DAILY DOODLES – Part 3: Energy!

An ongoing assignment from my painting coach DAILY DOODLES (or 'as often as I can' doodles) are an important part of maintaining regular creativity and visual expression, more about the journey or process, than the end result.

It's time I caught you up a bit with my doodling, having posted some in September and then October, things have moved on again. I started off with pencil, making shapes and marks, seeing what came:

posted in September

This led on to using felt tips, where I closed my eyes, selecting colours randomly and making the shapes that came to mind when listening to music. Once my eyes were open I would work into the picture with water and more marks:

posted in October

By this point I was producing mini pieces of art some suitable for framing and sale, which was all well and good but I realised that I needed to strip things right back again at least for a while.
So I purposely chose rubbish paper and to limit my time to less than 1 minute per doodle.

This produced much more VISCERAL, RAW, MOVEMENT FILLED MARK MAKING. It became a much more physical approach involving repetition and drumming actions. Percussing and jabbing at the page causing holes, breaking pencils, getting messy. Drums are my favourite instrument (I hope to learn to play one day) they get me right in the gut, send shivers down my spine and bring me to tears. This type of responsive action drawing connects with my inner percussionist!

The results are WILD, FRESH, EXPRESSIVE AND FULL OF ENERGY. This type of doodling has got me working more confidently, passionately and freely.
The key, and the bottom line which keeps recurring, is the importance of focussing more on the process, the playfulness, than on the result and desire for success.

See more of my doodles in my DAILY DOODLES Facebook album