In wanting to get active with my fellow doodler community, I wanted to stop in and introduce myself. My name is Dalton Stark, I live in Texas, and i'm a doodle addict, and an advocate for the possibility of anything. For me, doodling is my purest state of being human. My sketchbooks are a very sacred place for me to practice this expressive and arcane form of imagination meditation, which I'm always trying to find more excuses to spend more time in. It is to me, all about intuition, making discoveries, surprising yourself, having fun and maybe even making yourself and others smile or laugh sometimes. I look forward to being a part of this beautiful inky ecosystem with y'all, here are some very secret sketchbook spreads.
My vision of the character ‘Smaug’ from J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’.
Pencil sketch, coloured digitally on IbisPaint X.
Here is a passage from The Hobbit describing Smaug’s appearance: “There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light. Smaug lay, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat, turned partly on one side, so that the hobbit could see his underparts and his long pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long lying on his costly bed.”
Fineliner scribblings on a back ground of paper... . . . ... . . . . . . ..... . ... . . . . . ...... ... . . A rabble of sozzled birds on a tightrope of joy heading towards the puppet master up above. . . .... . . ... . .... .. .... .. ... . . . . Prints are available (16 out of 20 at the time of going to press) . ..............................
Doodle with Pentel brush, and posca! A little bit note to self. "In between goals is a thing called life that has to be lived and enjoyed." by Sid Caesar.
This is part of an ongoing series. This time we pass through The Great Exhibition and meet the different characters there to view art or just to socialise and hang out.
I am an art teacher with a master’s degree—trained by brilliant professors who believed that art could do more than decorate walls. I offer safe spaces for teenagers to grow—nourishing soil where their imaginations can take root.
And yet… I am assigned to hallway duty.
This is compulsory education, after all.
So I sit—posted like a sentinel—watching young lives stream past.
“Get to class,” I say with a smile and a nudge.
The system wants attendance; I’m hungry for presence.
Armed not with a whistle or clipboard, but with a pen—
my scribble’s soft insurgency.
The hallway stretches out like a geometric hymn.
Columns and corners chant structure.
Teenagers swirl past—half-formed galaxies of limbs and laughter—
their orbits chaotic, their gravity pulling time forward.
I begin to draw.
Not their tardiness, but their motion.
A shoulder. A blur of sneakers.
A tilted head chasing freedom.
Feet flickering like seconds.
Each mark a pulse.
Each smudge a breath.
My paper becomes a seismograph of seeing—
trembling gently through the mundane.
This isn’t about making art for a frame or a feed.
It’s about refusing to leak away in the fluorescent hum of obligation.
It’s a quiet mutiny against the clock.
I do this on long car rides, too (passenger side, mind you).
Letting the lines grow wild, jagged, and unapologetic.
Not for polish—
but for presence.
This is how I remember I’m still alive.
Still growing.
Still watching.
Still choosing to see.
Because sometimes mental health looks like
a piece of scrap paper,
a moving pen,
and the simple, sacred act of
marking time with wonder.
"Say hello to these rabbits & they'll say hello right back,
Just don't offer them carrot flavored jello as a snack.
'Cause it's more than they can stand, and they're likely to attack,
And when a rabbit bites your hand then you'll have to bite it back!"
It got cold very quickly and the fog was there, moving thickly around us, shutting us in on all sides. The smooth swell rolled out of the fog, crawled under the raft with a swallowing movement and rolled back into the fog the other side.
....
Albert picked it up by the neck and looked at it, and it began to screech and flap one wing.
Let it go! I shouted. Everything looked so terrifying with the fog and the black water and the bird creeping around and screaming that I was beside myself and said: give it to me, I'll hold it in my lap, we must make it well again.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
#20 Cartoon Doodles - I have been in the mood to draw simple cartoons characters lately. Of course I don’t like to copy the original artist’s style. I prefer to change it up a little. Half of this was drawn on magma(dot)com, the other half was drawn in ibis paint (iPad pro). No Ai garbage used!
