Do you DOODLE?

Doodling is the process of moving your pencil (or pen, or marker, or crayon) around on the page without thinking about it hardly at all.

It’s less like drawing, and more like dancing: the focus is on the process, on the movement, on the feeling of the pen in your hand and the paper underneath. The coolest thing about doodling is that anyone can do it! Everyone can do it! And you know that we here at Arts For Life are BIG FANS of everyone doing art!
In this lesson, we’ll show you how you can transform any ol’ doodle into something a little bit extra.

(Pssst…we loved this project so much that we made a video about it! Click here to see Arts For Life teacher Alison teaching Doodle Fish!)

Materials

• Black Paper
• Metallic Markers
• Prismacolor Art Stix or Colored Pencils
• Optional: Pencil, baby oil and Q-tips

Directions

Using a metallic marker (or pencil if you want to practice first), draw a series of wide loops on the black paper.

With the metallic marker, add tails, fins, lips, eyes, and other details to each loop to turn your loops into fish. Don’t worry about being realistic here—just make each fish interesting!

Use Art Stix or colored pencils to color in your fish. Use at least two colors for each fish—start with the darker of the two colors and fill in the entire space. Then use the lighter color(s) to highlight certain areas. You may choose a color theme for all of your fish, or you may choose to do each one differently.

If you want, you can blend your colors by rubbing a Q-tip dipped in baby oil over it.

Once you have filled in all the fish, use the metallic marker to fill in some of the blank space with bubbles.

Tweak it!

Switch up your materials! You can make your doodles in black marker on watercolor paper and fill in the fish watercolor paints.

Can you change your doodles into something else? A zig-zag doodle may make a neat-o little forest:

A bunch of scribbly doodles might make funny hairdos:

What other kinds of doodles can you imagine?

Did you make this project?

We’d love to see! Share a photo with us on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #artsforlifenc