Doodling is drawing with no goal, which is why it's relaxing and why it's easy to run dry. These 60 doodle ideas give your pen somewhere to go without turning it into work. Most are patterns and shapes that repeat, so you can keep going for as long as the meeting lasts.
There's no wrong way to do any of them. If a line wobbles, repeat the wobble and call it a pattern.
- Rows of overlapping fish scales with a dot in each
- A brick wall where every fifth brick is shaded
- Wavy lines stacked like a contour map of hills
- A grid of squares with a diagonal through every other one
- Concentric circles that stop wherever they bump a neighbor
- Tiny triangles packed tight like shattered glass
- One ribbon drawn as a single continuous curl
- A honeycomb with a few cells filled solid black
- Basket weave: three short lines across, three down, repeat
- Bubbles in three sizes with the gaps between inked in
- Leaves growing in pairs along a curving stem
- A checkerboard that bends as if draped over a hill
Doodle art ideas that grow across the page
- A spiral that turns into a staircase halfway around
- A tower of cubes stacked off balance but still standing
- A row of arches shrinking into the distance
- Your name as a folded ribbon with shaded undersides
- A knot of rope with no visible ends
- A paper chain of linked rings along the top margin
- A maze that starts at the margin and ends at the page number
- A pile of pebbles, each with a different pattern inside
- A feather divided into bands, each band a new pattern
- A burst of arrows flying outward from one dot
- A tree whose branches end in spirals
- A big wave built from rows of smaller curling waves
- Block letters with a drop shadow on the right side
- Bubble letters filled with tiny stars
- A word where the letter O becomes a ringed planet
- A page border of linked diamonds
- A title underlined with a lightning bolt
- A numbered list where each number sits in a different shape
- Five arrow styles: curly, dotted, double, blocky and feathered
- A header drawn as a road sign on two posts
- A corner filled with a spider web of ruler-straight lines
- A text box with one corner folded down
- Your initials built from stacked stripes
- A scroll unrolling with a curl at each end
Draw the shape first, then turn it into something.
- Turn a circle into a clock stuck at teatime
- Turn a circle into a porthole with a fish drifting past
- Turn a square into a window with a cat on the sill
- Turn a square into a gift with a lopsided bow
- Turn a triangle into a slice of layer cake
- Turn a triangle into a tent with a lantern glowing inside
- Turn a rectangle into a bus full of round heads
- Turn a rectangle into a domino, then a whole falling row
- Turn a heart into a strawberry with seeds and a stem
- Turn a star into a starfish wearing sunglasses
- Turn a teardrop into a leaf with a center vein
- Turn an oval into a sleeping cat seen from above
- Take turns adding one line each until a monster appears
- Draw a squiggle and hand it to a friend to finish as an animal
- Fold a page in three and each draw a head, body or legs unseen
- Fill a page with pairs of eyes, each pair in a different mood
- Join twenty random dots into a constellation and name it
- Loop a road across the whole page, then add tiny cars
- Stack ten small objects into a wobbling totem
- Draw one wavy line and hang laundry along it
- Write a word and grow roots and branches from each letter
- Design a five-step chain reaction machine that pops a balloon
- Divide a pizza into slices and give each slice a pattern
- Shade a row of ten boxes from white to solid black
Zen doodle, or pattern doodling, is a simple routine that turns the pattern ideas above into a finished little artwork:
- Draw a square about the size of your palm.
- In light pencil, draw one or two loose curving lines across it. These split the square into four to six sections.
- Fill each section with a different pattern in pen. Go slowly, one stroke at a time.
- Darken a few gaps so some sections sit back and others come forward.
- Add light pencil shading along one edge of each section to give it depth.
Each tile takes ten to twenty minutes, and you never need to erase.
Keep a doodle page at the back of your notebook. Divide it into a grid of small boxes, and every time you're on hold or waiting, fill one box with a new pattern from the first section. When the grid is full, you have a personal pattern library to pull from.
The monster from the take-turns game or the starfish in sunglasses can be the seed of an original character. If one makes you laugh, drop a description into the Random Character Generator or the Character Creator and see it fleshed out.
Keep doodling with cute doodles, abstract drawing ideas and things to draw when bored.
Repeating patterns: fish scales, bricks, bubbles, stripes and basket weave. You only have to learn one small mark and repeat it, so there's nothing to get wrong.
It's a relaxed way of drawing where you divide a small square into sections and fill each one with a different repeating pattern. The focus is on slow, deliberate strokes, not on a realistic picture.
Many people find it helps them stay focused while listening and calm down when stressed. At the very least it's hand practice: every doodle improves your line control.
Start with one shape and repeat it outward: circles into bubbles, lines into bricks, a spiral into a staircase. Shape-based doodles don't need your full attention.
