Folded Paper

It's been a weak couple of weeks for posting; the earthquake in Fukushima and several time-consuming projects derailed my almost-daily posts - and my family vacation next week will keep me out of reach of a scanner.

But I did manage to scan this one on Friday. Hard to see, but the bottom portion is folded, showing the back of the page. Also, the orientation of the paper ended up cutting off a third of the page. So I don't have much to say about this one, except that I love folding paper and seeing doodles on the other side.

Aloha everyone, I'll be in Hawaii for a week!

Objects in Space

This one kind of feels like planets and exploding stars, nebulae and swirling cosmic gas.

 

Contrast

Because doodles tend to be one color, I find that shading, wieight, and texture provide the contrast.

 

Phone Numbers

Seems like whenever I am jotting down someone's phone number the whole thing just devolves into a doodle fest.

Pen on Paper

Part of the pleasure of doodling is the feeling of the pen on the paper. For some reason, ball-point pens are more satisfying than pencil - unless it's a very sharp pencil - or other sorts of pens.

 

The Hot Corner

The upper right corner of a legal pad is always the sweet spot for doodling. Something about the way the double vertical red lines intersect the blue lines just frames it up right for me.

Post-It Doodles II

Today was actually a low output day for me. I did manage to almost cover this post-it note pad. I noticed that it has a different feel depending on which way you hold it.

Post-It Doodles

Post-It Notes were made for doodling. A neat stack of Post-It Notes just screams out to me to fill it with doodles. 

The Doodle That Started It All

Sometimes I'll fill an entire page with doodles. My father was also a habitual doodler, and I recall being so impressed with one of his pieces - which filled an entire legal pad page on the desk in his law office - that I started doodling to imitate him. I wish I could find that doodle now - or any of his doodles for that matter - perhaps there are one or two among the boxes of his papers that I have. At any rate, it's interesting the way something I consciously labored at as a small child eventually became second nature. The doodle pictured above is one I posted on my other blog, Ideuhs, back in June after reading an article reporting that people who doodle during meetings retain more information than those who don't (read the post!). That was shortly after my friend and coworker Todd Diamond suggested I start a doodle blog. The original suggestion was to create a space where others could contribute and share their doodles. I'm not quite there yet. It took me six months just to flip the switch on doodlemob.com so I could post my own doodles, but a flickr-like doodle site would be fun to do.

Origins

I like doodling on ruled paper because it provides some structure, like a trellis for a creeping plant. Often I will start out tracing over the lines, creating a rectangle or other geometric shape. At a certain point, it will give way to more a more organic form. In this case however, now that I examine it closely, it appears it was the other way around. The biomorphic blob was obviously drawn first, the incomplete rectangle providing a counterbalancing frame for its explosive energy.