Whenever I go running these days, often early in the morning, my friends and family are all surprised. “Wow, you’re so eager!” they say. “Where do you find all this motivation?” they ask. “Wouldn’t you rather stay in bed a bit longer?”
How to Effortlessly Create Easy Doodle Art
The difference between sketching and doodle art is significant. When you are sketching, your drawing has a purpose. Perhaps you are practicing drawing skills, testing new techniques, or planning a picture. Doodle art is for fun and relaxation. But it is also great for advancing your drawing skills.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Table Of Contents
- Doodle sessions on the run
- Doodling to prepare for an art project
- What to draw when you doodle?
- Sample doodle topics
Doodle sessions on the run
I have an enduring ambition to draw daily. The truth is, I sometimes find myself too busy with other things. To close the gaps, I started doodling. No matter how tired I am or scrapped for time, I can always squeeze in some doodles. Craft paper and a white gel pen are excellent for doodling. Or a black fine liner pen on white paper. If you use a pen, there is no chance to erase it. That is important. Dooling is not about pretty, cool, or perfect art. It is a way to let your hand play and have fun. Doodling releases tension in your hand. It loosens up your linework. Without effort, your hand gets into the flow of drawing. That is worth gold for your drawing ability.
The other reason for doodling is to jumpstart an art project. Sometimes, my hand refuses to cooperate and produces lousy artwork. Instead of risking such a sorry state of affairs, I often doodle from the outset. First doodling, then sketching. I don’t stop until I produce something of value. Then, and only then, I am ready for the actual art project. This progression hardly ever fails. But it requires patience. I challenge you to try it.
What to draw when you doodle?
If you can’t think of what to draw, you are not alone. Do you know how many Google searches there are for the term ”what to draw” every month? 60,500 in the US alone. My question to you is, what do you enjoy drawing? My favorites are flowers, plants, birds, fish, and swirls. It has got to be a simple version of either of these for doodling. I fill the gaps between the objects with dots, short lines, circles, triangles, and squares. Somehow, it is super relaxing to fill in the gaps, even more than doodling the objects.
Let’s say you enjoy drawing leaves. Make a Google search for “leaf shapes”. Open the first image that attracts you, and stay with it. Being selective is not going to help you. Speed is of the essence to not lose yourself in the too-many-choices-nightmare. Doodle a few that you see in the Google Image tab. 
Then, stop looking at the pictures of leaves. Draw the leaves that your hand dictates. That is true dooling. Along the way, more shapes will materialize. The key to the fun is to let go. Do not worry about the outcome. Allow it to become the ugliest drawing ever. This blog is all about nature. But let’s not stop at mother nature here. How about shoes? Do a Google search for “shoe shapes”. You see what I am driving at. Simple shapes of any object are excellent inspirations for doodle art. Ask yourself: What do I want to draw today? The first word that drops into your head is what you should search on google. Try “shell shapes”. “House shapes”. Any subject + shapes! Have fun! 
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The Philosophy of Wu Wei
Wu Wei (Woo-Way) is Chinese for non-doing or non-action. But this literal translation conveys a false sense of laziness. Wu Wei is not about doing nothing. Rather, it’s about doing things more effortlessly.
Now, what does that mean? It means letting things happen the way they happen, not how you want them to happen. It means to let go of certain expectations, certain outcomes. To stop acting against the natural current of life.
Think about it — too often we’re told the more effort we put in, the more we get out of something. But every day, we experience that this is simply not true.
For instance, when you want to fall asleep quickly, you’ll only stir up restlessness. The harder you try, the more you roll around in bed. Or maybe you’ve noticed that fighting your anxiety actually increases anxiety. You’ll get anxious about being anxious.
Embracing Wu Wei is to be in harmony with nature. When you stop trying to fall asleep, you finally drift away. Likewise, when you can acknowledge and sit with your anxiety, it loses its grip on you.
The feeling of Wu Wei is almost as if you’re tipsy. You still have complete control over yourself and all of your senses. But you’re less tense, less insecure, and less serious.
It has a light, effortless quality.
A huge misconception
One thing that many people get wrong when hearing about this concept is that it means total surrender. Yes, Wu Wei implies giving up on forcing things. But never giving up altogether.
For instance, when you’re experiencing injustices, Wu Wei doesn’t suggest resignation. It’s quite the opposite. Wu Wei suggests a persistent amount of pressure. This pressure isn’t a metaphorical jackhammer or wrecking ball. It’s a soft strike in the right spot. It’s like water quietly working through the toughest cliffs and rocks.
Bruce Lee said it best:
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves… Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Let’s look at another case study that illustrates this art.
The Art of Not Trying
Charles Bukowski, one of the greatest writers of all time, struggled most of his life to make something out of himself. He wrote hundreds of short stories without any merit, bounced around hellish jobs, and lost himself in alcohol and prostitution.
It took him 30 years of relentlessly writing thousands of pieces, living from hand to mouth, and even going through a near-death experience to finally make it as a writer.
Bukowski’s story seems like the embodiment of the American dream: work hard, never give up, fake it ‘till you make it. But the truth was far from it. Here’s how Bukowski put it in a letter:
“Somebody asked me: “What do you do? How do you write, create?” You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more.”
This is Wu Wei in a nutshell.
Bukowski was incredibly prolific, sure. But he never wrote to become rich, famous, or respected. To him, writing was effortless because he felt a burning desire to craft stories and poems. And not even substance abuse, grueling jobs, or death could hold him back.
Despite all his misery, Bukowski acted in harmony with his inner nature. In fact, the worst thing he could’ve done would’ve been to deny his urge to create and sink into a hole of meaninglessness.
So, there are many expressions for Wu Wei. Choose the two words that appeal most to you:
Let’s see how we can put those into action.
3 Simple Ways to Apply Wu Wei
Integrating Wu Wei into your life should feel — like the concept itself — effortless. Ironically though, we tend to struggle with that because we’re tangled in webs of hustle, consumption, and brute force. We’re stuck on the Western treadmill of meritocracy.
Wu Wei, on the other hand, is a gentle approach from Daoism — an Eastern philosophy. It’s not some hack or tool to get what you want in life. It’s more like a feeling. A lifestyle.
That’s why the practice of Wu Wei cannot be learned through an easy 10-step guide to greater wealth and happiness. But there are a few small things you can do.
1. Ask yourself this question
What would this look like if it were easy? This simple prompt from Tim Ferriss reminds us that there’s often simplicity and effortlessness in rough situations. It encourages you to find your Why and identify potential bottlenecks, needless perfectionism, and simpler alternatives.
It’s one question with dozens of implications. Remember it whenever you feel stuck or overwhelmed.
2. Visualize an effort scale
This scale goes from one to ten, whereas one is minimum effort and ten maximum effort. Keep that in mind whenever you’re doing something difficult — running, working, playing an instrument.
Now, the trick is to start as low as possible on the effort scale. Maybe at one or two. And only when your task feels ridiculously easy, shift up a gear. Then, another. And another. But as soon as you struggle, go back to a lower number or quit altogether.
That’s how you enter a state of flow and make hard things easy.
3. Be a scientist
Why does life feel so hard? Why do we force things? Why do we burn out?
These questions share the same root cause: We desperately want things to be different than they are right now. And if we cling to this mindset we’ll never be truly content. We’ll always find a flaw, something to optimize, something to force into our cramped world view.
One of the greatest antidotes to this is to live like a scientist. When everything you do is an experiment you can detach yourself from preconceived outcomes. There’s simply the experience and you, the observer. And then something beautiful happens: You adjust yourself to the experiment as it evolves.
You can still make changes, of course. But you finally let go of the belief that every experiment must go exactly as planned. That’s the essence of Wu Wei.
Painting with Texture
Impasto is an advanced traditional technique that adds a strong, sculptural, almost 3D expression to a painting. It can be recreated digitally to enhance textural effects and rendering.
Recreating an impasto mood digitally requires a non-transparent approach and the use of opaque over opaque brushes. Acrylic or gouache presets are ideal for this.
By painting the exact same line with a smaller nontransparent brush over the larger one, you can bring this particular effect to life. This rendering can be pushed even further by adding (sandwiching) an in-between layer of a 100% black stroke right before the use of your second color.
Finally, underpainting in plain black can also positively affect your impasto, as this will outline your volumes. This was a frequent method Van Gogh used to build up his canvas.
Painting with Contrast
Dramatic illumination in traditional media was a technique developed to achieve a rendering using strong contrasts in-between light sources. It is a highly impactful method, that can be summarized as instant directional and/or volumetric shading.
Obtaining this effect digitally requires the use of semi-transparent brushes, and a fixed warm low-temperature color (red, orange, yellow) that you will affect by strokes on each side.
As light modeling does not affect the color directly, it is in fact the easiest way to produce very fast and eloquent renders, as it only requires short variations of light degrees to be relevant, instead of complex variables of gradient strokes.
Bravura
Bravura means virtuosity in Italian. It is often what people will instantaneously feel by looking at the art of Velasquez, Titian, Vermeer, Goya, or Caravaggio. An immediate feeling of awe that many viewers can’t summarize properly. Of all the qualities most painters strive to achieve, this is the highest one.
The underlying principle of a Bravura brushstroke is a purposeful use of painting knowledge. It is engraved in each aspect I’ve tried to enumerate above, and attempting to produce those techniques again and again will help you a lot to properly grasp the Bravura concept and the depth behind it. It is a profound way to naturally bring life and personality into your paintings, whether you are a beginner or an advanced painter.
About the Artist
Simon Goinard is a French concept and visual development artist working in the entertainment and publishing industries for clients like 20th Century Fox, Ubisoft Entertainment, NBC, ArenaNet, The Walt Disney Company and more. He also works on side projects developing new technologies as well as his personal IPs. Some of the latter are shown in this article.
www.simongoinard.com
simongoinard.artstation.com
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