Doodling has never felt so good.
January, 2021, I came across a new art community on instagram called the Friday Doodle Club. The premise was simple enough, each week on Friday the community hosts would post 3 random words as inspiration. You, the artist, are invited to create a doodle, sketch, illustration, painting, whatever floats your fancy, based on these words.
Hosted by Jennifer Jamieson, Sandra Eide,
Brenda Harris, and
Charlotte Yao, the Friday Doodle Club is a community of artists sketching, drawing, growing and supporting one another.
I was intrigued. Instagram had become a love-hate relationship for me, a place to both gain validation for my art, and a experience a rolling sense of artistic, existential dread. I would often fall into the trap of comparison, looking at other artists in both admiration, envy, and self-doubt. “Why isn’t my art that good yet?” “When will I be at their level?” bla bla bla. There was also a bit of art challenge fatigue going on by the end of 2020 (on top of all the covid-19 exhaustion). Each week there was a fun art challenge or list released by a fabulous group of artists, and I wanted to participate in all of them… too bad there was only one of me and 24 hours in a day.
The Friday Doodle Club seemed different. I was intrigued by the set up. A one-word theme offers a realm of possibilities for inspiration, but sometimes having too much leeway causes the same result of coming up with ideas from scratch—nothing. Or too much, and the idea is unfocused. Having three words gave a bit more direction, and the week deadline seemed to work well with my schedule. Sometimes I’d have time for a full illustration, sometimes just a character sketch, no matter what I did, there was a sense of pride for meeting the Friday deadline and “completing” the week. What’s more, I feel I was able to really grow as an artist.
The first thing I noticed was the new, organic way I used my sketchbook. Illustrations would start with a mess on paper. Either rough sketches or doodles.
This is a 2-page spread for my second doodle club illustration: ecstatic, dancing, cactus.
The second, was the way I was able to really hone in on a new style, one that I first started developing late 2020. With each week, I would try my best to challenge myself, and the positive feedback from the community was the perfect motivator. It was wonderful to see how other artists interpreted the week’s random words—that, and discovering so many new talented people was another benefit.
Halfway into February, I was asked by Sandra if I would be interested in an Artist’s Spotlight interview. Needless to say, I was as ecstatic as my dancing cactus illustrations. You can read my interview here on their website. Now, two months in, I want to take a moment to celebrate what I have created, and thank the community that has helped me grow in ways I wasn’t expecting. I found a new direction for my art, created new positive habits, and re-established a relationship with instagram that skews a little more on the love side. I would recommend this community to any artist, new, emerging or established. Thank you Brenda, Sandra, Jennifer, and Marie-Charlotte, and cheers to many more Fridays!
January Friday Doodle Club illustrations.
February Friday Doodle Club illustrations
Learn more about the art community on the website: https://fridaydoodleclub.com/
Or follow them on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fridaydoodleclub/
