May's Random Doodle Club

 Hello Doodlers!

I hope you've all had a good month. Immy and Maria are back with some fun doodle exercises this workshop! 

Warm up

Draw a big spiral, and then populate the spiral with as many curls or smaller spirals as you can

Leveller: terrible snails

* with a D4 dice roll, decide what number to draw: 1. draw with your non-dominant hand, 2. draw without taking your pen off the paper, 3. draw without looking at the paper, 4. draw with one eye shut or squinting

* spend a minute drawing each type of snail in one of the terrible methods listed above: Garden snail, Cone snail, Auger shell snail. If you don't know what they look like, that's fine, they're supposed to be terrible!

* See Immy's video of this exercise here: vimeo.com/711707338/73b44d5b68

Thought processing games

A View with a Room

* think of a view from your favourite window. Picture what it looks like in your mind as the seasons change. Split your page into four panels, and in each panel draw the view in a different season of the year. You can do this with a landscape you particularly like, or if you are somewhere with no clear seasons, you can divide the year differently, for example the wet season or dry season

There and Back Again

* think back to your favourite excursion, it could be a short trip round the block or a long day at the beach. It could be recent, or something that happened years ago. Imagine what it felt like at the beginning, middle and end. It could be very practical, maybe at the beginning you are checking you have everything you need with you, or it could be more about how you experience that stage, for example you might be really looking forward to an adventure or smelling the sea in the middle of the excursion. 

* draw a path down the middle of your page, and illustrate your thoughts, feelings or experiences at the beginning, middle and end of the excursion

Randomly generated mazes

* we will make maze patterns, using particular shapes of loop within the path, and then with some freedom to decide how you meander through your maze. To get random numbers, you can use https://www.random.org/integers/ or you can use dice again

Dice generated maze

* start by drawing a spiral at the centre of the page, roll a D6 dice to determine how many turns the spiral has. 

* then we're going to add some meanders or wiggles to the path of the maze. Roll a D4 to choose the shape of wiggle: 1. square ended, 2. circular loop, 3. key shaped, 4. dog leg or L shaped

* draw the number of wiggles as indicated by the dice roll, and then roll again to keep drawing. If it's all getting a bit much, or you don't like the direction it's going in, you can draw some turns outside of the pattern to get your pen to a better position

* if you want to add more variety, you can use a D6 dice or a deck of cards to include more shapes. You could add in more shapes like this: 1. square ended, 2. circular loop, 3. triangle shaped or pointy, 4. dog leg or L shaped, 5. key shaped, 6. spiral turn or wave curl

* a video explanation is here: vimeo.com/711726407/6a62ac73a4

Random numbers maze

* for this, you will need a list of random numbers. For this workshop, they used these randomly generated numbers from 1-20 because you can do this in a little notebook, but Immy often uses 1-100 in their own doodles

* start by drawing a central spiral, by rolling a D6 dice to determine how many turns the spiral has. 

* now go to your list of random numbers, and if the result is less than or equal to your starting dice roll then draw another loop around your spiral. If the result is greater than your last roll, draw a meander or a wiggle in any shape you like 

* the end of your wiggle is the starting point for counting the loops around the maze so far

* roll the dice again and see if it is less or more and repeat the last steps

* you can use rules to define your wiggle shapes, or you can just wing it! You can use the pip symbols on a deck of cards, a D4 or a D6, you can use the rules listed above for the other mazes, it's totally up to you

* if you prefer to look at a video about this, it's here: https://vimeo.com/711731997/da6ddb9855

Warm down

* fill a page with irregular shaped blobs, and fill them with spirals any size you like

* check out Immy's video of this: https://vimeo.com/711701114/e11fcb93df

And bonus blog activity!

They didn't do this in the workshop but here is an added extra that you can do if you want a much bigger doodle. You can see Immy's video here: https://vimeo.com/711741003/c98150bd3d

* draw a spiral at the centre by rolling a D6 dice or choose number of turns in your spiral

* look at your list of random numbers, if the result is greater than the last dice roll draw a wiggle in the path, you can use any shape you like for the shape of the wiggle. The end of the wiggle is the start for the next loop or wiggle. If the result is less than or equal to the last dice roll, then draw another loop around your maze centre

* go back to your list of random numbers and repeat until you run out of space

I hope you enjoyed the workshop and the exercises, feel free to contact us with your doodles, your questions or your suggestions.

Until next time,

Immy and Maria