The Daily Doodles

Anonymous asked: hi:3 i really like your blog, i was wondering if all the illutrations were yoursO: because i really love them♥ and i also whant to ask, how do you do them? i mean, do you do draw them or yoy use a type of program etc... kisses♥

Hey there, thank you! :-)

EVERYTHING on my site is done by me, yup!  All of the illustrations and writing and whatnot… the one part I ask friends for help with is with the gifs, because they’re much gooder at computery things and I don’t even own Photoshop.  SO, I tell them what I want, and they do it better than I even hoped because they’re geniuses :-)  Fatma, Kyle, and Chiara are the great artists and bestest friends who’ve helped me with my giffing.

Other than that, everything is done by me. :-)

And in answer to your other question, everything is done by hand!  I use mostly Crayola coloured pencils now, with some bits here and there done with dollar store markers and highlighters (I used to use markers more often, but I really didn’t like how it was looking). 

Here’s my basic process: I pencil my drawing with a regular ol’ mechanical pencil, then I ink it with some Micron pens (I am not that particular with which inking pen I use, though I know some have their favourites… I use whatever I got).  After it’s inked, I colour everything by hand with the coloured pencils and markers, and then sometimes I will re-ink a few touches because the coloured pencil can dull the sharpness of the linework.

I think I am pretty consistent with my method now, though it took a while to learn how to draw (long time readers can remember how bad my first 200 drawings or so were), and especially how to colour.  I’ve messed up on almost every drawing.

After the drawing is all coloured and I am happy with it, I load it up onto my laptop, open up Picmonkey.com and then round the corners of the picture :-)  I know it’s not an essential part of them, but I like it. 

I think I am trying to make it like a childhood photo, or at least my childhood, and I think this old picture of me as a kid kinda influences it—

I liked the warm glow of it, and the rounded corners, and I guess I went for “that look” without even realizing.

After the corners are rounded, I then post the drawing and the story together (usually the story, or at least the idea for the story, comes before the drawing… but not always.  And often, however the drawing turned out influences what the story is).

And then I hope they do well! :’-o  Because I am not cool and I care if something does poorly.

Thank you for the question, and for making it about something that is handy to answer publicly :-)

MY APOLOGIES FOR THE SLOWDOWN OF DAILY DOODLES THIS PAST WEEK, I am working on something for my site’s 2 Year Anniversary, and plan to post it Monday! 

Kisses to you Admiral Anon!  I love you.

And I’ll thank you again on the official “2 Year Anniversary Post” post, but thank you everyone who reads these things and has helped support me creatively over the last 2 years as I tried to make these into something that I can do sumthin’ with.  It really means a lot to me, and creating this site is one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Love,
—David Michael Chandler

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