My Wonderful Doodle Class Debut

I love getting ready to teach a class I haven't taught before. And prepping for Zen and the Art of Doodling at Trent was amazing. I knew that doodling, zentangling and colouring were becoming more popular by the day and the reference materials out there were incredible. I was even able to find a colouring pad for the floor with nearly rug-sized doodles to colour, in case people were really stuck.

But they weren't. Our first couple of days were spent exploring doodles and getting students to come up with their designs. And they were incredible - as individual as the students were - again!  It never ceases to amaze me how our brains work in a creative situation.

I am missing a couple of the students' pieces, but this shows you how amazing they all were.

This was Diane's first study in this design. She is going to do a couple more.

Margaret is doing a series to spell her granddaughter's name. H above and O below.

Rhea's beautiful adaptation from a friend's zentangle-inspired artwork. 

Charlene's funky teapot. A donation for a future fundraiser. 

Connie's amazing bamboo with doodled backgrounds. 

Pam's first and second pieces. She took to this like a fish to water. 

Nearly everyone in the class was hooking with a small cut - necessary to get the detail into the small pieces. And for the first time, I could see myself embracing the 4 cut for these tiny works of art.
When you are working on pieces as small as 5 x 5 (shown in the bottom photo), you really need to think small.

On the third day of class, I made everyone go through an exercise of bravery and daring - lol. They had to grid a 5" square on a piece of backing and then, with no preplanning - no pencils - no sketches - they had to draw a doodle directly on backing with a permanent marker!!!  Everyone did it and survived. No CPR necessary - although one student was borderline for a while. Pam's bottom one shows how quickly she was able to draw and hook her little free fall piece - after finishing her first one.

It was a fun class, one I am repeating in the fall and hope to do again and again. Trust me, once you get started doing these little doodle pieces, it's hard to stop. And it's a great way to use up lots of worms.