I started doing Daily Doodles earlier this year, about seven months ago (thank God that my Instagram account keeps track). At the time I posted my first one, I don’t really remember researching the idea and seeing how so many other people implemented it. I just wanted to draw. And I knew this would help me improve my style naturally, in time, without having to work too hard for it. I’ve now reached Daily Doodle no. 106, which means I’ve been posting, on average, a doodle every other day, and I’m happy with the way I’ve evolved so far.

Here’s my first Daily Doodle ever, 7 months ago (left), and here’s my most recent one (right), posted yesterday. See how insanely different they are?

My first daily doodles started as something to do to keep from falling asleep, while my laptop sloooowly rendered my huge work files

There’s a funny thing about how it actually started. At the time, I had this big project for print (huge illustrated walls ) and I was working from my old laptop, a MacBook Air. And it took literally 5 to 10 minutes sometimes to render even the smallest modifications on the files I was working on. It was super frustrating, especially since I was working nights and this constant defocusing made my eyes close. Obviously, while waiting for my laptop to finish, I couldn’t use it at all, so I had to find something to keep from falling asleep at my desk.

So I would take a post-it and draw something silly with my ball pen. It wasn’t supposed to be posted anywhere, I was just fooling around. But then I got this idea of starting to post each and every doodle, to keep track of my everyday thoughts and try and become better.

No pressure, just fun

I liked the idea of turning into a daily exercise, just for fun, no commitment. It was never a challenge and I have my (many) skipping days (I certainly haven’t been posting every day). There’s no-pressure and that’s probably what kept me going and seeing it as something fun and silly I’m doing, instead of turning it into a must-do (that never works for me, btw).

I find that daily doodles are a good way to teach yourself to illustrate concepts

And if at first, all my daily doodles were the result of a quick 5-minutes break from work, now they sometimes take up to 30 minutes. Some are silly, rough sketches, others are really cool illustrations (rumor has it!). It depends on the day and on my mood. Sometimes I draw something while standing at my desk and having lunch or coffee, others I go to bed early and take all my pencils with me. Sometimes I draw cool, funny or creepy things I encounter, during my day, other times I just try to illustrate concepts (that’s also a very good exercise, I find, trying to do a visual on a given concept).

At the end of the day, Daily Doodle is how I relax

What’s particularly fun about doing the Daily Doodle is you get to shut down for a little while, during that time. It’s like meditation. You get your box of toys… erm, tools (which evolved from a lousy ball pen, to an entire arsenal of pencils, erasers, graphic pens, water-colour crayons, brush) and you’re somewhere else. For a few whole minutes, everything goes away and you’re experimenting with your techniques, tools, subjects and so on, letting your imagination fly. It’s pretty cool.

So don’t be shy, follow my Daily Doodle on Instagram! And feel free to let me know what you think of my doodles, in comments.

PS: Obviously, there’s a ridiculous amount of talented artists posting doodles everyday, out there! One of them is Sally Mao, whose daily doodles make me wanna lock myself inside my office for a few weeks and do nothing but practise on my drawing! She’s very good aaand… she will be my guest on this Friday’s awesome interview!

So stay around, don’t miss it 😉