THE SECOND DOODLE

 

 

A few years ago I wrote a blog about doodling, and not long afterward, a doodle drawing I’d done became the cover of my book entitled iDoodle. However, this volume contained word doodles, rather than doodle drawings. I explained that word doodles, like drawn doodles, help people to focus and process what’s going on around them. Frequently the doodles present a humorous viewpoint about a serious subject.

This morning as I leafed through a portfolio I keep on my desk, I unearthed another doodle I drew. The vivid red in that doodle caused me to wonder if I’d been angry at the time of painting this weird piece of art. I’m always curious about the inspirations behind doodles. If I had been angry, the flaming color represented some kind of an emotional war going on. And I hope I was only angry with myself.

Doodles have become serious styles of random abstract art and contemporary drawings have morphed into mandalas that reflect serious thinking. These doodles have been the province of President John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford, to name a few notables of Doodle mark making. Today’s doodle queen is a Brit named Hattie Stewart, and the doodler Sunni Brown has written an entire book about the process of doodling entitled The Doodle Revolution. Doodles have now been divided into technical categories, and I’m certain that readers will get out their pencils or pens and start doodling if I begin to explain these technical categories.

Although doodling began as a playful activity showing chicken scratches on the walls of caves, today those marks could occur during a long telephone call or could appear as an exercise to calm the very nervous by helping them to solve knotty emotional problems. Doodling open eyes could represent a person’s inner Self; but if the eyes appear closed, the person could be refusing to look within.

I’m sure this is all readers ever wanted to know about doodling, but creating those doodles could inspire persons to smile about a serious subject if the artists can let their minds dawdle long enough to impart a little irony when they encounter a serious problem. In The Rector of Justin Louis Auchincloss says that taking one’s self too seriously is, after all, the highest form of conceit.