This article is written by Francesca Albini

I am a doodler. I doodle on a dedicated sketchbook while watching TV, I doodle on scraps of paper when I’m talking on the phone or writing notes. When I buy a new pen or marker, or I see one lying around, I just have to pick it up and make squiggles, cartoony faces, trees, eyes, noses, whatever comes to mind. I also do digital doodles on my mobile phone.

And I hate throwing my doodles away – they are free, spontaneous, funny. Let me share with you some ideas of what you can do with your doodles. You can rip them up randomly, glue them to your journals, adding glazes of watercolour and other marks to form an interesting, almost abstract, background. You can scan them and turn them into digital brushes (do a search for “custom brushes” to see how to do it in different programmes). For instance, I print patterned paper using my doodle brushes in different colours, opacity and sizes.

I also print borders for my pages. I stick strips of masking tape on a transparency or vellum paper that I can run through my printer, and use the decorated masking tape to make borders or attach photographs. I also scan some coloured doodles and print them on white or transparent adhesive paper to make stickers.

Or I simply cut the originals with scissors and arrange them into a collage. Here are some examples from my journal pages. I hope they will inspire you and make you think twice before chucking your doodles away. They too can find a place in your art.

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Francesca is a visual artist using pretty much everything she finds around her to record and relive feelings and memories of places and emotions. She collages, paints, draws, photographs.

Francesca loves mixing modern technology, such as mobile phone apps, with the simplest of tools such as glitter glue, crayons and other children’s art supplies.

You can see more of Francesca’s work at www.franvisions.net

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