About

Hello and welcome to the ‘Idlescrawl’ website!

This is the bit where, if you’re interested? I’m going to quickly chat about my work and why the name ‘idlescrawl’ -

We can all feel under pressure to be in control, to have all the answers, or at least to present that ‘face’ to the world, which is pretty exhausting.  As the real and virtual world become increasingly complex and overwhelming, particularly in the last year and a half, we all realise even more how important it is to try and find ways to retreat from the overload, if just for a little while, to gain a sense of perspective, to appreciate there are things behind our control but accept that.

For me, being creative in any sense has always been a way to do that, to be fully absorbed for a little while in something - doodling, colouring in, a room makeover, or gardening, anything really.

Acknowledging that there are things we cannot control and things that we don’t know is at the centre of my practice. I try to find different ways to remove some of the conscious decision making, to allow in randomness and chance, letting something just unfold, kind of manifest itself. Then I often follow up with periods of responding to what has happened (so allowing the control back in for a while), for instance I might ‘pick out’ a shape that emerges and outline it, or make up a rule to follow going forward, or colour certain shapes in a particular colour.

My work is mostly drawing, painting and print. I also have a thing for repetition, of building up in lots of layers or shapes. Recently I’ve been drawing or stamping random shapes using repetition and rules. I’ve always been a doodler and I tend to fall back to it a lot, I find it relaxing to let my mind wander, just let it unfold. 

I often just doodle fairly mindlessly in a cheap note pad whilst watching TV, occasionally these little scribblings are the spark for something, hence the name ‘idlescrawl’!  

As someone who is a habitual over thinker with a tendency to ‘over do’ everything, I realised what I get (but not always enjoy) from working in this way, is that period when ‘I know’ that I ‘don’t know’ what’s going to happen, its not always a comfortable place to be though, but it’s a way of letting myself off the hook, because what happens is partly going to be down to chance, to luck, to how the materials behave.

Sometimes the best part is when I look at blank paper and am clueless.

It’s nice to be clueless occasionally.

I’d love for people who think they aren’t at all creative to realise that you can make art quite simply and enjoyably without any special materials or skills. Some of the methods I use are very simple, just using shapes and repetition and everyday pens, pencils, biro, rulers etc and it is so beneficial for your mental health to just zone out with some doodling for a while. 

I’m going to try and share some work in progress stuff on the blog part occasionally, so you will be able to see my different approaches.

I hope you enjoy,

Thank you for reading!

Jane @idlescrawl