Tips & Hints- I will now refer to these as "Ask Leica"

Hetty here's my tips & hints for you. Thanks for asking me to do a specific topic. If anyone else wants to know how to do something very specific ask. I will demonstrate to the best of my abilities. So today I am going to introduce the very basics of Doodling!

• First, get a good pencil, the finer the tip the better. Practise drawing lines. Some straight, some curvy. Do this till you have fluent lines with no breaks in them. Surprisingly people don't understand how important it is that you can be consistent with making lines.

• second, try drawing circles. DO NOT make those perfect little round circles. They are so hard to work with. Instead make a close to perfect circle and then go over the line 2 or 3 times. This is called "gesture lines" They give you room to work with. Doodles are not meant to look flawless. Instead we want them to look effortless. Vary the darkness of each line to. Have a prominent line and then a softer one. This gives depth!!! Do this same technique with stars, squares, hearts, etc...

Swirls are the most common part of making doodles. They are definitely the prettiest to look at and the most feminine. This is where your practising circles comes in. Try drawing curvy lines that vary in height and thickness.

I always fill in the "curves" of the swirls. There is the most room to colour, or decorate with other designs.Start narrow, get wider than come back narrow. I tend to create my line within the curve but if you made your curves a little too tight then draw your second line on the outside of the curve. It doesn't matter. It might even work better for you. So try both ways until you are comfortable.

Here is where you can add colour if you like. Colour in the lines. Sometimes I leave these open too. I like to vary colouring, not colouring within the same curve design. It gives a cool look.

absolutely no matter what, DO NOT make your curvy lines equal height & width. It will just look like a row of u's.

This is much easier to work with.

Don't draw the curve lines in all the bumps. Leave some blank, otherwise it will be too much.

Practise drawing "infinity" symbols. Try equal sides, then make some larger and the other side smaller, etc...

Colour in the full parts of the curves. add slashes in the middle. Vary the designs that you do.

Sometimes you can just do plain doodles that make a big effect. Like a line around the photo that has a little loop on each corner. Sometimes I go over these lines because I really like the "messy/gesture" lines better. Quite often I add these little dots on edges of photos, layouts, anywhere that I want to make a small emphasis on.

I really try to make sure that when working with doodles I have strong & weak areas. The reason for this is you want to create focal points within your design. The photo should be the most important spot, so plan your doodles so they enhance your photo. If you want to large doodles, then they should absolutely mirror each other. Below is just an suggestion.

This is a little clearer what I mean.Have strong parts to a doodle and then weak (smaller) parts.

I really use many different tones in my doodles. Thick lines, thin lines, medium lines. dark lines, light lines. Have fun with it. I always, always draw my doodles in pencil first and then go over them. That way I don't wreck the page. Remember practise, practise, practise!!!!!!!

Hope this gives you a start, if you want to know more I teach lot's of classes on doodling. Below are a few dates. Come on down and have some fun!

• May 8th 7-9pm Doodling Basics
• May 15th 7-9pm Doodling Letters & Numbers
• May 29th 7-9pm Extreme Doodling
• June 6th 7-9pm Doodling Basics
• June 12th 7-9pm Multimedia Doodling