the reflection of the sky in the window … a field of poppy pods … a brushstroke of paint …
a drop of ink from a wooden skewer …
a photograph that captures the contrast of the tree shapes against the sunset … a bouquet of tropical flora … all of these things spark my imagination and inspire my creativity …
Inspiration comes in many forms. You can discover it while traveling through an exotic land, inspecting the lines carved in cement sidewalks, having afternoon tea in your garden, looking at a colorful graffiti wall or rummaging through a reclaimed vintage store. Everyone’s sources of inspiration are different. My inspiration is ignited by colorful patterns, letterforms, urban graffiti and the beauty of nature. Recording these inspirations helps guide my paintings.
Collecting inspiration in file folders and on boards creates a reference for my painted creations. I like to gather paint chips, photographs, fabric and paper swatches, magazine images, and embellishments to help jumpstart my projects. These inspiration collections are my guide through the creative process. Snippets of colors, text and lines are drawn from the pieces I collect.
Sometimes, my source of inspiration is a background that I have painted or collaged. I examine the painted page to seek out shapes, lines and colors I want to accentuate. Training your eyes to look at pages or paintings in different ways will help you find the doodle. What shapes do you see in the background? What lines can you draw to call out certain areas of the page? Is the marriage of colors and papers creating the shape of a bird? Putting pen to paper is the easy part, but deciding where to go next, and what movement of the pen or tool should come next, is a more challenging task. Using photographs, fabric patterns and typography as jumpstarts for inspiration will influence the shapes, lines and colors of your own marks.
In this chapter, we will find our sources of inspiration and use them to explore the process of painting intuitively and drawing freely. We will learn to look for shapes and imagine the art that can spring from them. What do you see when you turn the painting in different directions? A face? An animal? A flower? Let your imagination soar to reveal the doodles.
Take a few minutes to jumpstart your doodles with simple prompts. These exercises will help you overcome the blank page. Have fun and experiment!
Start with a few black markers in different weights. Use the following prompts to make a quick five-minute doodle:
1. Draw circles.
2. Draw floral shapes.
3. Change pens.
4. Draw lines.
5. Draw dots.
6. Connect the dots.
7. Fill shapes with patterns.
8. Draw lines.
9. Draw wavy lines.
10. Draw squares.
Draw a circle on bark paper with a brush and fuchsia ink. Paint circles over the color with a brush dipped in India ink. Work quickly, without interruption.
Write thoughts or phrases onto the page without lifting your pen. Draw circles, swirls or wavy lines that extend from each letter. Write backwards. Alternate lowercase and uppercase letters.
IDEA: Explore variations of these prompts with different pens and markers.
Write the above prompts onto a piece of paper and cut them out. Put them in a jar or box. Select a prompt at random and follow it. When finished, place it back in the container. Repeat this for five minutes. You can also add your own prompts or ask others to give you prompts and add them to the jar.
All of these exercises can be done on both paper and fabric. Experiment! Most of the art I make on fabric is for art journals, so it won’t be washed. If you are making something that will be wearable, be sure to use textile paints and markers so your design is permanent.
Using a black permanent marker, practice drawing various shapes and lines together to create a pattern. This example shows teardrops, swirls and circles repeated in various ways to form a design.
Close your eyes and scribble and paint on a piece of muslin, alternating marker colors. This is a great exercise for creating spontaneous marks. Continue to build on your marks by adding more doodles with ink and
a brush.
Open your eyes. Choose a couple of contrasting oil pastel colors to accent some of the previous marks. Write words. This piece makes a great background for journaling. You can also cut it up to sew an art quilt.
Sometimes there are days when you face the blank page and ask, “What’s next?” When this happens, try jumpstarting your creativity with these quick exercises. You can also add them to your jumpstart jar (see page 12). Suddenly, your page isn’t blank anymore!
Drizzle two to three colors of paint and scrape them across the surface.
Paint random marks with a foam brush. Let them dry. Draw lines over the painted surface with a black chisel-tip permanent marker.
Scribble phrases or words in crayon.
Draw lines and doodles with a white correction fluid pen.
Place letter stencils on your surface and spray paint on the page.
Scan a picture or one of your paintings and print it out. Cut the scanned paper into random pieces and collage it onto the blank page.
Create a daily log of inspirations using these easy exercises:
Collect photos and cut out shapes. Paste these into your journal. Flip through magazines and look for interesting advertisements and typefaces that you like. Add these to your journal as well. Use www.flickr.com to create a photo gallery of inspirations. Collect an image a day from online image searches.
When starting a new project, create an adjective bank of interesting ideas, words and phrases about your chosen theme, such as the flora and fauna theme shown at right. Feel free to draw shapes and doodles from photos you’ve researched, as well as other sources of inspiration. You can use these doodles to create a piece of artwork.
For the piece below, I created a background on a piece of muslin printed with a dyed paper towel, chipboard letter stencils and painted washes. Then, using my flora and fauna themed doodles, I painted a flourish with a paintbrush and white acrylic paint thinned with a little water and stamped a circle pattern with foam building blocks and turquoise fabric paint.
Dye paper towels using Colorations Liquid Watercolor mixed with a little fluid acrylic paint or Tulip fabric sprays. You can dip dye them, paint them with a brush or spray through a stencil. (Learn about the dyed paper towel technique in Collage Unleashed.)
Spontaneous marks arise from a natural impulse: the movement of your paintbrush, a feeling or an emotion. I may be inspired by music, a photo, a color or a painting tool. These marks happen without thinking and are completely serendipitous. One mark leads to the next, and I keep going until the page is filled with color, never second-guessing my movements. Work rapidly and don’t think too much. Create truly spontaneous marks by giving yourself permission to play!
Place various stencils on your chosen surface, then spray paint through them.
Scribble marks and words as they come to you with dimensional paint.
Paint through sequin waste and doodle over the resulting pattern.
Call out areas of a painting with different pens and oil pastels, choosing your mediums at random.
Stamp the entire alphabet onto a page and doodle about a word or theme that arises from each letter.
Close your eyes and paint.
There is no right or wrong way to complete these exercises. Experiment with the ideas and mix and match the techniques to create your art. If you are ever stumped about what to do next, grab an idea from your jumpstart jar (see page 12). If you feel like you are adding too much to one page, it’s time to move to the next one. Work on several pages at once to keep your ideas fresh. This will teach you to work spontaneously and freely.
IDEA: Make marks to music. Turn on your favorite music and paint or draw lines inspired by the sounds you hear. If the music is fast and loud, translate that into your marks. Let the music be your muse.
Time to get messy and fingerpaint! Stamp patterns onto a canvas with multiple acrylic paint colors. Then dip your fingers into different paint colors, as well as white paint, and blend them on the canvas.
To successfully build layers in your paintings, allow each layer of paint to dry before adding the next mark. I work on five to seven pieces at a time, which allows me to let layers dry completely.
Create spontaneous “cleanup” backgrounds by cleaning your tools on papers and cloths. Place a manila folder, a large sheet of butcher paper or a grocery bag on your work surface. When you’re finished with a paint color, wipe the paint from your brush onto the cleanup paper. Then, dip the brush into water and brush the excess paint onto the surface again, creating a wash. Repeat until all paint is removed from the brush. Clean your stamps and stencils on the cleanup paper, too. These make great doodling backgrounds!
Try painting on large pieces of muslin, drill cloth or canvas by spraying and painting the bottom layer, then gradually adding more spontaneous marks. Be sure to move the canvas as you work, turning it in different directions.
You can use all of your supplies to create unique pieces of art. Use a “cleanup” paper as your base. Stamp patterns with painted silk flowers and the bottom of a paint bottle to make large dots of paint.
Paint random brush marks onto a surface. Then use a permanent marker to draw some shapes, such as circles and flowers. Continue to build marks and add color.
What do you see when you look at a painted background? It is so exciting to discover a doodle just waiting to be drawn. Study one of your painted backgrounds and try to see it with new eyes. I often see faces in my painted backgrounds, but there are so many other possibilities: flowers, birds, animals, trees and leaves. Your goal is to look at a page and visualize a doodle based on the colors, subtle lines and shapes suggested by paint or collage. Once you find the doodle, focus on pulling out interesting shapes and lines using a variety of mark-making tools.
Collage painted papers onto a surface. Let the colors and shapes on the page inspire your mark-making. What do you see? A face? An animal? A flower? Choose a few markers, pens and pencils and begin pulling out the shapes and lines that you see. Turn the page in a different direction, make a few marks, and then turn the page again. Define the shapes or objects with your lines and write words to describe the story.
Take a trip back to kindergarten and get messy with a little fingerpainting. This is a simple and fast way to get color onto paper.
Paint two to three colors across the page with your fingers. Draw a doodle over the painting with a round brush and India ink.
Sketch a face over the background of the painting. Define the drawing with a black oil-based paint marker. Write words or journal about your day.
If you don’t initially see a design, start making marks around the main images, colors and shapes that call to you. Let your marks be flowing and free—not planned. Eventually, a design will present itself to you.
A great way to leverage your artwork is to take a photo of a painted background you have created and use it as a jumpstart to reveal the doodles on the page. Take the photo with a macro lens and no flash in natural lighting so the colors remain as true to the original as possible. Print the photo on an inkjet printer. Let this background encourage your doodles. What lines can you draw from the shapes that are on the page? Start to add your marks and see where it takes you.
BLACK AND RED PENS (COPIC
MULTILINER)
BLACK PERMANENT MARKER
COLORED PENCILS (PRISMACOLOR)
INKJET PRINTER
OIL PASTELS
PRINTED COPY OF PAINTED BACKGROUND
Using an inkjet printer, print a painted background you have photographed or scanned.
DOWNLOAD A BACKGROUND FOR THIS EXERCISE AT WWW.CREATEMIXEDMEDIA.COM/DOODLES-BACKGROUND.
Doodle over the background with black and red markers, using the shapes you see in the background image. Alternate pens to add more detailed lines to your doodle. Work quickly and randomly across the page without stopping. Draw whatever comes to mind; don’t think about it.
Fill in the doodles with colored pencils or pastels to add color to the design. Alternate colors and blend them with the background. Add more detail on top of the colors with a black permanent marker.