I pulled this clip off of You Tube, “Kamashitoo Doodle Wall Art.”
For me, it all started with Cindy Crawford. Many years ago, I saw an episode of Cindy Crawford’s House of Style show on MTV. I wasn’t a big fan of the show, I was just channel surfing one day, and it caught my eye. There was a segment where they showed a cheap way to liven up boring walls. The segment was aimed mostly at college kids, 20-somethings, and artsy types. The idea was to get big rolls of butcher paper, tape them securely to your walls, and then just let yourself and friends doodle all over it. The idea stuck in my head.
Later, in 2002, I wound up renting a super cheap little room from a Mexican family in Garden Grove, California. It was a tiny, jail cell sized room with no windows. Despite the two lights, it was pretty dark. It reminded me of a cave. Then the idea popped into my head. I could take the Cindy Crawford show idea, put butcher paper over the whole wall where the door was, including the back of the door. Then I could draw the mouth of a cave looking out at a killer sunset. It seemed like a good idea to me.
The first problem was that I couldn’t find butcher paper. But I soon found the big rolls of paper at Staples that cheerleaders use to make banners. I forget what they call that kind of paper now. Anyhow, I bought a couple rolls of that paper and a pack of 12 markers. I taped the paper up on that wall and started drawing. After a couple days of work, I finally admitted that it looked like crap. The standard marker colors were not the shades I wanted, and they were impossible to fade the way I had in mind. I’d never been much of a painter, so I decided I would figure out a way to make both texture and more subtle colors with markers. I threw away the cave mouth drawing attempt, and I taped a couple of 5-foot-long pieces of the paper vertically on the wall.
I started going through my old BMX and other alternative sports magazines, and cutting out my favorite pictures. A couple years earlier I’d made a huge collage on my wall of sports photos, BMX, skateboarding, snowboarding, rock climbing, and a few others. My roommate at the time, Chris Moeller, called it my Psyche Wall. I’d check out the photos a while of the best alternative sports athletes, and then grab my bike to go ride. I had those photos in a folder, and I started cutting out more. I made several big collages of sports photos, and I used the markers to make weird little designs between the photos, trying to ad some color and texture. It was a blast making those collages. It was the first time I could remember actually enjoying the process of making art, not just rushing to finish the piece like I always had before. I spent many great nights sitting there working on my collages, and experimenting with marker doodling techniques. I turned the Doodle Wall idea into Collage Wall Pieces, which I hung around the room when finished. The idea to find a way to shade and texture with markers started there for me.
Here are some more Doodle Wall videos to check out:
John Burgerman Doodling at ustwo London
Surface Gallery Doodle Wall: A true Doodle Wall in multiple colors, most of these above are single artist works in black and white. This one has a different feel to it, like a bathroom wall in the 70′s, but with less dick drawings.
Check out more of my work on Squidoo:
