Doodle art is underrated as an art form. It's a fun way of expressing yourself, but is also a brilliant way of experimenting and learning to draw. Doodles give a unique insight into your artistic style, conveying parts of your personality not shown through other mediums of art.
We've picked our favourite doodle artists out there, and listed examples of their work. Combining child-like doodles with expressive illustrations, they examples show how doodling can be used to create beautiful and arresting designs. Who knew there were so many doodle art styles?
If you'd like to work on your skill, try our selection of the best how to draw tutorials. Get drawing and you could add to your portfolio with a bunch of new work (for inspiration, see these examples of amazing design portfolios).
01. Joe Whale AKA The Doodle Boy
Joe Whale (who is 10 years old) used to get into trouble for doodling at school, until asked to decorate a local restaurant in his cartoon-style doodles, when he gained attention and now has a serious following. He's been creating art since he was 3 and likes to "pretty much create doodles from anything as I get inspired by my surroundings and create characters from all of the things I see such as my Burger and Fries characters, Flowers, Vegetables,Cakes -Yum, clouds, etc...".
The video above shows him doodling on his bedroom wall. Just imagine what the future holds for this young artist.
02. Mr Doodle
A photo posted by @mrdoodle on Feb 17, 2020 at 2:58pm PST
Sam Cox, also known as Mr Doodle, is a doodle artist who describes his mission in life as doodling everywhere, all the time. His work has been known to consume surfaces, walls and furniture in an almost viral form, growing relentlessly in clusters of characters, objects and patterns, and over the past few years he's been travelling the world to unleash his doodle creations, with his most recent doodling expedition taking him to Mexico.
03. Visoth Kakvei
Visoth Kakvei is a Cambodian graphic designer who specialises in the most intricate hand-drawn doodle art with a real sense of depth. Where he really excels, though, is in taking his artwork and digitally enhancing it, either with bursts of colour or by transforming it into solid-looking pieces that seem to be bursting off the page. He never seems to stop creating; you can find hundreds of stunning examples over at his Instagram feed.
Get the Creative Bloq Newsletter
Daily design news, reviews, how-tos and more, as picked by the editors.
04. Hattie Stewart
London-based artist and illustrator Hattie Stewart is the undisputed queen of doodle art. She's famous for her unique graphic style, iconic cover takeovers and client work with – amongst others – Adidas and Apple. The awesome wraparound cover shown above was created for our sister magazine Computer Arts.
"The Character theme of the issue was perfect for me (obviously) so I wanted to bring all of my characters together on the cover for one big happy party," Stewart explains. "It’s a rare opportunity to be given free rein on such a brilliant canvas." The motifs were all hand-drawn, then scanned in, edited and composited in Photoshop, and the design also features Stewart's interactive installation I Don’t Have Time for This, part of the artist's solo exhibition at the NOW Gallery in London.
05. Jon Burgerman
Jon Burgerman is best known for his colourful, fluid and playful creations. This design, entitled 'I stare out of the window', was created for one of the New Art Gallery Walsall's large-scale windows. The brief was to depict the trials and tribulations of being an artist, including creating a concept, playing with ideas, taking a break and checking emails.
Find out more about Burgerman and his doodle art in our post How to use Instagram as a digital sketchbook.
06. Géraldine Georges
Géraldine Georges worked as a graphic designer for seven years before starting to freelance as an illustrator in 2006. The Belgian artist's collages are a perfect blend of photography and illustration, beautiful and elegant images that seep emotion.
07. Eva-Lotta Lamm
User experience designer Eva-Lott Lamm does web and interface design for Google as her day job, but enjoys graphic design and illustration as well and has made a name for herself with her series of sketchnotes: doodled notes from conference talks that add a fantastic visual element to boring old note-taking. She's even collected her sketchnotes into four books as well as a series of posters; find them all here.
08. Viktor Kalvachev
Born in Bulgaria, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts, Viktor Kalvachev moved to the US to work in video games, and produced the graphic novel Pherone and crime series Blue Estate, the latter of which received two Eisner nominations. He now lives in Paris where he’s opened a studio and developed a video game.
09. Mattias Adolfsson
Working with everything from computer games to children's books, you will be hard pressed to find a better doodler than Swedish illustrator Mattias Adolfsson. Take a look through the pages of his sketchbooks to see what we mean.
10. Matt Lyon
Matt Lyon is the London-based graphic artist and illustrator behind this colourful and chaotic doodle. He comments on his website: "My work stems from incessant doodling, often laced with wild colours, shapes and patterns." Indeed it does. And we love it!
11. Fred Blunt
Inspired by The Muppets, Quentin Blake and the Flintstones, Fred Blunt has been a compulsive doodler since he was in hand-me-downs. His cute characters are an instant source of cute and child-like inspiration that'll have you harking back to your childhood.
12. Pat Perry
Pat Perry is a superbly talented artist who, as his mind wanders, inscribes in ink some truly surreal and attention grabbing imagery. A daily practice for the Michigan born artist, drawing helps Pat to work through the complexities of life and thankfully for us acts as a remedy for all we find mundane in day-to-day living.
13. Lizzie Mary Cullen
Lizzie Mary Cullen is a multi award-winning artist based in London. A natural talent with pen and ink, Cullen's doodle art has attracted the attention of many leading brands, including the BBC, MTV and Harvey Nichols. This intricate depiction of Brick Lane, is just one from Cullen's brilliant series titled London psychogeographies.
14. Kerby Rosanes
Kerby Rosanes is a graphic designer and SEO specialist with a passion for art and doodling. His work, which he post regularly on his Sketchy Stories blog, exists at various scales and his striking attention to detail makes each piece unique and original.
15. Lisa Krasse
Craft, drawing, and fashion combine in one amazing project. Lisa Krasse has combined her love of doodling with a love of Converse shoes to create these amazing sneaker designs. Check out the rest on her Behance profile.
16. Jim Bradshaw
New Jersey illustrator Jim Bradshaw has been doodling away since he could pick up a pencil. Jim tackles all things creative and is never far from his Moleskine – especially now that he is doing illustration full-time, after leaving the his corporate job as an art directer. His doodles open up a weird and wacky world that often includes creatures from outer space and walking tree stumps. We love it!
17. Chris Piascik
Describing himself as an 'illustrator, formerly known as designer', Chris Piascik fast became a well-known face in the doodle art world. Based in New England and with more than eight years of professional experience, Chris embarked upon a 'daily drawing' challenge back in 2007. Once he'd done 1000, he published them in a book entitled '1000 days of drawing'. He continues to doodle to this very day.
18. Sagaki Keita
Japanese artist Sagaki Keita specialises in recreating classic masterpieces by covering them in these gorgeous child-like doodles. Even though the doodles themselves are simple, once you look further away from the drawing, you realise that Sagaki has taken the time to ensure they blend together perfectly.
19. Johanna Basford
The unique doodling style from artist Johanna Basford managed to bag her this commission from international coffee company Starbucks. After persistently sending the company paper cups with her artwork on, Johanna was asked to design a wallpaper for the redesign of Starbuck's Vigo Street store in London. Hidden within the flourishes are tiny coffee cups, elusive birds, and the odd Frappuccino...
20. Chris Glasz
Owner of Tumblr blog In Doodle Format, Chris Glasz has chosen a number of popular films and illustrated them as creative doodles. Often using just a simple black Sharpie, so far, the talented artist has celebrated 11 well-loved films, including Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Inception (above).
We're a little in love with these illustrations, which are far more original than most of the fan art we see. It's also hard not to be a little in awe of this guy's talent with a Sharpie.
Related articles:
