It's 1:30pm. Your high school world history teacher is on day three of her lecture on the life of a feudal peasant in 15th century Britain as a post lunch malaise is laid on you like a comfortable blanket.
Her incessant droning is now sounding more like a lullaby than a history lesson, so you do the only thing you can think of before you fall comatose into the classroom floor.
You doodle.
At first it's simple, but it starts to grow, making the lecture on peasantry far more easy to digest. Oh, peasants were generally called serfs, who lived on and farmed lands belonging to Lords who had land granted to them by the King. Worlds come alive as your pen whizzes across your notebook filled with pages quickly becoming a living residence to the likes of Mickey Mouse and Spider-man as he fights off Gormouth the living Poop Monster.
Then a ruler slaps down on your drawing, startling you from a trance where you earnestly were digesting the lecture while simultaneously fending off the sweet lullaby of boredom induced sleep. You follow the ruler up a tense arm, across boney shoulders, then up a weathered and frowning face, until your eyes meet the disapproving glare of your teacher. She peers at you from behind a pair of glasses she has worn since the Nixon administration and snatches your drawing from your desk.
"Pay attention." she says, as she crumples up both Spider-man and Gormouth the living Poop Monster depositing them into the waste bin.
The Reputation of Doodling
Doodling gets a bad rap, when in reality it can be a very positive thing. Artists across the planet know this instinctively. Sunni Brown talks about this in a TED Talks lecture in a far more intelligent way than I could here. So I'm going to let her do the talking. Check out her talk here:
Remember to hold your head high Scofflaws, and doodle away!
-Dave, Grand Poobah of all Scofflaws
P.S. I've recently signed up with Google's affiliate program, which will add a bit of advertising to my site, but I promise that I will try to just include products I believe in or would use myself. For instance, I have used and have had a lot of success with Prismacolor markers. So, I feel comfortable recommending other artists buy a set like the one below. Click the image below for more information.
