I came across Doodlers Anonymous recently, and decided to join their band of doodlers on the website. Yesterday, I realised there were less than 11 hours left submit an entry for their Tom Binh showcase. The brief was simple:

“In this challenge we ask that you doodle your journey – your summer adventure – one that has happened, will happen, or that you dream of happening. The only condition to this challenge is that you place the following travel bag within a drawn scene of your journey as you zip through crowds, grab a seat, and navigate new places.”

The Tom Binh Aeronaut 30

The lazy part of me said I could still continue to snack non-stop while surfing Youtube. However, I could not deny this was such a good motivation to begin my Day 1. How apt was it that the challenge is also about a journey? So I dusted my hands (of food-related debris) and got to work.

The process:

1. Hopped over to Tom Binh’s website and Instagram feed to look at their products and get a sense of how the products are portrayed.
2. Brainstormed items and scenes associated with summer — beach, sunglasses, luggage, iced tea, slippers, books, frozen margaritas, camping etc.
3. Googled images to get inspiration for possible scenes.
4. Started doodling nonsense to warm up.
5. Doodled in pencil, lined in ink and coloured digitally. Also digitally added in the bag.

See Point 4. Some folks like Skottie Young are so good that even their warm up sketches are in high demand. Well… I’m not that kind. When I finally decided on doodling a vintage caravan, this was my first sketch:

My mom wouldn’t put this on her fridge even if I were in kindergarten. 

I have not drawn in many years because I had no strong impetus at school or at my jobs to. Guess I have to start somewhere now.

Being very focused on meeting the deadline, I have only two snaps of the doodling process:

Final product:

Ok, I know it’s not  a piece of work that you’d stand up and clap to. I’m just glad I tried, and kickstarted my own 30-day exploration. (:

The challenge has closed. You can see all the entries here and vote for the one(s) you like.