Out of Control Art

This past week I did some doodling.  It got a little out of control, which you will soon see.  But first, I did some non-out-of-control art in watercolor.

My issue, as you may remember from previous posts, was coming up with artistic subject matter.  Usually I just go outside and find something I want to draw, and as we know, this doesn't work as well when it's forty degrees or raining or when leaves are being blown into your face.  So I went in search of pretty pictures to use in the comfort of my home, and at the library book shop I found a magazine about Britain.  Yay!

After all that ink drawing in October, I decided to ditch the pens and do watercolor only, at least for a few days.  The lovely English home above just called out to be painted, as did the coastline of northern Scotland below:

Then someone donated a calendar to the bookshop, with lovely bird photos, so I did this Blue Jay next:

And that was it for my watercolor-only experiment.  I missed the pens!  I still couldn't think of anything to draw, though, and so one morning I simply sat down and started doodling.  The doodle began with a little doorway and some stairs, and then it kept growing and growing and getting odder and odder and I kept adding one peculiar bit after another until I wound up with whatever this is:

[CLICK on PICTURE for clearer view]

What can I say?  It's a doodle on overdrive.  I put in things that I like -- lighthouses, hot air balloons, a bird, plants, bricks...it was completely unplanned, with no preliminary pencil sketching at all.  And I had a ton of fun.  It reminded me of wacky stuff I used to do way back in grade school when I was bored in class, which was a lot of the time, although back then there would have been dinosaurs.

Anyway, I had such fun with it that the next day I did it again!  This time I started in the upper left corner with a roof line and a wacky claw, and then just kept going wherever it decided to go.  I decided it would be a cross-section of a bizarre house -- there's a bedroom, a bath, a kitchen, a library...and of course, you can't have a bizarre house without an owl, a frog, a hybrid lizard-fish, and plumbing that turns into a tree root...right?  Right!

Now I'm thinking of doing one in color -- whee!

And I'm happy to have found something to draw when I can't get outside -- all I have to do is step inside my own wacky mind.