Sometime mid-last year, I saw a video of someone’s art journal on Instagram or Facebook–I don’t remember where. Anyway, this journal was glorious. The kind of thing that makes you want to weep because it’s so beautiful and your art won’t ever come close to that level of magnificence. *pro tip, don’t compare yourself to other artists (I know we all do)* Then, out of nowhere, there was this totally random page of watercolour blob doodles amid page upon page of breathtaking splendour.

Why would someone utilise blob doodles when they’ve obviously been touched by some magical art-genie? Well, I googled it. Apparently, there’s a huge community of artists who work only with blob doodles, and many others who use this as an exercise to boost creativity.

What’s a blob doodle, you ask? Well, it’s when you make a blob with whatever media you may choose, in this case watercolours. You let that blob dry, then bring out the pen of your choice, and make pictures of those blobs, doodle style. You can turn the page however you want, until you see a picture in the blobs.

This is good, because it forces you to think outside of the box, thus boosting creativity. You learn to make pictures out of things you wouldn’t normally utilise, learn more about using negative space, while also freeing up some mental room to think about other things.

Apparently, creativity is kind of like a muscle that needs a workout to stay sharp, other than regular art-making. Some artists use blob doodles to boost their creative thoughts multiple times per month. It’s also a really good exercise to teach creativity to kids.

Now, I’m really, really bad with doodles, or cartoons to begin with. I’m even worse when it comes to drawing without a plan. These gorgeous loose watercolour flowers? Yeah, no, I can’t do those. So the idea of making watercolour blobs, then drawing some sort of picture from the shape was more than a little intimidating.

Still, I need stuff to blog about, you know? So I made some blob doodles just for you. All of the colours were mixed with my new Winsor & Newton Cotman travel set, and I’m SO IMPRESSED. Will do a product review for you soon.

Finding a picture in that first doodle was almost impossible, but once I’d figured out about three of them, the rest were much easier. Some of the doodles were Kayla’s ideas, like the potato, the car, the tooth, and the mouse. I found it really cool that she caught on so quickly and could make up her own pictures so soon. Apparently, her creativity muscles are fitter than mine.

Anyway, here’s what they look like.

I tried to spend no more than a few minutes per image, and also drew most of them from memory–that’s why they’re so wonky. Once I found my groove though, the pictures got better and I wrote an entire chapter in my mind. Not too bad, eh?

All in all, I totally recommend you try this at least once. I’m definitely going to give it a go again. If you do try it out, please let me know how how it went. Was it good, bad, easy?

Yolandie