Skribble Lennon

This might be interesting for some of you. A few weeks ago I submitted a drawing to Deviantart's Skribble contest. The goal was to make a drawing using only this:

Tall order, huh? Back in high school, my art teacher used to give us scribbles and ask us to create finished drawings using the scribble as a base. Because of that I actually had some experience, so I thought the contest might be fun.

For whatever reason, when I saw the scribble, I saw this:

  

I've always been a fan of simplicity in drawing, and I thought the skribble would be a great jumping off place to create a caricature of John Lennon. So after drawing the caricature and inking it on paper, I scanned it into the computer, and it looked like this:

The missing lens and hair would be replaced by the scribble. One thing I noticed was that the drawing was skewed a bit to the left. After doing the flip test (where the drawing is flipped horizontally) I realized that the drawing was definitely flawed. For some reason I had never been concerned about skew in my artwork previously, but noticing it here really concerned me. I mean, I'm entering a contest, the drawing should look good.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to go back and redraw Lennon (I was about to leave for vacation), so I used Photoshop to unskew the drawing as best I could. As handy as that feature is, it's a bit like cheating, and I'd rather correct errors like that beforehand. I mean, Michelangelo didn't have Photoshop, did he?

Okay, so it looks pretty good. I've fixed the skew, erased some lines, and used the skribble to create both sides of Lennon's head. From here I simply colored the lines based on the colors used on the Imagine album.

I had to tweak the colors here and there, but all things considered I think it looks pretty good!

Alas, I didn't win the DeviantArt contest, but I'm glad I entered. I'm not sure I would have created this without a little nudge.

Oh, and I'd like to thank Brian Brittigan. He introduced me to the flip test awhile ago, and I've been kicking myself for not employing it earlier.