The fewer rules and restrictions we have in art, the better it is for us to find our natural flow and the easier it is to discover what tool works best in our hand. I personally love a thin pen to create doodles, but I also have days when I want to work big and get messy with paints and thicker marker pens. It’s good to take the time to experiment with different pens or paints, either on their own or mixed together.
Thin black pen
Gel pens
Colored pencils
Now that you have experimented with doodles, you can use a basic shape such as a heart to create your own beautiful doodle design. A good tip is to lightly pencil the shape and doodle around the edge first.
Here is a heart that has been filled in with doodles.
When doodling, it’s a good idea to start with something you are comfortable drawing freely, such as a shape, like a heart, star or flower. Something so simple is not intimidating or difficult. You can give structure to your doodles by filling a shape in with repeated doodles. As you doodle over and over with the same shape you can start to make little changes to each one, such as its size, changing pens or colors, adding pattern or even words.
As you do this you will see your simple doodle become a design, which is really rewarding and exciting. This then gives us the confidence to experiment even further with our doodles. You will also discover your medium preference—maybe you love the way the gel pens flow or the intricacy you can create with a thin pen. This is the magic of creativity; this is how we unearth our own unique style, which we can then continue to evolve. These simple beginnings can grow into beautiful artworks if we trust our hand and experiment with different mediums.
And here is the same doodle design with lots of fun color!
This technique of repeating a doodle is great fun and the perfect way to get into the doodling rhythm as doodling is all about simplicity, fun and letting go of restraints, allowing your art and hand to flow more naturally.
It’s also quite therapeutic to doodle the same thing over and over again. Do you ever just doodle when you’re on the phone? It’s pure freedom with your hand and you tend to “switch off” for a while. This is also like coloring, which has become a big hit these days! It’s good for us to relax and let our hands take over sometimes in something so simple yet creative.
In this Butterfly Tree design, which has since become a cross-stitch kit and published as a greeting card, I used a very thin pen and decided to draw a tree outline and fill it with butterflies. Although each butterfly is almost the same as the other, coloring them in makes them different.
To repeat a doodle, you don’t have to draw a tree. The exercise is to let go and repeat the same icon all over, even if it’s just on a sheet of paper with no shape at all. Without knowing it, you are also building up your own design art library with doodles you can use in other artwork.
Here I have created a simple heart shape filled with repeated doodles of snowflakes in a variety of sizes and styles using gold and different hues of blues. Simple and quick to do yet very effective and perfect for a Christmas design, both male and female, or even a winter wedding or anniversary card or gift wrap design.
Experiment with different shapes. Here is a very simple tree, filled in with butterflies, swirls and other small doodles.