Doodles

I have always loved to doodle. Just ask anyone who sat next to me in high school. If only digital cameras had existed back then, I would have captured hundreds of pages of decorated notes.

Now that I’m all grown up… I still love to doodle! I usually draw when restless–waiting on the phone, sitting at a meeting, listening to a lecture. I sometimes take notes while doodling, too. When I doodle, it’s not that I’m not paying attention. Just the opposite, in fact. Doodling helps my mind to focus. In fact, there’s a great article on the correlation between doodling and memory.

With inspiration from a friend, I have decided to share some of my doodles, especially since sharing them might make me step up my game. For instance, my drawings used to be purposeless, starting with one color and switching when the pen stopped or when I became bored with that color. For example:

I also used to doodle exclusively on lined paper that marred the drawings. I realized if I was going to spend so much time on a piece of “art,” I should put a little more thought into it.

So this year, I am stepping up my game, sketching on unlined paper and trying to create a purpose, or at least a theme, for each drawing. Here’s something I created In August 2014. I was thinking about gardening, but the appearance of wasps in my garden added a bit of danger (the fangs). There is also a subtle theme of freedom longed for, with the one flower having escaped the ground (and the other trying), and the worm trying to escape from the dragonfly: