Skill Sharing

Phill Evans - Extreme Doodling

Firstly I draw an outline using a thick marker pen. This is purely to be a container for the

doodle and to make it a finite, encapsulated thing. I have taught seven year olds to do

these doodles and we used thin paper to trace pictures of dinosaurs etc but it works

equally well with a simple shaped blob or a ruled box. Here I am deconstructing one

of my favourites, the Chameleon. Because chameleons are ace.

The next stage is to break up the main shape into smaller areas using a medium thickness pen.

This allows you to approach the doodle in compartments, one bit at a time, rather than as one huge task.

Originally this was simply because I would often keep one doodle going over several sessions but later,

when I began to think of them as drawings in their own right, I found that I could use this stage to shape

the drawing and add volume and definition.

The last stage is the most fun to a compulsive mark maker like

me :) All of us doodle and, we all have simple shapes or symbols

that we unthinkingly draw. I simply take those shapes and meaningless, 

unformed marks and repeat them. Endlessly. As you can see in this detail

of the finished Chameleon I have further broken the sections into strips and used

them to make lines of swirls, triangles, hearts, flowers, whatever. Over

time, as the marks fill the sections and spread across the whole

of the outer shape, the doodle develops a visual texture. This

texture relies, as many drawings do, on the multiplicity of marks

made to draw the eye from one place to another. Because there

is such a depth of visual texture, the eye never sees the inevitable

(and when I do then, anyway, myriad) mistakes or wobbles or

sudden changes of mind.

And that is it. Extreme Doodling relies on a series of simple tricks

to develop a texturally complex image. Extreme Colouring, on

the other hand, is an application of patience and observation and

psychomotor skill of which I am completely incapable and I wish

all such colourists the best of luck, they have my absolute regard!

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