Because doodles are great for so many reasons! They can be the start of an idea, an outlet, and just plain amazing in their own right. I remember at school my books where covered in what was essentially scribble. My chemistry teacher once wrote in my book ‘is this really necessary?’ to which I replied ‘yes is it’ (especially in chemistry). If it wasn’t my books it was my hands… me and my friends went through a bit of a strange phase of covering our hands in scribble and doodles.
Drawing ‘Super-Bob’ the stick-man was a favourite pastime, normally in maths. I’ve just had a dig around in my old sketchbooks (I am really surprised how much art I produced at one time) and I found a whole sheet of ‘Bobs’:
Yay Bob!! 😀
Doodling is what got me back into art. I just had to draw Miraculous Ladybug haha. I’ve never been particularly interested in superheroes before (except maybe Super Ted when I was about 5) but something about her really inspired me. So I started drawing rough little doodles of her in my diary. Mostly things like this:
I was pleased I could get her basic features right (having a mask cover half her face really helps). But I thought this was about the best I could do and I produced some similar doodles to this in colour too. Then just before Christmas 2017, I was enjoying my first day off in ages and I thought, ‘right, I need to do some art! I need to get a hobby!’ So, Ladybug being my muse, I decided to try and draw a half-decent picture of her based on an official ‘ZAG’ image.
The first picture wasn’t great (see below) and it was a bit of an experiment anyway because I was using Promarkers for the first time. Ick! I wasn’t at all happy with the way it looked, but now some time has passed I think maybe it has it’s own style even if it wasn’t what I was going for.
So I looked up a drawing tutorial on YouTube to get an idea of proportion, and a little while later came up with another picture (below), done with ballpoint pen and coloured pencils (which are much more familiar territory!). This one I am really proud of and I have no idea where it came from, when I think about my rough little doodles. It was a relief and a delight to see that there seemed to be some skills buried in my brain somewhere.
It’s not perfect – I can see a number of places where I would draw it differently such as the left edge of her face and the sketchy lines below her mask. Not to mention I meant to get her whole body into the picture, not just her head! But I really like it 🙂 It feels wrong to say publicly that I like my own work but I really do like it. And I enjoyed the process I went through to make it.
I’ve since noticed how some of the artists I follow online will draw doodley little pictures as well as their more polished works. It’s an important lesson to learn that when I can focus myself, I can produce art that I am happy with and proud of. And also, doodles are a great place to start! I’m definitely someone that struggles with perfectionism and I’m realising that it’s OK if the first thing I draw today is basically scribble! At least I’m putting pen to paper. And the more I draw, the more I learn about and refine what I’m drawing. The first drawing doesn’t have to be the final piece.
Thanks for reading my first blog-post! I’d love to hear about your doodles and the things that you’ve learnt about art along the way 🙂
