New paintings and regular art updates.
Youdraw drawing. I’m trying to catch up with things but the youdraw interview put me in a spin. So many old memories. Old friends, thinking about what I was doing and what I was capable of twenty or so years ago. And the frustration of no longer having those abilities.
I want to think about how I can get some of it back. I’m going to see if I can get better medication for Parkinsons. Does life have to be this hard? Mentally and physically I’m feeling my age.
https://youtube.com/shorts/EmEBgH30shY?si=Q3TMLxNVdQfRB6Sj
I was drawing at a digital platform called youdraw several years ago. The object was to collect 500,000 drawings.
I’ve recently been contacted as they are going to publish 10 books with contributors art included. I thought I would share the link to my interview. Hope that’s OK…
One of my Youdraw drawings, the website may open back up again next year. Currently they are showing some of the artists works on Instagram.
I did over 11,000 drawings on the site. The only tools were a thick and thin black pen and a thick and thin eraser. The canvas size was only about two inches high by one inch wide. But that simplicity gave the site charm and also a challenge to create interesting images.
Drawing from 2013, popped up on my Facebook memories. I drew it at the now defunct website sketchfu. Sadly closed because the owners didn’t have the resources to keep it running and towards the end barely communicated with its users. It was a simple drawing site, a few pen sizes, colour picker and palette, and an opacity and eraser button. It was overwhelmed by users writing youth fiction (is that the term). I was a moderator after drawing a few thousand pictures. It’s hard to monitor places like that. So busy!
There are a lot of other drawing sites out there depending on your skill set. I liked Youdraw (basic black and white), 2draw (complex using applets), floating ginkgo (complex) wetcanvas (I forget). Have a look. I found them before I got an android phone and got directed to stuff via Google play which doesn’t seem to show you community drawing sites.
A tiny sketch I did at Youdraw.com of Audrey Hepburn a few years ago. I drew it in a tiny box on the site using a thick and thin black pen and thin and thick eraser. I added the pink later. That’s why the image is pixellated. It’s interesting if you can make something recognisable from only a few marks.
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Youdraw is a website that used to rely on Java script but after a while of being down its started up again. The area you draw on is only an inch by two inches in portrait orientation. You have a thick and thin black pen and a thick and thin eraser. But despite the limitations if you played with it you could thin the black lines or reduce the eraser marks. I did thousands of drawings there as Christine M-B. I’ve done just a few since it’s started back up. They are trying to collect 500,000 drawings. I copied a lot of my drawings and added colour to them.
I was mooching about my PC looking for old pictures that had been saved onto it before I had to have it fixed. Well after ages of searching I found the old drive they are on. It comes with a timeline, so I can find when they were posted. These are a few of my drawings from Youdraw in 2005. I also helped moderate the site. Apparently its been upgraded. When I’ve got my new drawing tablet I might draw some more.
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Sneezing and snuffling now. I’m really tired. I just found an old digital drawing I did on the youdraw.com website. It depicts a sleeping woman and I think that’s meant to be a handkerchief. I get colds this time of year (this was on my Facebook memories)
Goodnight.
Cyclops, looking at you,
What does he see?
One stern eye facing you..
Checking you out?
Staring deep.
Into your eyes,
Dazzled by your smile,
Ancient sight
Blinded by your brilliance
Or your insolence.
Imagine a website where you can only draw in a small oblong in portrait mode. Imagine you only have a thick and thin black pen and a thick and thin white eraser. Then imagine drawing complicated images with only these tools.
That’s Youdraw, I don’t go on it anymore because my old computer is defunct and my tablet does not let me use a proper stylus pen.
The images above are my drawings, taken from the site and then changed in Photoshop so that I could colour them.
I found it captivating to be able to use the site to draw so many ideas. The shape was better suited to portraiture, but you could fit landscapes in, abstract ideas, botanical images, anything black and white. Some of the artists there could draw incredibly detailed pictures, one person at least built up a huge interconnected picture of 100 images, maybe more.
If you go and have a look at Youdraw.com you can see what is there now. I’m not sure if its still taking images. The plan was to collect 500,000 drawings to publicise the population explosion on Earth.
Hopefully I will go back and draw there again one day.
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Mallaband-Brown