Just Doodle It

I originally pursued this as a project using a medium I love to elevate or explore something I love. I began with the campus, but I was dissatisfied with my results. I found myself going back to the drawing board, only quite literally. While exploring mediums, I found a set of brilliantly colorful permanent markers. I was attracted to the fullness of life and vibrancy that they represent to me. I have recently been turning to bright colors and white backgrounds as a way to work through some more challenging and dark times in my own life. I like to draw, but only in a very simple, cartoon-esque style. I love it when my work is able to capture a fun, light, yet somewhat substantive element to it. One of my favorite hobbies is to work out specific projects and ideas onto a blank notebook. Right now I cycle through about five. I used one to map out a doodle info graphic about doodling. I chose one blank piece of foam board, took my markers, and went to work. So I made a project that was about my project. One might call it meta-art. It is art that comments on art's ability to enter other fields. I have long struggled with attention issues in many environments. After seeing Sunni Brown reveal research onto the academic and realistic merit of doodling and learning combined, I was inspired to work it into my own life. Author and corporate trainer, Dan Roam encourages companies to use it to problem solve. Many stop short because it seems to frivolous. To me, both offered brilliant, simple solutions to a variety of problems. Epiphanies all around for me. In short, doodling (and many other art forms) can be also be described as external processing. What goes on as partial abstracts in portions of our brain can be made concrete and further developed through art. In terms of education, communication, and perhaps even innovation, this is a largely unknown frontier. It seems so fraught with frivolity that no one dares enter into the terrifying world of doodling. Now that's ridiculous to read, write, or say; but that's how I see the world acting. And that, in turn, corresponds to art. Art has the potential to be a frivolous act or serious endeavor. Or it can be both. I believe one of the largest obstacles in our cultures progress in art is our inability to recognize the validity of frivolity, and to expand the bounds of "serious" art. However, not all folks are assured or confident that they can be "creative," or true artists. I wanted to challenge these very things. Doodling is a common, ordinary way to express oneself. Turning it into a time based art form, gave it an interactive quality that I think would be lost in other mediums. Approachability was paramount to this project, because I want someone to look at this, say "Hey! I could do that!" and then go out and doodle, draw, or express through some other medium. The world is at a loss because of unrecorded, un-captured, and lost ideas. I would like to change that.