In praise of the Doodle

There is an interesting difference between the activity of 'scribbling' which is defined as to draw carelessly or hurriedly and doodling, the making of drawings while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. To scribble is a word that comes to us from the mid15th century and it derives from Medieval Latin, scribillare, a diminutive of Latin scribere "to write" (from Proto-Indo-European *skribh- "to cut"). The noun, 'scribble' as in "hurried or careless writing," is from the 1570s, and was derived from the verb to scribble, gradually this came to represent careless or overly fast drawing as well as writing. But it is interesting that its history is one also associated with cutting or slashing. To doodle is also a verb, a doing word. As you look in more detail at its meaning you get, to "scrawl aimlessly," back in 1935 this use it was suggested was perhaps coming from dialect, the terms doodle and dudle were used to express an idea of "frittering away time or a trifle." It was also associated with the word dawdle (which might be the source of the dialect word). It also was a noun meaning "simple fellow" from 1620s. That link to "simple fellow" re-emerges in popular culture from time to time.

In the film, 'Mr Deeds goes to town' (1936) we have a scene in a court with the following dialogue, 

Longfellow Deeds:.....For instance, the judge here is, is an O-filler.

Judge May (H.B. Warner): A what?
Longfellow Deeds: An O-filler. You fill in all the spaces in the O's with your pencil. I was watching him. (laughter from audience in courtroom) That may make you look a little crazy, Your Honor, just, just sitting around filling in O's, but I don't see anything wrong, 'cause that helps you think. Other people are doodlers.
Judge May: "Doodlers!?"
Longfellow Deeds: Uh, that's a word we made up back home for people who make foolish designs on paper when they're thinking: it's called doodling. Almost everybody's a doodler; did you ever see a scratchpad in a telephone booth? People draw the most idiotic pictures when they're thinking. Uh, Dr. von Hallor here could probably think up a long name for it, because he doodles all the time. (laughter; he takes a sheet off the doctor's notepad) Thank you. This is a piece of paper he was scribbling on. I can't figure it out -- one minute it looks like a chimpanzee, and the next minute it looks like a picture of Mr. Cedar. You look at it, Judge. Exhibit A for the defense. Looks kind of stupid, doesn't it, Your Honor? But I guess that's all right; if Dr. von Hallor has to, uh, doodle to help him think, that's his business. Everybody does something different: some people are, are ear-pullers; some are nail-biters; that, uh, Mr. Semple over there is a nose-twitcher. (laughter) And the lady next to him is a knuckle-cracker. (laughter) So you see, everybody does silly things to help them think. Well, I play the tuba.

This scene is the result of Deeds being taken to court to see if he is sane or not, irrational behaviour being cited as a reason for him not to be able to have control of his own very valuable estate. The courtroom scene makes it plain that 'sanity' is a very contested issue, the judge eventually declaring that Deeds (the country yokel) is "the sanest man who ever walked into this courtroom". This brings me to a very personal issue that also draws out another aspect of the doodle. I was always interested in Gary Cooper films, (he plays Mr Deeds), because my mother told me I was named after him, (Gary Cooper - Garry Barker), a bit of information leading to my fascination with Cooper, something going I suspect deep down into my own psyche, and an influence emerging as I write these sentences as a sort of word doodle. As Yates said, "I made it out of a mouthful of air". In fact Yates' idea is that everything we say just emerges, we don't sit and think it up before we say it; so could it be that all our great edifice of words is constructed out of verbal doodles? 

Doodling is a word rooted in contemporary history, people in the far past had no spare time on their hands. However there is one meaning for 'doodle' that comes from the Dutch, a 'Doodle Sack' which was a bagpipe, but probably because of a bagpipe's organic form, it was also a term used for the private parts of a woman. This more sub-conscious association, is also interesting as it brings into the arena of meaning something else again, a Freudian slip perhaps, that reminds us that all meanings are capable of slippage and that doodling can be a way of channelling the unconscious and tapping into Jungian archetypes. 

Doodling is fascinating, because as you are only half attending to what you are doing, things from the back of your mind can be allowed to surface, doodling in some ways can record the body/mind's thinking when outside the framework of logic, perhaps like a map that records fragments from unlit territories of the mind. Sometimes this can also be to do with horror vacui, or fear of empty space, a need to fill a void or gap in the visual field, but it is how we fill that gap that is interesting. 

Adolf Wölfli

Adolf Wölfli, regarded as an 'outsider artist' fills every corner of his images with something, images, writing, musical notation; all having an equal visual weight. These types of images it would seem to me are extended doodles, doodles that emerge at some point into constructions that 'know' what they are becoming. They slip from one thing into another, from a horror vacui to a diagram of the mind, from an unthinking doodle to a complex world with its own laws of construction and inner logic. When stuck, I often just begin by just drawing a line, and if I trust myself to just let things happen an image will emerge. The doodle lies very close to the heart of creativity. 

Caleb Lewis, a west Yorkshire artist, has autism, he describes in detail how doodling for him became the starting point for a complex world of images, and he clearly articulates how an obsession began to lead to a particular type of image making. Although the article on his work is used to illustrate certain points about the relationship between image making and autism, it seems to me that we are all on a spectrum of autism, and that the issues raised could therefore be applicable to everyone.

Caleb Lewis: The Commonwealth’

Lewis had been doodling with a felt tip pen and when it ran out of ink he had to resort to a fine liner, and he then goes on to say,  "I finished what I had to do with dots, triggering a dormant compulsion that once awake became very difficult to control. I thought I was onto something and started stippling paper. Stippling for stippling sake rather for any broader artistic purpose- I needed to escape from my own mind and stippling lifted me off to somewhere else. I tried to do lots of dots as close together as possible with none overlapping which seemed an important rule at the time. In my mind all other anxieties were eclipsed by just one- getting the dots right. As time progressed I became happy that I could fill in circles with small dots and ventured into the great unknown"....he then goes on to state..." Stippling a line will ordinarily leave a slightly jagged edge similar to the pixels visible on a blown up computer image. Using a 0.03 nib, with a heart rate and breathing set to zero, I’ll further stipple along the outer and inner edges of the line until smoothness is achieved. Lines must taper and bend without flat spots, widths, shapes, the spaces between them and their relationships in groups and with other groups need to be perfect or else I will have failed." In fact Lewis often refers to his breathing rate when drawing, and he sometimes draws between breaths, at other times he uses his breath to carry him through much longer times, such as those needed when covering larger areas of paper. 

Read more about this in a detailed article on the art of autism. 

My recent experience of working with a range of other artists; 'The Body I am in' also touched upon breathing and its effects on drawing and I'm very aware that Zen artists take great care in relation to the integration of breathing techniques with brush control. These issues linking back into the importance of embodied thinking, the 'stupid' body being in reality the controller of all these activities. 

Henri Michaux

The art world has its own codes of acceptance in relation to doodling, because of its association with 'scrawling aimlessly', it has to be understood as something else, as a definition of this sort could undermine its value. Therefore an artist like Henri Michaux is referred to as working with Tachist ideas or belonging to Art Informel, a group of artists concerned with "a lack or absence of form itself". Art Informel was more about the absence of premeditated structure, conception or approach, another way it could be argued of doodling, except that is, that it would have to be premeditated, and doodling just happens, you don't have to stretch a canvas to encourage doodling into existence.

The delicate line between what is seen as fine art and what is seen as doodling was identified by the artist Alan Brookes a few years ago. 

Alan Brookes: Fill 183 x 183cm

I remember seeing Alan Brookes' 'Fill' painting at one of the John Moores painting exhibitions in Liverpool, I cant remember the year but I was immediately fascinated by the image, and saw it as one of those attempts to bring to our attention something little noticed and normally outside of artistic worth. Alan is an ex student from LAU, who now lives and works in London, at the time he had this to say about 'Fill'. 'It started as a found scribble on a discarded post-it note. I was attracted to its bored, absent-minded spontaneity, its author filling in time as well as the physical space of the piece of paper. I enjoyed its structure and its disciplined use of the square. By remaking the image, enlarging and magnifying its surface detail, my intention was to harness the attitude of the original and add to it a perverse, fragile peculiarity. The process and the image act as a container for managing an insane desire to make gestural marks'.
On the one hand we have a response to horror vacui, every bit of the post-it note has been filled with horizontal and vertical scribble. On the other hand we have an image that could be an example of Tachisme. By copying this image and making it large, Brookes also adds mimesis into the mix of approaches and a dollop of realism to boot. 

Doodles made by the Queen of Prussia 

Those doodles left by ordinary people in the margins of meeting notes and school books will of course all be consigned to the wastebasket of history, but occasional doodles do get preserved, often due to the fact their makers are deemed as being more worthy. Doodles made by the Queen of Prussia, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, as well as by our own queen Elizabeth, being cases in point. 

Doodles made by a very young Queen of England

In a society of the celebrity it matters as to who doodles, it's not what it is, but who did it that counts. However the 'doodles' by a young queen bring up another point, and that is, at what age does doodling begin? Are all children's drawings 'doodles'? 

However it's also about time for this verbal doodle to come to an end, as is normal with these posts I don't know what I'm going to say until I say it. Short informal pieces of writing are rather like scribbled ideas, but gradually perhaps they build up into that map that records fragments from hidden territories of the mind. My point is that doodling, something rarely taken seriously, especially within art education, may be the most important type of drawing there is. Its very informality releasing it from logocentric thought and in that release invention may well be at its greatest. 

See also:

Unica Zurn

Children's drawings in an adult world

The continuing influence of Surrealism