For a while, I’ve been wanting to paint daily small or mini watercolor paintings, but haven’t had the subject matter to spark creative inspiration. Today’s lettering challenge prompt “Merry and bright” seemed like a good enough jumping off point. Painting in a small scale is freeing in many ways. It allows me to use the least amount of brushstrokes to represent a form like a holly leaf or red berry. [By the way, I chose to watch Little Women as background accompaniment for this one.]

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I took the watercolors out for a spin again for today’s challenge doodle “Hot cocoa”. I sketched, painted, and inked it while watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Netflix. The movie quote, “…no other factory in the world mixes its chocolate by waterfall, my dear children, and you can take that to the bank” seems a fitting companion to a cup of hot cocoa painted entirely from watercolors.

Can you find both the words “hot” and “cocoa” in this painting?

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Today’s challenge prompt of “HO HO HO” was a tough one for me. I love hand-lettering done with a brush pen when it’s rendered by someone else, but I’m really lousy at it (probably because my brain is too rebellious and gets bored with doing something someone else has done again and again). So I had to fudge on this one and create the repeat digitally from my best red version and green version of the words.

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I can’t believe it happened twice in less than a week, but this challenge doodle was another one that came into my mind and I knew exactly how I wanted it to look. I just had to find the time and energy to execute on paper what I saw in my head. I almost got impatient because my hand couldn’t go fast enough. I guess that’s why I’m better at photography than art.

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Today’s doodle prompt is “Stockings”, and my imagination immediately pictured a hidden letter piece (again… I can’t help it… I think my brain’s just wired this way). I did this with a combo of various colors of markers in several sizes. An added bonus outcome of working with all the reds and greens is that it got me in a Christmas-y mood.

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Back in graphic design school, my lettering instructor introduced the class to the concept of hidden lettering. As someone who loves hidden word puzzles and the like, I really gravitated toward the idea and in the years that followed, every once in a while I’d produce a hidden lettering piece. The lettering and doodling challenge I’ve been participating in for close to a month now has brought those ideas to the forefront of my mind. Every time it’s a day for doodling, ideas of hidden lettering compositions begin to percolate to the surface of my imagination. Today the idea shot to the forefront of my mind almost completely composed, and I had to get the idea out of my brain and onto paper. That doesn’t happen often, but I love it when it does.

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