My Line Work

In my last blog post, Line Play, Zendoodle and Baby Steps, I talked about work with lines as well as discussing a form called Zentangle or Zendoodle. (Find a How-To on Zendoodle, here.) As you play with this concept in your sketchbook this week, I thought I would show you what I've been up to.

First, I thought I'd show you just a basic black line play that I did. I used my Zebra Emulsion EX pen in black that I have recently gotten as a free sample. I was just mucking about with this piece and it took me somewhere between 2 and 3 hours to do.

It's not much, but it's fun to do. You can see that I experimented with straight lines, curved lines, line thickness, line length and brevity and even "line" as negative space. Once you get started, it's really addicting.

Next, there is this one. This one is a line play like the last, but I used a blue Bic Mark-It Permanent Markers Ultra Fine Point. It bleeds a little, but I like Mark-Its and Sharpies for their vivid, vibrant colors. Once I know how a marker is going to bleed, I can work around it.

In this last drawing, I play with line and multiple colors. This is a doodle I've made since high school and it shows up in a lot of my pieces. In this piece, I used Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Permanent Markers, which I just love. I've left the insides of the shapes blank so you can see how just simple doodles with color can make interesting visual components.

Maybe later, I'll go back and add detail inside the doodles. But, even if I don't, I love how this doodle looks every single time I do it. There's no set pattern and each piece always unfolds second by second and I never know what the whole piece will look like until it's done. I like the spontaneity of the process, the surprise of the effect and the way I can make colors play off of each other. This is a doodle that I will probably draw for the rest of my life. Call it my signature piece.

What do you doodle? Was there something that you always drew on the back of your notebooks in school? Is there something you doodle in the margins while you're on the phone at work? If so, don't dismiss these little gems as "just a doodle." "Just a doodle" can turn into something pretty cool, if you just work with it a bit. Never ignore what you go back to, time and again. That means there is something worth exploring there. It means that there's something there that your mind and hand find interesting. And, if your mind finds it interesting, other people will too.

Keep on creating, my lovelies. Keep on art-ing.


And please remember that we are all visionaries. We just have to figure out where we excel.



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