Doodle Camp

In July I took part in Dawn Sokol DeVries' Doodle Camp. This was a short online class about doodling. It only was five days (although of course people can still post and talk about it in the facebook group). It was...okay. This has little to do with Dawn or the class and everything to do with me, myself and I.

I sometimes wonder if I am the right person for online classes. In theory they always sound really nice, but the truth of the matter is that I would much rather just do my own thing without given instructions or other people's ideas and prompts. There you also have the reason I'm behind on the Sketchbook Challenge, I'm just no good with prompts. It's not that I can't work with them and I like what I've done so far. It's just that they always feel a little bit like homework to me.  The only online class I have really enjoyed until now was Mary Ann Moss' ROD class, because it taught me something really new and out of my comfort zone. (And well let's face it, Mary Ann is way cool, haha.)

But I digress,  I was looking forward to spending a few days completely focused on doodling and it was cheap, so I thought 'why the hell not?'. And I was very curious about Dawn's process and I thought it might give me some insight.

In the class we learned to make simple book with duct tape in the binding (ruined my awl, thank you very much) and there were prompts and ideas for filling the book. To challenge myself I decided to do the whole book in black, red and white. A very sophisticated colour combination in my opinion. ;-)

So, without further ado, here's the Doodle Camp Book!

The book is nowhere near finished (I think I'm almost halfway through), but I do like how what I have done has turned out. I have no idea if I will ever complete it. Even though I love how it looks, I was kind of fed up with working in it. Like I said, too much like homework. Still, it might make for an interesting book to finish. We'll see. If I ever do I'll let you know. For now I'll just consider it a temporary an unfinished experiment.

I think this book shows an interesting point. No matter how good something looks, if you have only limited enjoyment in making it, it's just never good enough. It's not about it being hard or challenging, I like a challenge, it's about pleasure in the work. I can move mountains if I just feel it's worth it and somehow this book just doesn't do it for me. Maybe sometimes it's good to just let things go.

Wishing you all a wonderful and artsy Wednesday.