Do You Doodle?

When I'm gripped by a surge of inspiration, driven to the page by creative impulse, the results usually find their form in a slender string of lines--usually a scrawl of messy cursive. I try to jot the words down as quickly as I can, so as to remember their order and sequence, sometimes inside a tiny notebook that I keep on hand, or in one that rests beside me on the nightstand. And if these items fail to surface, I'll settle for the back of an envelope, the flip side of a bank statement, if I'm in a bar, the requisite whiskey-soaked napkin will suffice.

Regardless of their exact location, lines come and land on the page in mere seconds, and after that, it's up to me to decide what comes next. Are they worthy of more attention, or was the jotting down of them their sole purpose? If it's a longer piece I'm writing, perhaps they fit in somehow? Or, if they're entirely nonsensical, but the syntax is just right, maybe it's just a tiny amusement I file away under, "Jokes I tell Myself." One of my friends calls it "scribbling," and I like that. It takes some of the pressure off, in a way.

But for artists whose creative expression comes in shapes other than horizontal lines, while they may refer to their work as "doodling," the end result can often be awe-inspiring and sometimes startlingly beautiful.

When I taught English, I would sometimes notice the occasional student sketching a small drawing in the corner of a notebook. Rather than feel annoyed that said student may not be paying his or her full, undivided attention to whatever I was saying, instead I would find myself curious--sometimes to the point of distraction--to see what they were drawing. Doodles are inspiring. They rise up from some part of ourselves that feels free of imposed constraints, expectation, or the need to produce something worthy of an audience. Doodling, just like jotting lines, feels necessary. I've read several articles arguing that doodling can in fact help a person focus and aids in the learning process by opening different pathways in the brain, particularly when lots of information is being processed. So perhaps it is best to leave the doodling student to her craft.

Doodlers Anonymous, or DA, is blog-home for doodles, interviews, and themed-submissions, and it was started by OKAT and Hugo Seijas, who are also both self proclaimed doodlers. Artists like Gemma Capdevila, whose work is shown below, mix together whimsy, humor, and sometimes a bit of the absurd in their sketches, and many of them are stunning. It leads one to question where the line truly rests between doodles and, well, the other side of doodling?

So dreamy, right? 

Check out more gorgeous doodles here and here.

Also, how doodling helps you pay attention.