The cross-hatched creature

I did this while at work, last September, supervising a workshop. It was during an activity that I felt was proceeding just fine without my control-freakish attentions, so I found myself in a perfect frame of mind to doodle: half of my attention devoted to looking like I was paying attention, and the rest to exploring and messing around with pen and paper. I was pleased with the result. The only problem is that it really is impossible to doodle unnoticed. It’s not quite as socially unacceptable as yawning conspicuously, but you just don’t look anything like someone who’s paying attention to what’s going on around them. Although I was drawing in the same notebook that I was taking notes of the event in, it was obvious I wasn’t writing: I was clearly doing something much more absorbing, so much so that people kept wandering over to see what I was scribbling. Since I was being paid quite a lot of money to pay attention to what was going on, I decided this activity might provoke some hostility – and, heaven knows, consultants don’t actively need to look for opportunities to provoke hostility – so I’ve stopped trying to meet my doodle quota while I’m working. However, I am interested in re-creating that happy state of devoting half a mind to something that’s going on externally, which seems to free up the doodling-inclined part of my brain to draw, unhindered and uninhibited by the usual white noise of discouraging voices in my head telling me I’m doing it wrong, it’s ugly, it’s boring, etc. I’ve discovered I can re-create this state by watching TV or a movie. However, I can get so absorbed in the drawing that I miss most of what I’m watching, so, ideally it needs to be something not very challenging and very predictable: CSI is perfect, for example. I’ve also done some good doodles during Toastmasters meetings as well…

Dip pen experiments

I hope I’m going to be able to do this. Even doodling takes time, and I seem to need to warm up to be able to just doodle – and I thought that’s what doodling was: the equivalent of piano scales before you get down to the business of playing music. Darn it. I did these with a dip pen, which is scratchy and wobbles but seems to be the tool of choice of “real” cartoonists, so I am determined to make friends with it.

Here’s some cross-hatching.

Here’s Gordon Brown.

Here are two doodles trying to prove that perspective isn’t important.