5*15 CREATIVITY EXERCISE SERIES — 11

Create 15 pieces of doodle artwork using only circles

This is your opportunity to go on creative adventures of sketching and doodling

Ladies and gentlemen;

In this series (15*15), I am very excited to design and present you 15 adventures and challenges in 15 days. The goal of these challenges is to help you expand your imagination and exercise your muscles of creativity.

I am developing these challenges in real-time — I hope you do enjoy and benefit from these exercises. And I hope you are not tired! This is the 11th day and 11th installment of that series.

The previous 10 challenges are below:

Your Challenge: Create 15 pieces of doodle artwork using only circles

In this challenge, I want you to create 15 small samples of doodle artwork. Creativity thrives better under constraints. So, each of your doodles should be made up of circles.

In other words, you can doodle as you wish, but circles should be the central feature in each of your doodles.

Here is an example video of how you could do this:

Here is another:

I also love creating lots of doodle circles, like the one below. You can also try it:

Another way to do this is to start with a circle and turn it into a different object each time:

If you feel more adventurous, you can even create a mandala:

For the purposes of this exercise, you do not delve into too much detail. Aim for 2–3 minutes of doodling for each box.

Doodling is easy to do and the process will make you feel calm and relaxed. You will feel a strange sense of flow and satisfaction. Why not try it now?

You will benefit a lot from exercising your creative muscles and getting out of your comfort zone. You will also experience a bit of ambiguity and uncertainty.

We need to give our brain creative challenges every day. If we make this a habit, the process will help us rewire our brains to be more open to creativity.

It is important to start small and treat these exercises as pure play. They are small experiments in imagination. They work much better if you stop judging your work and obsessing over the quality of your writing.

All masterpieces start with small steps. Small actions are all that you need. You will instantly jump in the water without thinking. Thinking too much hurts your creativity because it paralyzes you. Every creative act starts with taking a leap of faith into the unknown. Each time you jump into the unknown makes you more adventurous, confident, open, and creative.

Below, you will see my doodle adventures — each page featuring lots of circle doodles:

See you in the 12th episode of this journey tomorrow.

I hope we can all be naive, curious, open, vulnerable, and foolish like children. As these are the foundations of all learning and creativity.

Fahri

Fahri Karakas is the author of the Self-making Studio. You can explore more here.