Doodling and Corporate Layoffs

Sometimes I don't even know I'm doodling. I will be talking on the phone, or in a meeting, and when I look down at my desk, or at the pad in my lap, doodles are everywhere. They show up on the edges of meeting notes, on the backs of flyers, on the top of striped legal pads.

They are subconscious marks and designs that, for reasons unknown to me, pop out of my brain, travel down my arm to my hand, and end up on the paper.

I have begun saving and scanning some of the doodles and using them in my artwork.

This journal page started as a doodle--I spent a lot of time on the phone recently because the company I work for suddenly laid off 70 people--and a very dear friend was one of them. Notice the dollar sign that is coming out of the right eye.

I scanned the design and glued it into the journal that I keep on my desk. I also keep some simple art supplies in my office, which I use on my lunch hour to help decompress.

Over the course of a couple of days, I added color, then stencils and stamps.

After I glued a printout of the design into my journal, I used water-soluble oil pastels to add color. My lunch hour was over, so I put it away until the next day.

The next day I pulled out my art supply bin and played with some favorite items: a new stencil by Seth Apter, which I found at a great little store called The Ink Pad, went on the neck to simulate a tattoo. I had a lot of bubble wrap hanging around my office, so I filled in big blank spaces with bubble wrap dots. I pressed a black stamp pad on the bubble wrap, then flipped the inky wrap over and gently pressed it to the paper.

I also added more of the flourish stencil around the page, and used black markers--both thick and thin--to add some extra doodles and detail.

This may not be the best artwork I have ever made. However, it was extremely therapeutic. I was able to let out my frustration with "big brother" and the corporate axe that fell all around me in a safe, creative way.