The Beginnings of 30 days of Doodles And Why I'm dong it.

Doodles As Art

Well, I’m really busy right now trying to finish up my Graphic Design Course. At the End of June I will be a ¾ ‘s the way through it. I am working toward completing it by August 28th. I would like to get it done but I also know that because I lost 6 weeks when I was ill in March and April that I might have to get an extension. I have so much going for the fall I really need to get it done fast.

However, I also haven’t been able to plan out any long term work to paint because of the course and physical Therapy. ( which is on-going.) Then one day I got this idea. One of my friends on Facebook was doing something called zentangles. Well I looked closely at them and realized that they were nothing more than flowing semi-organized doodles like we used to do in the 1970s on road trips. Usually, we could find a pad of paper and a marker or pen then we would just create games to pass the long hours on the road.

Here is the interesting thing; during the 1960s and 70’s a lot of artists were doing these things, as were people in advertising. It’s how their thought processes worked, so they could make “ artist notes” Most of this stuff didn’t survive. Mainly because it was thought of as prep art(aka rough sketches), so it wasn’t really saved for posterity.

When, I decided to do the first one, last Tuesday night, All I could think about was Peter Max and some of the things he did. He simply painted his work with color and patterns most often used for advertising and cartoons published in newspaper.( I know there is a name for those patterns, but it escapes me at the moment)

Get this .. my grandmother doodled a lot. Especially when she was on the phone. I doodled to keep my self alert in History classes. My mom used to doodle as well while waiting for doctor's appointments or talking on the phone.

Well, It seems like a man and wife got together and decided to put the Zen into doodles and use them for meditation. They even assigned parameters and standards to these and prescribed meanings to the basic shapes. I could go on. This isnt really my thing I have to admit.

I suppose you could really use just about anything for meditation. Personally I like to meditate on God’s word. And I especially like to meditate on what it’s like to be in God’s presence.. I mean wow to be in the presence of total all consuming unconditional love with no counterfeits, no manipulation, no demands except just to receive it. I mean wow. Now that is real peace to me.

Doodling to me is just another form of expression. I suppose I could assign some physcological meaning to what I draw but here's the bottom line I am an artist and I like to create art. Especially art that gives people a feeling of joy and happiness. So...

So I’ve decided to doodle my way through the next few weeks of this design course. One doodle a day for at least 30 days. Take a look at some of the doodles I’ve done so far. I' ve peppered them through out this post. I’m about 6 days into this. I have to admit I was going a little crazy not being able to paint. So far some are really good. If you have any ideas of doodles you would like to see let me know.

To see all of my latest art before anyone else  see my facebook page: 30 Doodles in 30 Days Project