Or at least that is what the dictionary calls it. But what if there is more to it? Just how absentminded do you have to be, for it to be a doodle? What if the same ‘doodle style’ is used deliberately? When does a doodle become something else?

For a start, just take a moment to lay out in your mind what type of image you consider to be a doodle.
Is it abstract? angular? curvaceous? small? dotty? random? useless? a mental distraction? ….

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Now, consider this… you do a little doodle on the side of a memo pad, or on the edge of the essay your working on, or even in your journal, or sketch book… The doodle gets lost for a while, then you find it again and are struck by the image in some way… You take that doodle and port it into illustrator, trace it and use it for something (a design element in a magazine spread, decoration for a product, or artwork in it’s own right,  for example). Now, is that still a doodle, or are you going to call it a sketch, or a drawing, or a design element now?

Now consider further… you liked the style of the 1st doodle and decide to make some more in a similar vein. The finished item looks very similar to the 1st doodle… but you did them deliberately rather than ‘absentmindedly’… Or you deliberately set out to make some more in an absentminded manner – as in the state of mind required to hold and use the pen… Are these still doodles?

OK, now what about concept sketches?… your sitting there at your desk (or on the couch) coming up with the 1st ideas for something (logo/artwork/business card/movie character etc) and your absentmindedly putting down any idea that crosses your mind… “rough drawing made absentmindedly” … are these doodle too?

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So…  perhaps a doodle is a rough drawing made absentmindedly & without a purpose.
And when it gets a purpose, then it becomes (is named) something else: concept sketch, design element, wild & crazy idea… etc.

Right. That was an interesting dwardle through a lot of quetions. It’s late, and I’m not sure if this post has gone quite where I wanted it to. but it’s all an interesting thought. By the by, I invented the word scrabooli to cover a doodle-looking-type image that had been done deliberatly. …

Anyway… So there I was… huge big beach… the tide way out… wide clean un-foot-printed, slightly damp, smooth sand… and this neat little point on the cuttle-fish bone.

So you know what comes next, I just couldn’t resist! … …

About 5 minuets later I stopped scribbling and realized that the bone had just slipped into my hand and was completely and perfectly comfortable to hold and write and draw with. I even tried it in my other hand just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke!

If you don’t believe me, next time you find one, try it for yourself and tell me what you think, I would love to know if it was for real or just a double fluke – After all, it could just be the way I hold a pen. I’m going to try to make a mold for a pen grip based on the shape of it and then cast one out of soft rubber that will fit over a pen – like those triangular ones that you can slip onto any pen. Not sure how well it will go as I’ve never done anything like that before, but I am hoping that it will make scrabooling much easier to do for hours on end without upsetting the joints…. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, if anyone out there wants to use this idea and make an actual salable product from it. go for your life! I will look forward to seeing the result.