaNoDrawMo 2012 doodles #2 thumbnail

NaNoDrawMo 2012 doodles, part 1

November 16, 2012 at 12:09 pm (PT) in Art

The NaNoDrawMo[ref]NaNoDrawMo is inspired by NaNoWriMo (“National Novel Writing Month”), but “National Novel Drawing Month” doesn’t make sense. Many people have instead backronymed it to mean “National November Drawing Month”, but that’s redundant.[/ref] challenge asks for 50 drawings in 30 days. Fortunately for me, the only requirement is quantity, not quality.

My original plan was to do 50 tiny drawings using the Pilot Hi-Tec C pen on a single side of 8.5″×11″ paper, but I decided that I wasn’t up to that challenge. I instead chose to use two sheets of paper with 25 pencil drawings on each.

Here’s my progress at the midway point:

NaNoDrawMo 2012 doodles #1 thumbnail

Crappy watercolor paintings

September 2, 2012 at 11:33 am (PT) in Art

Some crappy watercolor paintings that I made in 1998 for an introductory watercolor class. Derived from photographs from magazines.

Mountains #1 thumbnail Mountains #2 thumbnail Sailboat thumbnail

The instructor noticed that I seemed to have some fascination with painting mountains. Maybe that was due to all the Joy of Painting episodes I watched as a kid.

Ink doodles

August 16, 2012 at 8:00 pm (PT) in Art

I started drawing again a few months ago, this time using ink and no pencil, which is mostly new and unusual for me. A significant motivating factor probably was my usual, futile desire to eventually become good enough to impress someone who likely would never care anyway.

Ink doodles thumbnail

Done with a Pilot G-2 0.5mm gel pen. (I hadn’t yet acquired the impressive Pilot Hi-Tec-C pen that I kept reading about from various Kickstarter projects.)

I am a total narcissist

November 21, 2010 at 3:33 pm (PT) in Art

James Lin ambigram thumbnail

The “James” part is old, but somehow I didn’t make an ambigram of “Lin” before (although it also looks like “417”).

May 28, 2018 update:
I made an updated version that tries to make “Lin” look less like “Liin” and gave it a black background.

James Lin ambigram thumbnail

Crappy PDA doodles

December 5, 2009 at 12:00 am (PT) in Art

Doodles I drew on various Sony CLIÉ handhelds from 2001–2003. Like all other Palm OS devices, they used resistive touchscreens that lacked any kind of pressure-sensitivity, and the digitizers in the touchscreens were somewhat noisy, so hand-drawn lines ended up with a shaky appearance.

I made the first image with TealPaint (which at the time supported only the traditional Palm OS resolution of 160×160 and not the 320×320 resolution of the CLIÉ devices). I made the rest with MemoRu!.

  • Troll (2001-05-31)
    Troll
  • Demon (unfinished) (2002-03-03)
    Demon (unfinished)
  • Heathcliff (2001-12-02)
    Heathcliff
  • Dragon head (2001-12-04)
    Dragon head
  • Ant man (2001-12-02)
    Ant man
  • Fat baby (2003-03-24)
    Fat baby

Spaceman

December 4, 2009 at 12:00 am (PT) in Art

Spaceman thumbnail

Acrylic on cardstock. A DIY print I made from a foam egg carton impressed with a dull pencil at the 2007 Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.

Yes, that’s the “(electrical) ground” symbol on the flag, which is lame, but I couldn’t think of anything on the spot.