Why Do I Doodle?
Dear readers, Doodles. Drawing. Art. Why do I do it, or attempt to do it? What is the point of it all? Why do any of us do anything? Why even breathe? Where are we? Point of life? Who knows. Seeing that I’ve diverged into pretentious, philosophical nonsense, I will now attempt to get back to the point (if there is one?), addressing the question of this blog post. I doodle. I love it. I do it all the time. Drawing. Or writing. If I have a pen, pencil, brush or mobile app in or at my fingertips, something to draw on, and an idle mind full of ludicrous inspiration, I am at my happiest. Letting the world and hours fly by and switching off my phone to all distractions. A coffee or tea close by is a nice luxury. The location of where I’m vomiting my imagination on paper isn’t much of a worry, unless I’m in an environment provoking motion sickness, and then I’m vomiting my last meal on the paper. Not a good thing. Unless you like vomit art. And if you are, please stop reading now and visit the dark web or wherever sedates your needs. You know who you are, even if we don’t. Spoiler alert: I don’t practise that kind of art. I also love the absurd. In art, novels and movies. The tens of thousands of thoughts we have every day. The vast majority of them are useless; we don’t practise upon them because of just that: they are absurd. But art enables us to do that: spew our thoughts out on paper [note to self: enough of the vomit analogies. I don’t know what’s got into you. It’s tiring your dear readers and beginning to sound like verbal diarrhoea. (Pun intended.)]. I have always enjoyed drawing or doodling, or painting. I don’t think I’ve ever been that great at it. I struggled to colour within the lines at school, causing much disdain among teachers (I justify it now by telling myself that art shouldn’t be kept within the lines…I wish I’d had the wit at the time to tell the teachers just that, not that I hold any [much] resentment). Through constant practice, and I don’t want to bore you with the ‘practice makes perfect’ line, I’m proud of my improvement. Maybe it’s the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000-hour rule to master an activity. Fuck knows which hour I’ve reached. I’m not counting. Who does when one’s enjoying themself? Just recently, I feel I’ve turned a corner. Not to blow my own trumpet. I’m not winning any prizes (yet!), and when I look at doodles and drawings in galleries or social media or Pinterest or by friends, I am astonished and inspired by the thought process and technique and style of the artist. It’s a constant learning process, like everything in life, but in a more profound way. Sometimes it is just a stream of consciousness and improvisation, being inspired by something I see and trying out styles and/or putting my own touch or narrative around it. Just finding out what I like, and fucking up with no pressure or remorse and succeeding now and then and being proud with what I produce, taking my foot of the pedal, so to speak. Self-teaching and finding a voice for everything. I love to see what comes out from an intangible idea created in a millisecond, to create a tangible work of art. The spark of it all. The burst of activity. This comes through all acts of creativity. But still, I love it. I guess I started something of an artistic journey two weeks after my father passed away. To the day, actually. Sunday 23rd October 2022. I found myself walking down the high street in Great Malvern with a fiver in my pocket. Not in note form, though; just coins and shrapnel. And if anyone knows anything about the UK or even spent 5 minutes there, they love change, and to make matters worse, the coins weigh a ton, even if it doesn’t come to that greater value. You need a belt to save your trousers or skirt dropping to your ankles. And don’t think that baggy trousers trend in the early 90s had anything to do with aesthetics or style; fuck no, the eejits just had too much change in their pockets. Which is where I found myself that morning, no doubt a grey morning considering the time of year. To be honest, I can’t remember if it was grey or even a morning. I just remember walking down the high street, trying to adjust to the death of my father and a cashless society. I felt the coins in my pocket and had a burning desire to part with them as quickly as possible, with an adequate rush of consumer thrill (more like dull thudding), while also trying to keep my jeans at waist height. I was toying with the idea of a sausage roll and/or Cadburys Chocolate. But then the book and craft shop, The Works, stood before me, so I stepped in to see what nonsense of a book I could buy and probably not bother to read. But, amongst all the Christmas shite that Santa had no doubt barfed up, there sat with halo around it was a little black sketch book; the colour pretty much reflecting how I was feeling around those days. I needed to fill it with whatever storm was brewing in my head. I picked it with some colour pencils and went to the till. The irony was, the two items came to over five pounds so I had to use my card anyway, and I was still left with the hunger to part with the fiver. Luckily my hunger for a sausage roll and Cadbury’s Chocolate had not departed, so I walked home with the thought of being slightly fatter and the potential urge to do something artistic. And it all sparked off