Juliana Machado Cruz

Aula 13
Topic: Doodles
As a new exhibition shows, doodles can be a powerful form of creative expression,
writes Clare Thorp.
By Clare Thorp24th August 2021

For Queen Victoria, it was donkeys. For Winston Churchill, it was airplanes. For Leonardo da Vinci, it
was everything from crude drawings to the first workings of his ground-breaking laws of frictions.
Throughout history, humans – whether royalty or a bored office worker – have doodled.
Usually relegated to the margins of notebooks or the back of envelopes, the doodle is often considered
something messy, throwaway and unconsidered. If life is what happens when you're making other plans, then
doodles are the result of your mind being somewhere else – a phone call, a meeting, a daydream. Yet in those
scrawls – be it shapes, animals, lines, names – can be something powerful, with what they reveal and how
they allow us to express our creativity. Hence why a new art project is taking doodles out of the margins and
placing them centre-stage.
Frequencies, by Turner Prize-winning artist Oscar Murillo, collects together 40,000 canvases that
have been marked, scribbled and drawn on by more than 100,000 children from around the world. Since 2013
Murillo has sent blank canvases to over 300 schools in more than 30 countries. The aim is to capture "the
conscious and unconscious energy of young minds at their most absorbent, optimistic and conflicted" and the
results are currently on show for the first time in their entirety in Murillo's former school in Hackney, east
London. "The blank canvas is like a recording device," he tells BBC Culture. "You leave it there for six
months at a minimum and then you simply allow for an individual to interact with that, however they wish.
They are my collaborators, these almost 100,000 children."
In the dictionary, a doodle is defined as an "aimless or casual scribble, design or sketch" or a "minor
work". Yet these "casual scribbles" are something humans have been doing for thousands of years – at least
73,000, in fact, with the first human drawing believed to be a Stone Age crayon doodle in a South African
cave. Dutch scholar Erik Kwakkel has studied some of the oldest doodles on paper, finding comical faces,
caricatures and geometrical shapes in the margins of Medieval manuscripts. "Doodled squiggly lines and
mini drawings are encountered frequently in Medieval books, mostly in the margins or on flyleaves," he
writes, highlighting one sketch found in the lower margin of a manuscript of Juvenal’s Satires that resembles
our stick figures today.
"Anything that humans have been doing from antiquity onwards, there's something powerful going
on," says Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution. "This behaviour is universal, it's across cultures
and across economic groups. It's like breathing or singing or dancing and is natural to human beings."
Everyone has a signature doodle – the drawing that leaks out of us when we're not noticing
Doodling has been shown to reduce stress, improve short term memory and feel rewarding. "Doodling
has this liberating quality for many people," says Brown. "It's a spontaneous act of just letting yourself be
who you are." But perhaps one of its biggest functions is as a way to unlock unconscious creativity. "You're
not prescribing the outcome and you're not striving for a goal, you're just allowing and inviting the mind to
shift into a different modality and that is a very sweet spot for getting unconscious information to become
available."

Excerpt from BBC; available in <https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210823-from-da-vinci-to-churchill-what-our-doodles-

can-mean>, in September 24, 2021.
Verbs:

To doodle – doodled To relegate – relegated To daydream – daydreamed To define – defined

 To strive – strived/strove –
To sketch – sketched To resemble – resembled To unlock – unlocked ed/striven
Vocabulary:

Donkey Crude First workings Ground-breaking

Messy Unconsidered Scrawl Hence*

Canvas Absorbent Aimless Flyleaf

Stick figure Signature Going on Outcome

Exercises:

1- Answer the questions below:

a) Are you used to doodling when you’re talking on the phone?

b) Were any of your dreams relegated to a the back burner? (back burner = less important position)

c) Have you ever daydreamed when the work was too boring?

d) What defines a good student?

e) Is it useful to sketch to help explaining something?

f) When you were a child did you use to look and imagine what some clouds resembled?

g) When you are at home, do you leave the front door unlocked?

h) What do you strive for in your career?

i) Can you doodle a donkey?

 j) Are you sketches usually crude or full of details?

k) Have you ever seen the first workings of Da Vinci?

l) Has your company ever developed something ground-breaking?

m) Are you messy in the kitchen?

n) Is there any sector in your company that you think it is unconsidered by the management?

o) Must all doctors write in scrawls?

p) What kind of activity would you consider absorbent?

q) Would you say being prepared for a bad outcome is the same as being pessimistic?

2 – Mark the best alternative:

a) The man from that painting … my uncle Marco.

1. Seems 2. Resembles 3. Looks 4. Like

b) When you doodle you are … your imagination.

1. Opening 2. Open 3. Unlock 4. Unlocking

c) “Why are there a stick figures on the wall?”

“My 3 year old kid thought it would be the perfect canvas for his art, …. the drawings.
1. Why 2. Because 3. Concluding 4. Hence

d) I know you like to be honest and sincere, but must you always be so…?
1. Crude 2. Rude 3. Aggressive 4. Cruel

e) He said he wants to improve his career, but without a project his actions are completely…
1. Wrong 2. Aimless 3. Unconsidered 4. Messy

f) Pink is Penelope’s … colour.

1. Favorite 2. Worst 3. Typical 4. Signature

g) I try to always know what is … around me.

1. Happening 2. Go on 3. Occurring 4. Developing

h) Nobody takes him seriously. He’s been … to the kids’ table.

1. Downgraded 2. Downloaded 3. Put 4. Relegated

i) The store … canvases of all shapes and sizes.

1. There are 2. Have 3. Sells 4. Paint

j) She is striving … balance in her life.

1. For 2. With 3. In 4. Of

k) We have to fight for what we want. We … just daydream about positive outcomes.
1. Can 2. Couldn’t 3. Could 4. Can’t

l) The … must have all the measurements and be drawn to scale.

1. Sketch 2. Drawing 3. Doodle 4. Painting.
3 – Write a text telling what is your signature doodle and in what kind of situation do you make
them. Then write your opinion about the text you’ve read and what was the most interesting
information you’ve learned from doodles.