I have recently joined a doodle-group on Facebook where amateur and professional artists are invited to compete for the fun of it doing doodle shapes and 4-minute doodles.
So let me share a few of the doodles I have shared with them.
I have been enjoying the doodle challenges as it helps to doodle when the world is dropping poopy bombs on your head through misfortunes of many kinds.
Here’s my doodle shape that hasn’t made a video yet.
I joined an art challenge Facebook group that regularly pits doodlers against each other with four minutes to doodle in and a place to post the results. And we do it for absolutely no prizes or titles or even ranking, just for the love of doodling. So here is a recent 4-minute doodle by Mickey posted on that selfsame super-silly group;
If you are having trouble believing that I dragon-doodled this in only 4 minutes, please notice that that the left side of the dragon’s face is clearly the area I was rushing to complete as the time was running out. I doodled this in black ink with a ballpoint pen. I timed it. And I have drawn numerous dragons before. So you could rationalize that I really worked for hours upon hours to be able to do this four minute doodle.
Filed under doodle, drawing, Dungeons and Dragons, humor, Paffooney
Yes, I was doodling again. Doodling is the kind of thing doodlers always doo. I am not the only secret sinner who doodles. My children doodle too. Except, number one son does his best doodling on the piano. I don’t mean he draws on the actual pianoforte instrument. He makes meandering melody that sounds almost polished, almost professional. He amazes people with his musical fingers and his musical ear and, especially, his musical imagination. Number two son doodles music too. Except he’s in love with the guitar. Seriously. He’s doodling out chord progressions and sonorous soulful melodies right this minute. He can play Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 on guitar. It is so beautiful it makes me weep. And the Princess? She draws anime characters and doodles more like me. Except, as you can see, I draw doodle-dogs and doodle-cats and make you wonder if they have spats. Look at the paw, the paw with the claw. Is it the doodle-cat’s claw? Or the doodle-dog’s paw? One way’s peace, the other war.
And that is my wisdom for today. Doodling is natural. Churches should not call it a sin. Everybody does it, in one way or another. And though it doesn’t usually create high art from nothing, it does lead to the eventual birth of masterpieces.
Today’s Paffooney paffoon cartoon is a puzzler. I have this Rabbit People cartoon scene in my head with no punch line, no dialogue, and basically no idea. It just popped into my head doodle fashion, and then flowed down through my pencil and pen onto paper.
What is boy bunny Benjamin asking or saying to young buck about town Bernhopper Bunny? And what is Bernhopper’s answer?
Maybe like this;
But that’s bathroom humor. We all know the Easter Bunny lays chocolate eggs for Easter, so bunny bathroom humor gets you wondering about about chocolate chip cookies from the Easter Bunny. And that’s just gross.
Maybe it should be more like this;
Now that’s downright bad citizenship advice. Surely we can do better. And does the story have to be about the fireplug?
Okay, gotta squelch the sexual innuendo. When it comes to rabbits, that kind of humor leads to lots more rabbits. I’m not really sure how this comes out. Maybe the story should involve fat Barry Bunny who secretly prefers bananas to carrots. Or maybe it is about beautiful Bingolette Bunny who plays the bongos and writes monumentally horrible love songs in her spare time. I just can’t figure out rabbit humor! It is so frustrating! Maybe you have suggestions in the comments. (Is that a challenge to your creativity? Just a test to see if you really read this junk? Or am I just too lazy to write my own cartoons? I’ll never tell.)
While watching Netflix yesterday afternoon, a retirement activity that becomes the majority of my social life when the diabetes demons are eating me, I started doodling a fox. It was a pencil doodle at first. And I was not drawing from life. I was drawing the fox in my head. I suspect it was the fox from Antoine de Saint Exupery’s masterwork, The Little Prince.
Yes, that fox. The wise one that knows about taming little princes, and loving them, and being reminded of them in the color of wheat fields. I began to need that fox as my doodle pen uncovered him on the blank page. There he was. Surprised to see me. Either he was leaping towards me in the picture, or falling down on me from the sky above. I don’t know which. But I realized I had to tame him by drawing him and making him as real as ever an imaginary fox could ever be. You will notice he does not look like a real fox. I did not draw him from a photograph, but from the cartoon eye in my mind where all Paffoonies come from. And this was to be a profound Paffooney… a buffoony cartoony looney Paffooney. It simply had to be, because that is precisely what I always doodle-do.
And so he was a fox. He was my doodlefox. I had tamed him. And then I had to give him color. And, of course, the color had to be orange-red.
And so, there is my fox. Like the Little Prince’s fox he could tell me, “What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that we can see rightly.” And I put him in a post with lyrical and somewhat goofy words to give you a sense of what he means to me, in the same way one might explain what the thrill of the heart feels like when a butterfly’s wing brushes against the back of your hand. Yes, to share the unknowable knowledge and the unfeelable feeling of a doodlefox. A demonstration of precisely what a Paffooney is.
This is a doodle even though it may look like finished art. I began doodling with a pencil and she wasn’t a starship captain until I began inking it.
Yes, now and again I have to doodle. You pick up the drawing tool and a blank piece of paper, and you let your mind go anywhere and everywhere that it wants to go. Why did I choose to doodle a girl? Sounds kinda creepy and bad, doesn’t it? But I like science fiction and adventure and young people… I’m turning myself into a young adult author, after all. And I like girls… even though I am 60 and my prostate is enlarged and rather dead. I’m still a guy and I ain’t completely dead. So maybe it isn’t really so creepy. I am trying to keep my mind off of you-know-who… he-who-shall-not-be-named. Yeah, this guy.
This is truly a doodle. I drew it in pen in about ten minutes time. And it sucks (in the sense of a vacuum cleaner) because the overlong tie looks like a stream of blood and I think I drew the hands too big to look realistic.
Random and open to the bizarre, allowing for accidents to appear on the page (both the Bob Ross happy kind and the not-so-happy kind), able to follow the wandering mind as fast as the hand can capture the flow of images and ideas in the silly old noodle. That is not only what a doodle is, it is what this essay is. A doodle essay.
I can do that without making a total poo-poo mess because I have practiced so much with pencil and pen and ink and paper that the lines flow naturally from my fingers. And I can rely on my constant habit of writing stupid thoughts down to create a semi-coherent essay out of random jumbled thoughts. Instinct born of practice guides my mind and hand.
Here’s a random picture of the wall by my bed where I am writing this. Perhaps it could be called a camera doodle?
Doodling helps me avoid the things needing to be avoided. The world is ending. Betsy DeVos is likely to be the Secretary of Education. A trade war with Mexico will bring an end to much of the fruits and vegetables we can afford to eat. I am big on avoiding. You can tell that in my camera doodle. Christmas lights Mickey hasn’t taken down yet? Yeah, I’m thinking about leaving them up permanently. You know, just until the world finishes ending. My family, as Jehovah’s Witnesses, don’t celebrate Christmas anyway. So what can it hurt if I keep my one dollar string of colored lights up for another few weeks. Just until the Russian nukes start raining down on Dallas Fort Worth thanks to the red tie guy.
So there is nothing important at all in today’s blog. Just doodles everywhere. But why, then, does it make me feel so much better? Well, I would say, “Because doodling makes it better.”
Filed under artwork, cartoons, doodle, drawing, foolishness, humor, illustrations, insight, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
DoodleFace!!!
I drew this face as a doodle while watching an episode of Iron Fist on Netflix. I don’t think it is anybody in the show I was watching, actor or character or comic book villain, but I can’t help but think that Doodleface is a great name for a Dick Tracy villain.
Of course, a doodle is a drawing done with only half-attention being paid. I was not ignoring Iron Fist as I drew this. I did not take time to plan it out with a pencil sketch. I started drawing the right eye, thinking it w ould probably become a girl’s face. When I tried to match the first eye with a second, it came out mismatched enough that she morphed into a villain. Bilateral symmetry equals beauty. Asymmetry equals comedy goofball or possibly villain. As I framed the eyes and developed the center of the face down to the chin, the chance to make a Natasha or an Olga Badenov sort of villain dissipated to the point of masculine villainy. That probably explains the curly hair, since the villain Bakuto in Iron Fist had curly hair. But curiously, this drawing-while- watching-TV fellow is not Bakuto. This guy has no beard. And in the episode I watched, Bakuto had a beard. And Bakuto also ended the episode with a knife sticking out of his general heart-area, not a good sign for his personal health and wellness, though in a comic book plot… well, who knows?
So, if Doodleface is a Dick Tracy villain, how did he get his name and what is his special thing? Pruneface was pruney in the face. Mumbles couldn’t talk so you could understand him. Flattop had a head that was flat on the top like a table. So Doodleface is obviously a master of disguise. He must possess a magic pen acquired in the mysterious Orient in the 1920’s, one that clearly allows him to redraw his features at any given time so he cannot be recognized. And hopefully, he draws well enough that coppers won’t just take one look and say, “Hey, dat guy over dere has a squiggle drawn all over his mug! Dat must be Doodleface!!!” (Of course it has to be three exclamation points because… well, cartoon exaggeration!!!)
And all of this is, of course, evidence that even when I am watching a fairly good show on TV (Iron Fist is not Daredevil or Luke Cage in its levels of amazing Marvel comics goodness) my mind and my drawing hand are both still busy doing their own thing as well. Doodling is an artsy-fartsy way to kill time and fill up empty spaces. My entire blog is basically the same in this purpose. But I am able to use the doodle imperative to create and be creative, to learn and to grow, and possibly make up something worth keeping.
3 Comments
Filed under artwork, commentary, doodle, humor
Tagged as artwork, doodle, goofiness, wasting time and art supplies