Painting Doodles

This doodle is my first attempt at painting on watercolour paper

If you've read any of my earlier posts on doodling, you'll know that doodling is about the only sort of art I can actually manage. It's easier for me to draw when I know that my picture isn't supposed to look like anything real.

After my doodles at the beach, I stopped doodling almost completely. There were so many other things to do; reading, writing, school work, Christmas, that doodling got neglected. My drawing book and coloured pencils languished in my desk drawer, forgotten.

This doodle was coloured with pencils

But then Mum took up doodling.

From the very first, Mum's doodles outclassed mine. Simple circles and ovals turned into brightly coloured drawings. From the very first, Mum favoured painting as the method for colouring her doodles. Watercolour pencils, and watercolour paints filled her drawing book with colour. For someone who maintained she couldn't draw, Mum's pictures were beautiful.

I tried a blotchy, uneven background with this one

This spurred me on to bring out my own drawing things. Obviously I wouldn't try painting. Painting doodles was for those who knew how to use paint, not unartist people like me. So I stuck to coloured pencils.

But Mum's painting looked so much better than my pencils. Why was it that, no matter how hard I tried, my pencil coloured was never as smooth, nor as rich as her paints? There seemed to be something good to this painting idea. So I dug out an old set of paints and a floppy paintbrush and tried it myself.

I love the colours on this one. Paint again

My first efforts were well rewarded. How nice my doodles looked when they were painted! How smooth the colours were! How bright! I fell in love with painting doodles after the very first one I did.

Doodle followed doodle. My imagination took flight. So many doodling ideas flooded my head. I drew and drew and...ran out of pages in my book.For the first time ever I had finished an art book.

Pencils. The colours seem to have faded in the scanner

Doodling reigns supreme in my art world. I can't draw a portrait, paint a landscape, or even manage a simple cartoon. But I can doodle. And I can paint a doodle. I know my art form, and I am quite content with it.

Which do you like better, doodles coloured with pencils, or doodles coloured with paint? Do you doodle? What kind of art do you do?