I did one! I used a brown envelope and a retractable pencil, and doodled some geometrical lines to get a feel for the paper (it was very SHINY paper!) Then I drew the cat on my workplace tea mug!

Well done! (and, er, look how horrible the interface looks. Sorry. Will add it to my list of things I will try - ineptly - to fix).

Click through to see the other stuff that was on the pad, and the pencil I used to draw with.

I wasn’t happy with it, and was about to redo it / choose another subject, when I stopped myself and decided to stick it up anyway.

Black biro on slightly shiny envelope that the subject itself came in. Oooh, how meta…

I know, very lax.

Um…. no?

What’s a biro? What’s sugar paper? I’m already intimidated and I haven’t even gotten halfway through the first post on this blog!

I haven’t been in an art class since I was in elementary school or something.

*weeps with frustration and hasn’t even picked up a pen yet*

NOW I get it. ;-)

Thank you, I’m feeling less dumb already!

Drawn while in a meeting today, on the back of a pad.

There’s a lot of ‘wasted’ space on either side of columns 1 &3. I’m not saying go to the edge, but by my reckoning you could easily squeeze another 170 or so pixels on, leaving a border, but being enough to get bigger pictures on.

I’ve just noticed though that the comments don’t go to the edge of the column - the ‘reply to this comment’ seems to have an extra column all to itself. Is it possible to extend the reply box, or is this the problem you’ve been talking about all along…?

There is no photo of this, but Kake told me I should say I did it :)

Sadly, that’s where my knowledge runs out.

I am not sure I am doing this thing right…

HB pencil on the back of last year’s Christmas card list.

Actually my first page of drawing was more just scribbles and shapes, but when I looked at the other drawings posted in comments, I became intimidated, too, and decided I should at least draw something resembling SOMEthing.

I drew in my little Moleskin notebook that I keep with me for making lists, notes, etc. of things to buy or things I like or things I want to remember to look up on the Web. I drew with a red pencil that I use for editing–I know these red pencils inside and out, so it seemed like the perfect tool for my first task.

I often have trouble deviating from abstract doodles, so I looked over and drew the first thing I noticed–my guitar–with the blue pen and yellow notepad I already had in front of me.

I am finding it very interesting seeing people’s first ideas of what ‘drawing’ is - I mean, whether they draw something they can see, or something from the imagination like you have. And I like the pattern detail on the wings. It looks like you’ve really thought about the shape of the bottom wings too, and made them very symmetrical.

Finally, PLEASE don’t be intimidated. Everyone thinks that others are better than them, but this is a place where we’re all working towards better drawing.

And aw, thank you. This face is pretty much all I draw these days when I doodle, I think because ages ago at school we had to do portraits of ourselves and it took ages for me to figure out how to draw my own nose. Now it’s like ’start with a circle, draw two bobbly bits at the side’, and the rest of the face just happens or doesn’t.

You don’t sound patronising at all, by the way. Not to me anyway.

One good thing, at least all this drawing uses up the scrap paper in a thoroughly worthy way.

What I liked best about the nose is that it shows an understanding of the bone structure underneath it, and that, yes, you can build complex shapes out of simple ones like circles and lines.

I took it home to scan it in, and promptly forgot about it. Noes!

(Click through for a slightly larger yet still blurred version.)

e.g.

(posted again because I forgot to sub to comments the first time…)

Okay, so. The baby fell asleep on me and there was no paper within reach. Gel pen on left hand:

You can’t really see the Loch Ness Monster below my index finger, sadly. Then the baby woke up, so, hey, monoprint snails on the back of a “vote Green” poster: