First Rule of Doodle Club is: There are no rules!

Over the course of this blog, I’ve had a fairly steady stream of emails asking what my approach to doodling/sketching is, and if I had any tips. My answers have varied, depending on the specifics of the question, but my general response has always been pretty much the same. I received another such email yesterday, and figured I’d go ahead and post my response so that anybody else who might be curious could read it.

   As far as tips for sketching, I’d have to say the first thing is let yourself just relax and have fun with it. Take more of a flow of consciousness kind of approach. If you happen to hit upon an idea you want to take further, that’s great. Do that on a second piece. (I’ve actually had doodles that turned into paintings and published illustrations.) But don’t let that be the goal of sketching or doodling.

   I guess the difference, for me at least, between doodling and drawing a finished illustration is like the difference between running around in the backyard with my kids and running a marathon. They both use the same set of muscles, just with vastly different goals in mind.

   If you’re still struggling with wanting to overthink a sketch, another thing you can do is the timed sketch. Give yourself a VERY short time limit (60-90 seconds) and turn yourself loose on an idea. But- and here’s the hard part- when that time is up, THAT’S IT. No more drawing on that sketch. None. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. Don’t even go back later and tighten up or erase anything.

In addition to the points I made in this reply, I’d add one more: use different tools. Don’t always feel like you can only doodle or sketch on a certain paper using only a particular pen or pencil. Try a wide variety of surfaces and media. Use crayons on a napkin, or colored pencils on an envelope, or Sharpies on an old shoebox. Whatever. Just don’t stifle your creativity by setting any strict parameters on something that is supposed to be a fun pastime. You might be surprised at the new possibilities or favorites you discover.

Hope this was helpful. Happy doodling, everybody!

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Dribbling Dorsal Fins, Batman!!!!

This is my son’s fifth year of basketball, and his team this time around is the Sharks. So I whipped up a mascot logo for them, doing the rough sketch in Photoshop first…

…and then working up the tight final art in Illustrator. Voila!

When Doodles Get Bored

Sometimes I get sidetracked doing other things and don’t have time to doodle (I know…sad, isn’t it), so the doodles start having to wait around for me to draw them. On occasion, one of them dozes off. And let me tell you, those guys can SNORE!!

If the snoring gets really bad, I have to hurry up and draw the doodle just to get that gosh-awful sound out of my head.

The Monster in the Living Room

A few days ago, I received an email that contained the phrase “taming the monster in the living room” in reference to TV.

I think I speak for all doodlers out there when I say that it’s a sin to let a phrase like that go undoodled!

The Sawtoothed Gawker Shark

 

The rare Sawtoothed Gawker Shark.

And, with this doodle, the last remnants of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week have now been officially flushed from my subconscious!

I blame Hieronymus

 

Sometimes my doodles have the bothersome habit of jumping in front of what I’m trying to write.

And then they just sit there….

…and stare….

…and sometimes giggle. Loudly. Like a hyena jazzed up on nitrous oxide and Twinkies.

Of Sea Monsters and Human-shaped Floaties

What if you were a sea monster who didn’t know how to swim? I bet you’d get yourself a nice little floatie with a human head, wouldn’t you? And I bet– if somebody did a drawing of you drifting around in your human-shaped floatie all unable to swim and stuff– you’d probably cop an attitude, too.

C’mon, you know you would. Admit it.

M.A.T.O.

Let’s hope there never comes a time when dragonflies have to rely on M.A.T.O. (Matron-Assisted TakeOff) to get airborne, because I’m betting those guys can get pretty verbally abusive and hypercritical… and old ladies just don’t need that kind of pressure.

The Ballad of Banjo Bill

 

When the urge to draw a guy in a tiny hat hits you, I find it best to just give in.

The Yo-yo Bots Are Coming!

  I’m sitting there doodling a robot, and I randomly decide (or so I thought at the time) to draw him yo-yoing. Now, I have a friend, Rob, who loves yo-yos…it’s a passion of his…so it almost always makes me think of Rob whenever I see a yo-yo.
  And then I thought, “That’s funny…here’s a robot yo-yoing..and Rob loves yo-yoing…and-hey….wait a second…robot…Rob…ROBot! Aww, dang! Rob’s a robot!!!! And he’s probably one of those crazy ‘destroy-all-humans’ kinda robots, too! All this time he’s been deceiving us while he made his plans for world domination!
  “And the whole yo-yo thing, that was just his subtle way of showing us puny humans that he’s toying with us….stringing us along while he calls all the shots!! I feel so betrayed!
  “Well, fine! See if I ever invite him and his little robotic people-hating family over to my house for any more cookouts. That’ll teach him!!”

You never know. I could be right….or that could just be the Mountain Dew talkin’.