Doodle art: styles, materials and 20 ideas

Doodle art is drawing built from small, loose, repeated marks: lines, patterns and little characters, usually made without planning the whole picture first. It comes in five common styles, needs only a pen, and the 20 ideas below give you a start in each.

What counts as doodle art

A doodle starts as something you draw while your mind is elsewhere. Doodle art is the same habit done on purpose: you fill a page, an object or a photo with marks that grow out of each other. There’s no set subject. What ties it together is the hand: visible lines, repetition, and a bit of wobble you leave in.

Line doodles

One pen, one line weight, outlines only.

1. One-line portrait Draw a face without lifting the pen. Look at the face more than the paper; the odd lines are the point.
2. Hand map Trace around your hand, then fill it with lines that follow its shape, like contour lines on a map.
3. Growing initial Draw your first initial as an outline, then grow vines and leaves out of its corners.
4. Wave page Fill a page with parallel wavy lines, and let one line break into a new rhythm halfway down.

Pattern doodles

Small motifs repeated until they make a surface.

1. Mandala from a dot Start with a dot, then add rings of petals, dots and triangles, each ring a little bigger than the last.
2. Fish scales Rows of overlapping half circles, with a smaller arc inside every third one.
3. Nine-pattern grid Draw a 3-by-3 grid and fill each square with a different pattern: dots, stripes, checks, spirals.
4. Repeat border One tiny motif, like a leaf or a star, repeated around all four edges of the page.

Tangle patterns

A shape divided into sections, each filled with one repeated pattern. The Zentangle method made this style popular.

1. String and fill Draw a loose, curvy line across a square to divide it, then fill each section with a different pattern.
2. Shaded orbs Pack circles together and shade a crescent on the same side of each one, so they all look round.
3. Tangled animal Draw the outline of an owl, a cat or a fish, then fill it with stripes, scallops and dots instead of fur or feathers.
4. Black and white rings Divide a circle into rings and alternate solid black with fine patterns.

Character doodles

Little figures with faces, often in crowds.

1. Monster page Draw ten blobs first, then give each one different eyes, teeth and legs.
2. Objects with faces Your toaster, your phone and your houseplant as a small cast, each with its own expression.
3. Bean self-portrait Draw yourself as a bean with your hair, your glasses and your favorite sweater.
4. Tiny crowd A page of small people, each a circle and a few lines, all doing something different.

Doodle art on photos

Mixed media: a real photo with drawing on top, so the drawing reacts to something real.

1. Drawn costume Draw a crown, a cape or animal ears on someone in a photo, following the angle of their head.
2. Past the edges Glue a printed photo to a page and keep drawing the scene past its edges: the rest of the tree, the rest of the street.
3. Peeking creatures Small drawn creatures peeking out from behind real things: a cup, a plant, a shoulder.
4. Sky drawings Planets, orbit rings and stars drawn over a plain stretch of sky.

What to draw with

• Fine-liner pens, around 0.3 to 0.5 mm, for line, pattern and tangle work.
• A brush pen or marker for bold outlines and characters.
• A pencil for planning, and a white gel pen for highlights on dark paper.
• Any paper. A dot-grid notebook helps keep patterns even.
• Your phone, for doodles on photos.

Doodle art on your photos with Tada

Draw in Tada, an iPhone app, lets you draw on any photo with your finger, and the drawing moves. Choose My lines to keep your lines exactly as drawn, wiggling like a hand-drawn cartoon (free), or Make it cute to have AI turn them into a cute doodle that moves (1 AI tada). Tap Save and it goes to Photos as a Live Photo.

For a finished drawn layer you don’t draw yourself, two AI looks in Add effects keep your photo exactly as it is and add a hand-drawn layer that moves:

• Sun & Moon: a smiling sun or sleepy crescent moon on the subject’s head, with tiny planets, orbit rings and stars, in brush-pen marker with white sticker borders. More in sun and moon drawing.
• Crayon Cosplay: a drawn costume on the main subject (a crown, witch hat, cape or animal ears) and a dozen crayon doodles around them, in pink, black and white pastel crayon. More in crayon drawing.

AI looks use 1 AI tada each and take about a minute. To make them, your photo is sent to Tada’s AI partners; Tada asks before your first one. See privacy.

Questions

More you can do

• Doodle ideas
• Aesthetic doodles
• Scrapbook doodles
• Sketchbook drawing ideas
• All guides