Art or Doodling?

Before I started my blog in 2009 I had been doing what I called doodling. I don't know whether it's because I didn't have the nerve to call myself an artist, didn't consider what I was doing as "art" or a bit of both. I didn't have a lot of art supplies and I thought 5 x 7 Moleskine journals were pretty cool. I wasn't even doing art in the car in the mornings at that time. I was playing and playing through a lot of emotional pain at the time. Art was my friend. I needed to keep showing up to meet up with art. Talk about mindless, doodling. But so much fun. I started to buy some gel pens and markers. Then I started to get strange, like "extra galactic," wierd stuff, or so I thought. Then I went back to black and white where you can see my beginnings of trees and buildings start to appear. Sorry one of them is very blurry. In my thinking about this art and doodling, I see that my doodling or what I saw as doodling then, shows up in my art work now. You know how everyone is always saying to keep a sketchbook or journal? This is the place you doodle your thoughts and ideas. I guess these are mine. Recently I purchased Dawn DeVries Sokol's book Art Doodle Love. I must admit I was drawn to the colorful pages with prompts and or suggestions for playing, doodling, and although I've only worked on one of the pages, I've traded in my morning faces for morning doodles this week in the car. The prompt was to fill in the colored areas with a doodle of anything each day for a week. Here's what I have done. I have a feeling I will enjoy playing in and with this book. Thanks for visiting....................................................................................................jo

If

If you express what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. If you don't express what is inside you, what is inside you can kill you. ~Gospel of Saint Thomas ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm sharing with you something I did several years ago, when my life seemed in a state of upheaval, of changes. Some unpleasant, some very painful. I didn't know it then, but I was doodling my state of feeling broken and fragmented. It was the beginning of mending, healing, and working through a lot of pain. Art is healing.

That page is now part of" The Smash Book overhaul." And this

........... is what I was on my art table a year ago today.

I'm glad you came by.............................................jo