I am a chronic doodler.
Since I was a student in high school I doodled. I covered my notebooks with ink, they looked like the work of a tattoo artist with a full body suit. Page after page of doodled notes fills the sketchbooks of my professional life, as well, as I sat through hours of meetings and presentations. The doodling helped me pay attention to what was said. It kept my mind on what was going on in the room. And I made some wild designs.
Often, I wondered if should “do something” with this. But what? I continued to doodle, dismissing the thought every time it occurred to me. For YEARS. And then. Adult coloring books, doodles outlined, and “Zentangle” appeared in the world. And were they ever popular!! I wonder, is that the “something” I should have done? I wish I had listened. It was a boom and I missed it. Oh well.
Fast forward to today and my career as a freelancer and educator is now also embracing a new branch of design… Surface Pattern Design. I am using my propensity to doodle to become another discipline. It is so energizing and fun to hone this new craft and it is a novel feeling to be quite so inexperienced in an industry. My design world was limited to in-house corporate marketing teams and agencies. I never expressed my own creative style or pursued my expressive voice in the work I was doing. It was creativity generated for someone or something else, which I find easier than doing creative from inspiration alone. Easier isn’t the right word. The doing isn’t easier, but the sharing and publishing of it is. If the client is happy I am happy. But now that I am the “client”–while I practice art, develop a portfolio, and test my artistic wings in front of the general population–it’s another thing entirely. It’s scarier to share and to publish. I’m not as sure of myself in this area.
The thing about scary, it that there’s usually growth and some really wonderful things on the other side when you do it in spite of any trepidation. So here I go. I hope you’ll enjoy some of the patterns and surface designs that I post. I’d love to hear from you if you do.
