June's Random Doodle Club

 Hello Doodlers!

Here is a round up of the activities from Saturday:

Warm up: Patterned Pie

Materials: pen or pencil, paper (lined is fine)

1. Draw a large circle or oval that take up most of your page

2. Divide it into halves then quarters, then however many times you want using a line down the middle - until it looks a bit like a pie chart

3. Choose a theme - it could be as simple as something like 'shapes' or as complicated as 'flowering plants that have appeared in bad 90s TV dramas', the example below is themed on 'things you can see in the sky'

4. Fill each section of your pie chart shape with a different pattern or doodle based on your theme

Leveller activity: Terrible Clock Doodles

This exercise is designed to make us all draw at the same level, specifically as wonky as possible! We use a variety of methods to make our drawings wobbly/ uneven, and some are listed below. Feel free to make up your own though - as long as your drawing isn't precise or lifelike, you're doing it right. This game is a reminder that drawing doesn't have to conform to any standard skill or representational accuracy to be fun. 

Materials: pen or pencil, paper, timer, dice if you want to use for picking drawing methods. A list of ways that you can draw badly that you can assign using a die is below, or have a friend arbitrarily pick for you - Maria chose for us in this workshop.

1. Have a think for a moment about clocks. Think of the oldest clock you can imagine

2. Once you have chosen a method to make your drawing go askew, set a timer for one minute

3. In one minute draw the oldest clock you thought of, using your chosen method; remember it should look terrible

4. Repeat this activity for the newest clock you can think of, and then for your favourite / nicest clock you have seen, using a different method each time. 

Terrible methods you could choose with a D4 or a D6 (four- or six-sided dice) include:

1. Draw with one eye (or even both) closed

2.  Use your non-dominant hand to draw

3. Draw without looking down at the page

4. Look at something else in the room (other than your paper) while you draw

5. Don't lift your pen off the page as you draw (use a continuous line)

6. Turn out the light (if safe to do so) and draw in the dark

Directional Patterns

Materials: pen or pencil, paper, dice (D4, D6, D8, D12) or use an online dice roller like this one. Optional: colouring pens or pencils if you want to fill in your patterns

8 pointed star - pattern 1 (D4, D6, D8)

1. Select any four shapes you like to draw according to your D4 rolls. In this example we used 1= heart, 2= triangle, 3= flower, 4= square. 

2. Roughly sketch an eight pointed star or 'compass rose' that takes up most of your page

3. Number the arms of your star from one to eight

4. Roll a D4, D6 and D8 and then

Draw the shape corresponding to your D4 roll along one arm of the star

Use the D6 roll to decide how many of that shape you will draw

Draw on the arm of the star selected with your D8 roll

5. Repeat until you run out of room on one of your arms

The pattern can be coloured in if you want, you can also vary the size of your shapes along each arm or fill in the space between the arms

8 pointed star - pattern 2 (D4, D6, and D8)

The difference between this pattern and the previous one is that you are drawing concentric shapes - that is shapes, one around the other, like ripples from a stone thrown in a pond. It doesn't matter if shapes from different arms overlap

1. Select any four shapes you like to draw according to your D4 rolls. In this example, we used 1= circle, 2= triangle, 3= square, 4= diamond

2. Roughly sketch an eight pointed star or 'compass rose' that takes up most of your page

3. Number the arms on your star one to eight

4. Roll a D4, D6 and D8 and then

Draw shapes corresponding to your D4 roll one inside the other on one arm of your star

Use the D6 roll to decide how many shapes to draw

Draw the shapes on the arm of the star selected by the D8 roll

5. Repeat until you run out of room

This pattern also makes a good colouring sheet, albeit a more complex one than the previous pattern

Around the Clock / Points Around a Circle (D6, D12)

1. Draw a circle or oval (depending on your page shape or preference) that is about half as wide or tall as your page (you want some room around the edge, basically)

2. Mark 12 clock points around the circumference of the circle/ oval with little stars or a cross

3. Roll a D6 and a D12 and use the results to draw concentric circles around one of your clock points:

Use the D12 to pick the clock position you draw at

Use the D6 roll to decide how many circles you draw

4. Draw circles around one another like ripples in a pond, without worrying about whether they overlap with any neighbouring circles

5. When a clock position comes up more than once, keep adding circles around that point

6. Repeat until you reach the edge of your paper

This one is fun to colour in, especially if you use pens in primary colours so when the circles overlap new colours are made. You can also use a larger number of points around a circle  - marking them out with a protractor or angle measurer will help, you can use a number generator like this one to get larger lists of random numbers

Nat's Gratitude Doodles 

Materials: pen or pencil, paper, optional: 6D (six-sided die)

Last up, Nat guided a gratitude practice: first, divide your page into four squares, then roll a dice to determine what you will draw: if you get 1. draw something that makes you happy, 2. draw something you couldn't live without, 3. draw something you love to do, 4. draw something you are thankful for, 5. draw someone you love, 6. draw something you are looking forward to.

Then I invite you to sit and contemplate for a few seconds before you start. As you draw, try to notice the feelings coming up - you might feel warm, joyful, happy, content. After each drawing take some space to enjoy those feelings. Drawing images like this helps to notice and highlight feelings that might otherwise get lost, it brings them into our minds so we can experience them more often for longer. 

You can do this practice without the dice roll, if you just want to think about things you are grateful for that day. You can also use this as part of a bullet journal or doodle journal practice if you have one. This is a great practice to do at the end of the day before bed.

Warm down: Ripple Clouds

Materials: pen or pencil, paper

1. Fill a page with puffy cloud shapes

2. Where there are rounded areas in each cloud shape, draw concentric circles 

3. Keep drawing circles each rounded edge of the cloud until it is filled with overlapping ripples

You can use different shapes than clouds and circles if you like

See you next time!

Immy, Maria and Nat