Doodle Plus

Was just waiting in a waiting room, waiting and waiting, when I started to draw. I had planned to draw a Zentangle picture, but for some reason, my mind was too preoccupied with other stuff and just wandered off, and I started to doodle… Without any sort of direction. Gave me tons of Zen flow. It was fun and reminds me a bit of the masterful doodles (if you can call them that) produced by some of the great doodlers who display on youtube and instagram, such as Peter Draws, Crystal Wagner's bio junk and some of Irina Vinnik's older work.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I was allowing myself to explore and roam freely, it felt like an adventure. Everything in this new year feels like a new adventure, trying and planning to do things that I have not done before, such as taking two large trips in the same year. It also occurred to me that Adventure was an excellent candidate for my “word of the year”, which is the theme of one of the many Facebook groups I belong to.

Here is a close-up of the picture.

I love the intricacy. And I love how the shapes play and vary and change, this is not your usual tangle pattern. I call it “Doodle Plus”, because it's so much more than just doodling mindlessly. Half-way through the drawing I realized there was a certain rhythm to it, there were things I was doing repetitively, just like a Procedural pattern. A Procedural pattern is a design that repeats more like a set of rules, producing variations within the design. Feziii and Fractalized Tangles are excellent examples of Procedural patterns.

If you like this type of drawing and would like to see a lesson on this topic, send me a note here.