From Ink Splots to Doodles with a Sharpie Pen

Hi there, I'm Andrea Carvey. Welcome to The Creative Spark. I'm so glad you're here. This is a weekly video series that I'm doing and it's taking my simple ideas that I lean on when I'm busy or I just don't know what I wanna create. It's either gonna be in my sketchbook or my art journal. Just 10 minutes, we all have 10 minutes. But I'm hoping that little spark that you get out of the video will get you going and get you into a creative flow. All right, so I'll see you in the studio. Okay, this spark, oh my gosh. One thing that I love to do is go into things that I've already done and use them as a starting point for some art. I'm gonna show you exactly what I'm talking about. This is an art journal that I use. I have a bunch of these journals. I love, love, love them. This is Ranger Dilutions Journal. This one is about seven and a half by seven and a half. I'm trying to see if it all fits in here. It almost does. They all come with a little envelope that I love. And I just love how thick and yummy all these pages are. This is just a quick peek on some of these pages. But have you ever thought about, I wanna do something, I wanna grab my sketchbook, I wanna grab my art journal, I just don't know what I wanna do and I really don't have a lot of time. This is exactly the type of thing. I want you to think about when you don't have a lot of time and you don't wanna actually think too much. It's perfect. Okay, so I am mostly full with a lot of these. I need a new one. And so what I do is I go, that was kind of interesting. That's actually just all my jelly plate kind of runoffs. I love doing that in here. And all right, so what I do is I flip through some of these journals and I find a page that maybe I started, maybe I want to add a little bit more. That's kind of cool. I found this one and it was perfect for what I wanna do today. So here's a journal page that I started. Look how cute that is, my little placeholder. Okay, so I'm gonna grab a Sharpie. Sharpie is a tool that I love, especially with a little arthritis right here in my hands. The thicker the pen, the better it feels for me. And I have a bunch of Sharpies around the house. Usually I just go find one in the kitchen, but now I'm like, ooh, I think I need this as like a permanent art tool. All right, so I'm looking at this and all I want you to do is if you, and if you don't have one like this, make an ink splot, go away for a day and come back and do this. It's taking a page that maybe has a few little marks and it really doesn't matter what kind of pen it is. I just love a Sharpie. I'm using this design and I have no idea what I'm gonna do. We're just gonna have fun. I'm using this design as a springboard for, I don't know, either an underlayer of an art journal page or maybe a sketch or maybe a final page, I don't know. And that is the beauty of having 10 minutes and a Sharpie in your hand to just kind of have fun. All right, so I'm making some squiggles, kind of all based on this squiggle right here. And then I love round, organic-y types of shapes. So I'm just gonna use this idea and these ideas to create more. The great thing about a Sharpie is it's permanent. And Ranger Dilutions, these journals, these sketchbooks, whatever, however you wanna use them, you can add so much stuff on top. All right, so now I'm just taking this pen and I'm just letting it kind of do whatever it wants to do. I have no rules. So I'm just filling in some of these sections because it's fun. Sharpie's got nice, light coverage too. So I've got this black blob here and I'm trying to think, what do I wanna do with it? Well, my first instinct, which is what I'm gonna go with, is always to try and create an abstract type of flower. This is definitely not going to be a realistic drawing. You certainly could use an ink splotch as the beginning of something that's realistic, but for me, I'm sort of just kind of going with an abstract feeling here. So that's kind of cool. But then you could take this same shape idea, just using these shapes, and I'm kind of really thinking about, what is my gut telling me to draw right now? And maybe it's for you, it's just scribbles like this. Could you imagine a whole fun page of doing this and then coloring every other one in? That's what I love. I love just not knowing what's gonna happen. This is very intuitive. This is how I like to paint. This is how I like to do art journaling. Just listening to what feels good. And always remember your sketchbooks, your art journaling, all your things that you do in your books, they are your own place to play. You don't have to love them. I think the main thing is during the minutes, the 10 minutes that you're putting aside, what's happening right now? Is your mind becoming calmer? Have you stopped worrying about all the little things that were bugging you? This is why I want you to develop a little practice of just 10 minutes, because you know what will happen. You'll spend more than 10 minutes. Let me know. Tell me in the comments too. Do you start these little things and then the next thing you know it's an hour later? That's a good thing. The 10 minutes is just so it's quick and easy for me to show you, but I encourage you to spend obviously more than that. So now I'm just coloring in, looking at how much time I have. So that's only been like four minutes that we have done all of this, which is crazy, right? So another kind of mark I like to make are little dashes. Also, I do like to make little circles. Those are things that could be really fun that you could just fill in even right here. Got a big plane overhead. Hopefully you can't hear it. But just these kinds of things, like sometimes in the negative space, you can think about what else could I do that's just black and white? Well, fill that in. That looks kind of fun. And I've got like this space here. So what do I wanna do with this space? Maybe I wanna do another one of these shapes. So I'm gonna make my own splotch, okay? Make my own petals. You can see how fast I'm also using this marker. I don't wanna overthink and stop and should I put that mark there? Should I put that there? Just do it. See what happens. What's the worst thing that can happen? It started as an ink splot page. Now at least I've got some coverage happening. Okay, so I just wanna get in this little section. So maybe I do some of this stuff. I'm holding my pen different ways too. Light and easy. Like you can see, I'm just kind of holding it up. So try that. Try your different pens. You may not have a Sharpie today. Maybe you're gonna use something else. What happens if you hold it differently? You could even do some fun marks like this. Just kind of working around, finding all of that negative space and just adding something. I love swirlies. That's a little swirly in there. Just so much fun. Maybe, do I wanna have one of these? Maybe we'll do this one as a swirly. I'll show you. I love doing this. They always remind me of binoculars or roses or peonies. Look how much fun that was. I don't know if I'm gonna do all of them though. That could get a little bit crazy. So how quick was that? I also like to do this kind of stuff. So you can see how it's a little addicting. You might end up doing like pages and pages of this. It's really good for your brain. It's really good to bring any blood pressure down or your heart rate. If you're kind of feeling stressed out, it's a way to just relax. You could end up filling a lot of this up with black and white. And then what you could do, if you wanted to take it to like another level, like past our 10 minutes here, it's kind of a messy one. What I would recommend you do, because it is a Sharpie pen, what I would recommend you do is you could, so many things, okay. You could take color pencils and color that in. You could take watercolor and watercolor sections. You could take acrylic paint, markers. I mean, seriously, so much stuff. You can also take bits of black and white collage. Look how cute. Maybe not, but put that guy over there. You could do black and white collage on top of it. You could take some of your sketches that you've done before that are black and white that you don't love and collage some of that on top. I love these books. They're super smooth. They're really great to work with with so many different types of tools. And it's just kind of like, look at that ink splot. You could go back in with this, with a white signal even, just adding little dots. You know what I mean? Just adding little dots, that's it. But it's a great thing to do, especially if you're kind of thinking, I don't really know what I want to do. Then either go find an art journal or a sketchbook that you have that has a couple little marks in it. Use those marks as your starting point. And if you don't have anything like that, then just start doodling and using the black and white spaces to kind of come up with new ideas and shapes and fun. And I could do this all day long, but I'm gonna try and cut this off at our 10 minutes. And I think I'm beyond 10 minutes, so I'm sorry about that. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed this one and let me know if you try it. I'd love to see it too. All right, see you later, bye.