Start Doodling with the Fill-Your-Page Challenge

If you are like me, you see people making art online so effortlessly and wonder how to achieve that yourself. I’ve been having such a hard time with art lately, and I think other people can relate. I’ve been trying to doodle more and not stress myself out when I don’t finish a painting or struggle with a piece. So, I decided to try some low-stakes doodling and focus on relaxing when making art again within the loose structure of a fill-your-page challenge.

I came up with the idea for a fill-your-page challenge when I saw some full-page doodles on Instagram. It looked really casual, and my Pocket Art Toolkit-sized sketchbook made the challenge feel doable.

I originally intended to go straight in and doodle, but I felt too overwhelmed. So instead, I just loosely sketched some big shapes and arranged them in different ways until I was happy. One of my goals in doing this challenge is to remember to enjoy art where I am right now and that all of this is just part of the journey.

So, how does one do this? I struggle with composition quite a bit, but I let that go too. Instead, I thought to myself, well, what do I like? I love playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I love collecting dice, playing video games, and listening to any and all music. This is quite the spread, but I’m up for the challenge!

Then, I just drew the things I liked! The shapes helped me visualize how I wanted to use the page. I went in with the Pentel Brush Pen for big swatches of ink, a white Gelly Roll pen, and a Uniball Onyx Micro pen—it’s a really lovely fine pen, and it’s my favorite doodling pen.

It was nice to just put on some music and let myself draw something simple for once: I’m a portrait fan usually, but this time, I thought I needed to keep it simple and go back to basics! I hope this inspires you to just relax and have fun too!