Doodling is a great, fun way of expressing yourself. But it's often underrated as an art form. Yet doodle art can help you learn how to draw and make a great addition to your design portfolio – as highlighted by these brilliant examples.
Combining child-like doodles with expressive illustrations, they show how doodling can be used to create beautiful and arresting designs. Who knew there were so many doodle art styles?
01. Hattie Stewart
Bold and beautiful, this gorgeous piece is the work of illustrator Hattie Stewart (as is the opening image). Commissioned by graphic design studio Bureau Mirko Borsche, Stewart doodled this awesome cover for Bavarian Opera magazine Max Joseph.
Best known for her 'doodle bombs', Stewart frequently redesigns magazine covers with her own twist. Her unique style has landed her work with many leading brands, including Adidas, Diesel, and Marc by Marc Jacobs.
02. Jon Burgerman
Jon Burgerman is best known for his colourful, fluid and playful creations and this one is no exception. Titled 'I stare out of the window', Burgerman was commissioned to create this piece 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.
03. Tessa Shearer
Based in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Tessa Shearer is a designer and illustrator who specialises in the cheery and quirky. Her eye-catching doodle style is inspired by a strange mix of Japanese and vintage artwork, as well as the tastes of her three young children. If you like what you can see you can buy her range of limited edition art, jewellery and accessories at her online store, House of Wonderland.
04. 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.
05. Kim Jung Gi
This South Korean artist is the master of the doodle. Taking to blank walls when he's not capturing his improvised art in a sketchbook, Kim has become world famous for his on-the-spot epic doodle masterpieces.
In Kim's case, seeing is believing, and thankfully his YouTube channel is chock full of brain-tinglingly amazing pieces.
The artist says: "I observe things all the time. I don’t take references while I’m drawing, but I’m always collecting visual resources." Take a dip into his sketchbook!
06. Viktor Kalvachev
Born in Bulgaria, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts, Viktor 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.
07. Mattias Adolfsson
Working with everything from computer games to children's books, you will be hard pressed to find a better doodler than Swedish based illustrator Mattias Adolfsson. Take a look through the pages of his sketchbooks to see what we mean.
08. Faith Georgia
This energetic, yet calming doodle was created by artist Faith Georgia. A super-talent, Georgia has created numerous, beautiful, black and white and colour-filled doodles, all of which can be found in her awe-inspiring Flickr portfolio.
09. 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!
10. Snippy Snippy Crab Kristine
After months of procrastination, the artist that goes by the name of Snippy Snippy Crab Kristine completed this completed this set of entirely random doodles. This talented artist spends much of her time creating gorgeous Manga artwork, with any spare minutes spent doodling lovely creations such as this in her skecthbook.
11. Matthieu Bessudo
Matthieu Bessudo, aka McBess, is a French illustrator living in London. With a passion for illustration and music, Bessudo always tries to mix the two in his work. A super-talent, his doodle art features a mind-blowing amount of detail.
12. GenerallySpeaking
High school student Michelle aka GenerallySpeaking is the lady behind this intricate ink doodle. Covering a book from one of her notebooks, this is doodle art at its best. Using a simple biro, Michelle began the detailed illustration in the top-right corner, allowing organic shapes to flow around it until covering the entire page.
13. Helen Kaur
Helen Kaur is a full-time graphic designer and part-time illustrator from Singapore. As part of her development and illustrative work, Kaur creates vibrant doodles in her spare time. And while we're not taking anything away from black and white doodle art - it rocks - it's great to see such a mixture of colours amongst all the detail in this drawing.
14. 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.
15. 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.
Next page: more inspiring examples of doodle art
