Miriam Badyrka is The Doodler

Doodle of the Week

A break from all the carpet doodles. I like this group of simple medallions. Clean, round and bold.

Doodle of the Week

This is a carpet doodle dominated by three medallions. Really like these medallions, especially the large one. It reminds me of those Indian tapestry bedspreads from Pier One that we all had when I was in college. Do they still have them?

It may also be another piece of the giant doodle. I really have to think about what the giant doodle really is.

Is it a single large piece? Or is it just a series of similar doodles? I often go on runs of medallions or some particular type of doodle.Why am I doing this and not something else?

Am I still actually doodling? Is this becoming more of a conscious act? I really don't think it is. I only do it when I am watching TV in the evening. I never think of it as artwork and I don't pick it up when I am working, even when I am drawing.

Hmmm. Much more thinking on this needs to be done.

PS. Apparently Pier One  and Cost Plus have gotten too snooty for those. Yet I am pretty sure my daughter has one on her wall. So where do college kids get them these days?

Doodle of the Week

A nice group of medallions this week.

I like the big one on the bottom. It looks like Greek pottery to me, although it really doesn't. I can't find anything but this plate, which is not what I am thinking of.

Strange how your brain sometimes makes connections that don't really exist. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind are black pottery with incised concentric circle decoration. I am certain it was greek, but I don't know why.

I found these which are blackware ca. 350 - 325 BCE. I think it is as close as I am going to get without resorting to pulling out my old art history text.

And none of us what that, now, do we?

The 2009 crop circle video is here in all its glory. Enjoy!

Doodle of the Week

Another group of roundels. I like how bold they look, but otherwise have little to say about them. I didn't doodle anything particularly interesting this week. 

Doodle of the Week

I like this doodle, it is a bit more organic than my usual Collection of Medallions type doodle. The whole thing revolves around the central medallion.

There is something about this doodle that reminds me of a tatoo from the South Pacific. I am going to have to do some research on this, a quick google search leads me to tatoo galleries, but not the kind of historical documentation of tribal tatoos that I am looking for.  

This is a Maori facial tatoo from the 1800's.

I have breezed through a couple of tatoo galleries, but they are not really what I had in mind. Mostly it is people selling downloadable designs for you to have tatooed.

I don't have any tatoos and don't want one. I do like them as art though. Many of my doodles would fit right in.

It does make me wonder if that is what most of the hits on my blog are from people looking for tatoo designs. Could that really be it?

I took another stab at a search and came up with this, which claims to be the world's largest on line tatoo museum. This seems more like what I was after.

Doodle of the Week

Here is a large mandala image. Still with the circles, but a nice one, with a small satellite. I especially like the positive/negative dots. A minor detail, but one that pleases me.

My bookmark list is getting huge again. I must write a link-y post. Stay tuned for it later this week, along with a new embroidery.

Doodle of the Week

This week's doodle is another bunch of medallions. It is amazing how I can endlessly produce these things. But that is how it is with doodles, you don't control them at all. They happen and they become what they want to be. Apparently, mine like being concentric circles.

Because of the last embroidery, which reminded me of looking at pond water under a microscope, I went looking for some images of microscopic things.

This site has images of micro fossils, like this little lovely, a biscutum novum, whatever that might be. It is really worthwhile to spend some time clicking through this site.There are lovely images of things that are too small to see. I especially like the diatoms.

Isn't the world grand? Even though they are so tiny, they are beautiful.

This archive of images from BGSU is another amazing resource, and the images are in color, Oooh. Pretty. Consider yourself warned, this site opens a new window for each image. Do look at them though. They are totally worth it.

And don't miss the Diatoms of the Great Lakes from the University of Michigan. Or the California Academy of Sciences Diatom Collection. Stunning images, and they are large.

Yeah, stop me now. I could be sending you all over the web for days. (Thank you to all the scientists and universities who make all of this available. You are awesome!)

Doodle of Last Week

 

This should have been your doodle on September 11th.

I like that there is a whole field of medallions. Then, for some unknown reason I tossed in a random square.

Life is just like that sometimes.

Doodle of the Week

This week's doodle is medallions once again. Overlapping medallions. I thought last week's bunch was unusual. I like that there are lots of ovals in this group. It gives them an organic feel, don't you think?

I was stuck in traffic the other day with no way to escape.

My fellow prisoners and I didn't know that there was a giant accident involving a semi and 6 cars. At the time, all we knew was that we were stuck on a freeway on ramp for an hour and a half.

The only good things about it were a.) finding emergency provisions (lifesavers candy, how funny is that!) I left in the car, and b.) watching a hawk corkscrew lazily up until I lost him in the clouds. For a non-bird watcher, I seem to watch them a lot. Perhaps I should take it up as a hobby.

I bet he wasn't even hunting. He was probably just laughing at us being stuck down there the whole time.

Doodle of the Week

This constellation of 25 (yes, I counted) roundels caught my eye.

They all touch at least one other, and none of them overlap. I think that is interesting, and unusual. A quick scan through old doodles (not an exhaustive search, I have lots and lots and lots...) proves that I was right. Usually, there is space between them, they overlap or they are boxed.

I wonder what I was thinking about. Don't they seem carefully and delicately balanced? I wish there was a handle somewhere that will start the whole mass spinning like cogs or gears.

If you are interested, here is a 1949 video from the Hamilton Watch Company about how a watch works. There is loads of stuff on the internet about collecting vintage watches, and I even learned a new word.

Did you know that horology is the the art or science of making timepieces or of measuring time?

I didn't either.