This article assumes you have basic knowledge of a graphic imaging program.

Doodling is easy and involves the most basic of materials. Using inexpensive materials can free up the creative process, because there is little worry about wasting your resources and little pressure to do the 'good' drawing. There is a certain amount of freedom working this way. You don't have to have fantastic drawing skills for this exercise.

I quite often use plain typing paper and kids felt pens, pencils, paints, crayons and pastels as a starter for my works. Frequently those works end up being the finished works. I will use any kind of surface when inspiration strikes envelope inners, paper napkins and serviettes the list goes on.

The downside to using these materials is that over time the works can fade and become discoloured. Right now we want to preserve all that glorious colour and freshness of your drawings. Here are a couple of pages from one of my sketchbooks. The basic flowers have been coloured with felt pens. The floral elements were drawn with ordinary blue ballpoint pen.



Step 1: Scan the pages at 300dpi so you can use them for printing. You can always change the resolution later to 72dpi if you want to use them in webpages.

Step 2: Make a selection around each image on the page, you may need to use a freeform selection tool.

Step 3: Copy the image to a new file, then save. You may want to make a folder for each set of images you work with.

You may not want white space around the edges of your images. A great wee application for getting rid of white space is a plugin called Mac's Remove White.
Another way is to select the white space and delete it. If you do this, remember to save the file with a PNG extension. Otherwise you can save your image as a JPG.

Now you have the basic pieces you can start arranging them into little posies or clusters. You can save these too if you like.

I have made some A5 notepaper with some of my doodles for you to download, print and use. There are two notepapers to one A4 sheet. Once printed, fold in half and cut to separate. Now, write a note to someone you love!



Click on the notepaper to download and save to your machine.



The font used is called 'Journal'

Article and images Copyright Mina Keenan
Personal Use only


Doodles & Flowers from Amazon
Don't be fooled into thinking that kid's books are just for kids! Childrens books are excellent starting points when you are beginning something new, if you are searching for inspiration or just to stir the inner child.