It’s rare that I draw at all these days, but lately I’ve sort of started again. Mind you, it’s nothing spectacular at all. I’m not out there prototyping character designs, doing anatomical studies of the nude figure, or parking myself on benches drafting landscapes and architecture, and whatever else most trained fine artists and illustrators do. I still don’t even carry a sketchbook with me because I have sketchbook ADD. But the point is, I’ve started forcing those ideas itching inside my head out to scrap paper and napkins; in Photoshop or Illustrator — whatever medium that’s convenient to me at the time that light bulb flickers. They might look as sloppy as a mountain of entrails at a crab shack, but at the very least I’ve got something documented.

What this all means is I’ve been doing a lot of doodling. And doodling, compared to the more disciplined practice of “sketching,” has been liberating because I get to ditch everything I’ve been told in drawing classes to pump out these nonsensical, spur-of-the-moment products of my imagination. The real benefit is, I don’t think about my actions three-quarters of the time because I’ll have something out on paper or screen long before annoying habits like perfectionism and overanalyzing kick in.

And more often than not these doodling endeavors have pleasantly surprised me. I find that I doodle more quality content when I’m distracting myself from crap like boring corporate meetings, since they are best for shutting off that logical side of the human mind.

So, hopefully these activities continue to be a developing trend for me. I’m gonna try to get more into the habit of posting the significant pieces here as they’re produced.

This one I did today was originally drawn on the task list printout I took with me to my work department’s weekly meeting. What started out as an exploration with lines, line thickness and circular forms became the Murakami-esque chipmunk/hybrid/thing above. I liked it enough to bother tracing it in Illustrator to clean up the line work. Maybe I’ll color it in later on, too, who knows.