Ten Doodles To Unwind Your Mind and Annoy Your Teachers
Do you have hands? Excellent. That's a good start. Can you hold a pencil? Great. If you have a sketchbook, open it and start by making a line, a mark, wherever. Doodle.
- Chris Riddel
Ten Doodles To Unwind Your Mind and Annoy All Your Teachers
1. Screw Coasters. Brown ring stain left over from a triple espresso or Cookie Dough Swirl Frappucino? Take a pen and write the tasks you’ll accomplish while riding this particular wave of Caffeination-Powered-Motivationⓒ. You got this.
Or, are you out with friends? Write the names of the amazing people you’re passing time with around the perimetre.
2. Climb. The lines of your notebook are now the rungs of a ladder, and the stick-figure version of you is trying her very best to reach the top. What rungs must she make it past? What figures offer her a helping hand?
3. Draw your biggest obstacle. Or your biggest monster. Or your biggest fear. Now, erase it. Erase hard. Until there’s a hole in the paper. Make the hole the center of a flower. Put the flower in a pot. Erase your fears and grow.
4. Locked Up. Turn your notebook 90 degrees and draw a box. This is a jail cell- little stick figure you is now stuck behind bars. Give each bar a name.Unlike the blue lines in the notebook, the bars in your life can be forced apart.
5. Doodle yourself, and cut yourself out. Find a photo of a view you got to enjoy and glue doodle-you into it. Aren't views prettier when you photograph them yourself, without spending 20 minutes yelling at soe poor friend to "take the picture already?" Or, draw of yourself relaxing, kicking your feet up. In your PJ’s. Or with no pants on. Take a photo of your office. Insert.
6. Fold the corner of the paper down. Somehow, every book and notebook I own ends up that way anyhow. Write something you can’t quite admit to yourself yet in the corner, and cover it with the folded flap. Secret crush? Guilty confession? Sudden realization? No-one has to know yet. But it’s there, shhh.
7. Mad? Bad day? Your boss is evil and Jessica is being cruel and your boyfriend sucks and no, mom doesn’t get it. Take a Bad Word. A Really Bad Word if you want to. Doodle it in the most elaborate, curly, fancy childlike handwriting you can. Take your time. Make yourself smile when you’re done. Doesn’t that feel bloody wonderful?
8) What do you call a three humped camel? Pregnant. Draw a horizontal squiggle with three crests. The first one is a hump. What hump do you need to get over? Tomorrow? This year? This deadline? The second is a wave. What wave are you riding? Popularity? Authority? Financial Security? The third is a mountain. What mountain are you climbing? The Promotion? The Love? The Dream?
9. Crying? Tears falling on your paper in a way that almost makes you want to write a deep song about it? Ever notice how beautiful it is to look at lights after you’ve been crying? Wait for the teardrops to dry. Draw a moon. Then, turn the tear stains into stars.
10. Tear the paper a little bit. Draw a pair of lips, parting along the rip. Draw what you left unsaid today, but shouldn’t have . Or maybe draw the words you let escape, when you would have been better off leaving them locked away.
