Doodle Pattern Library

The How

Description: Shapes with patterns inside. Sometimes the shapes are long, sometimes they’re pointy, sometimes they’re blobby or leafy, but always shapes.

With few exceptions, my doodles have one main thing in common: bolding. No matter what I do with the line, I always double it to make it bigger. I have one example of one time I didn’t bold and I just don’t like the doodles as me (seen below in “Confetti Alts”).

My Process

Draw a shape. Usually whatever I feel in the moment.
Bold the shape. Thicken the lines. I try to keep it all uniform.

Tip 1: Sometimes I mess up and thicken the lines too much. When this happens, I draw another shape stemming from the thick area so that the two shapes can share the one thick line.
Tip 2: I don’t just thicken the outside of the shape, sometimes it’s more advantageous to bold the inside of the shape to make it all even.

Draw lines, dots, and shapes within the bolded shapes. I don’t bold these patters inside the shape to give it contrast with the shape itself.
Stack, scatter, and stem. Usually random or whatever I feel.

That’s how my doodles come to life. It’s contrast and repetition.

The Why
As I mention in my Doodle Anatomy sketchbook, my doodles are the truest reflection of me, my brain, how I feel, and my experiences. They are the chaos inside me, the pain and passion and meticulous obsession. They are patience and disorientation. They are confusion. They are me.

The What

Doodle Confetti

My standard doodles. The doodles that incorporate every shape and line I can think of as evenly as possible. I want the doodles to look like a box of knick-knacks or children’s toys.

Shaped Confetti

I’ve figured out how to fit my doodle confetti into various shapes and its created some great results. Some of my best (and worst) doodles.

Picto-Confetti

Much of my doodles in the past consisted of large doodles mixed in with the rest of the confetti. I liked hiding images inside the doodles

I used to draw the little pictures first and then draw the doodles under them, making the doodles look like they’re floating on top.

I eventually started embedding the larger doodles into the confetti, making the flow more natural.

The most recent iteration of my embedded doodles is in this piece called “Smile.” It’s a reflection on mental health masking. I took words and little doodles of things and camouflaged them into doodles. My goal was to create embeds that didn’t break the flow of the doodles in order to preserve the whole texture.

Can you see the embeds?

Color Confetti

Sakura Gelly Roll Moonlight gel-pens in size 06 work really well for my doodles.

Separated Confetti

No standard doodles but with each individual shape isolated. Created a nice pattern but not as visually stunning.

Confetti Alts (i.e., retired)

Early iterations of confetti where I used simlar shapes over and over. In the right one, I wanted to see what it would look like without the bolden that I do. I like the bolding better.

Geometric

Specifically hard edged doodles, usually consisting of mostly or only rectangles. Sometimes can include triangles or random polygons with lots of edges.

I’ve learned that I really like using them to give direction.

Stackable

While I’ll often combine geometric and organic, the gemetric can have a lot of movement on their own and create really interesting patterns and textures.

Organic

These doodles are either curves and circles or plants and flowers (usually both).

Rings

Some geometric here but still a very organic pattern. And an old one that I found recently.

Floral

Sometimes I do just flowers and no bolding and get some cool looking textures. I think bolding them would be better for the most part, but I really like how the right picture looks and the way I stacked the flowers and leaves.

Flower Power (retired)

The original florals I did when I started doodling. This is a rare colorized doodle drawing (it’s digital)

Synaptic Weave

Organic movement with a lot of geometric shapes, my intention is for this style of doodle to look like cables or robot muscle fibers.

Heavily related to the Stratified Layering technique.

Combos

I frequently combine geometric shapes with more organic shapes and it creates a lot more movement.

Webbing

It looks organic but also uses a lot of geometric shapes to accomplish the effect.

I really like doing doodles like this and it creates cool images.
(ref. Watching)

Single Shape Doodles (retired)

This was how I started doodling and getting into the repetitive process of doodling the way I do. These are mostly retired, but I want to reprise some of them.