Doodles 🖼️

It’s been a hot minute since I shared some doodles, so I felt like a post would be in order.

I’m not above using erasers or cover-up tape to make my drawings better if the first try goes awry. 😉

For my birthday last year, my awesome sister got me a doodle journal. I’ve had lots of writing journals over the years, but never one specifically to encourage my development as a visual artist.

Each page has a prompt. They range from very broad and easy to interpret to real headscratchers that make me amp my creativity and test my sketching abilities, like the day it suggested drawing the final scene from a movie (gulp!).

I spend just ten to thirty minutes on each drawing (the shortest sketch was my Easter tulips), often in-between grading and making a snack or at the end of the day when I’m wide awake but too mentally tired to dig into a draft in-progress.

I find I care much less about whether the sketches are realistic enough to satisfy my inner censors and much more about the fun of using the art supplies.

The slowdown is very rejuvenating on my nervous system—almost like swimming, I can feel the languid time opening up. I was thinking about that a lot this week, as I paged through what I’ve doodled so far and treated myself to a box of soft oil pastels, which are new to me.

This has also given me a chance to practice doodling people, one of my weakest skills. I gave it a whirl on a doodle of a Jane Austen book cover as well as my version of The Bard.

I used a variety of colored pens, colored pencils, gel ink, whatever was handy on these sketches.

Sometimes, I accompanied the sketch with a short sentence or two reflection, almost like a journal, either in answer to the prompt or just a thought on my mind, such as the day it was 18 degrees outside.

Enjoy this medley of doodles from my sketchbook, and may you continue to find enjoyment and inspiration in your own writing and artistic journeys! Create on. 🥳

Thanks for taking a look at these sketches and for all of your support of my books and teaching. Signed copies of my latest poetry book, Does It Look Like Her? , available at my Etsy store: clickety-click. Also, available (unsigned) through Amazon: clickety-click. 📔

This prompt asked doodlers to draw a self-portrait of themselves from another era. I drew myself in an 1860s tintype. My 1860s self is not as smiley. 😁

To 2023! 🎉

I bought this fanciful party horn at a greeting-card store and have lost track of when.

Doodle by yours truly. Mechanical pencil, Paper Mate Flair Medium and Arteza Bold 1.0 mm pens, and sketchbook paper. Digital filter used in larger version seen below.

It doesn’t have a year on it and the store is now out of business. It has golden paper that shimmers and a fluffy frill of ebony feathers that I think gets prettier with time.

It’s a little crooked (in real life and in my drawing) but holds a lot of hope and cheer.

Each time this calendar year we get to start over, to reset, to look ahead in art and in life, and that feels fitting and good. Thanks for all of your camaraderie and support.

Here we go, 2023! To all that we’ll create and experience in the year ahead!

Words and Doodles: A Multimedia Experiment 🌞

A little something I’m giving a whirl recently. I’ve long wanted to scan some of my sketches and make new ones that incorporated word art and simple doodles. It’s good to shake it up and try new ways of approaching ideas in art, and the process of putting pen to paper to color in is very meditative and relaxing. Here’s a recent one I made and scanned this week.

To me, next means: not perfect, but moving forward nonetheless. Next is a place of hope and discovery. Next is a no-pressure zone; it’s taking what you have and seeing what good you can make of it.

I made the first letter lowercase to show how shaky and tentative some first efforts can be, and then as we gain our strength and clarify our vision, the rest of the letters (and steps) get easier and surer. I also left the slightly askew bottom bar on the X and the slightly shorter bar across the right of the T as I’d first penciled them before tracing with my felt pen. Plus, it’s drawn by a human hand, so there’s a kind of nice authenticity to these quirks.

Next also means a contentment in each moment, because bigger things are on the horizon. The cherry blossoms matched nicely with that thought and were super relaxing to draw—I could feel myself get into a writer-like zone where time felt slowed with each blossom, petal, and branch.

Truthfully, I know I’m not at all the best or even a good sketcher. I have a long way to grow. I have a horrible time drawing figures of animals and people who look like themselves (I’m not great at drawing anything to scale), although I like drawing a caricature of myself waving on cards and in signed copies of my books sometimes. Flowers, I can sometimes do, and I’m going to give people a whirl again, maybe as silhouettes or stick outlines or in my own way, because why not? These are for the joy of making them and, perhaps, sharing some, too.

After scanning and uploading this word art, I headed off to my software to begin the computerized portion of the project. So many hues, filters, and options to be had! I’ll include a few of the transformed file options below, too.