I love to doodle. It’s fun and lately it’s been good practice. I used to just doodle during meetings all over my notes. Surprisingly I found it a way to focus and wasn’t a distraction. It wasn’t a sign of boredom although there have been many meetings that I have been bored to tears.
About two years ago, I decided to take my drawing “to the next level.” I have been learning more about techniques and structure. There’s a part of me that says get things done as fast as you can while the other side says to take my time and do it right. This has always been my problem with drawing. I see what I want to draw and then I would try to draw it failing miserably. I just wrote it off as I just didn’t have any talent for drawing.
It just didn’t matter how bad I thought I was, I still wanted to try to get better. So I took a community drawing class and began my journey of drawing “for real.”
My sketchbooks are full of doodles. Through the years I can see improvement which makes me really excited. So I know practicing even if sometimes it may just be doodles are helping me become a better artist.
How to make more time for doodling
I keep a small sketchbook at work. My desk is very small, so I keep it close to my computer which in turn makes it convenient to pick up a pencil and make a few marks which waiting for things during the day. If you have a desk job, you probably have a fair amount of down time or when I complete a task I like to take a short break – hence I doodle.
When I’m at home, I usually doodle while watching TV or listening to music. I like to doodle to warm up so to speak before I try to draw something I’m working on.
I seem to doodle the same creatures, flowers, designs over and over again. It’s good practice although sometimes I feel frustrated with myself that I keep drawing the same stuff. It’s amazing how the brain works as I can tell you a flower I drew last year was way harder than the same flower this year. It’s like my brain now has a blueprint on a basic flower and it just does it automatically. A year ago I would remember thinking about the drawing process with each line. Now some marks just seem to be on auto-pilot.
So yeah, doodling. It might seem like I am doing nothing of importance but really it has become an important practice.
