I was lucky enough to get to illustrate a beautiful Gorilla sculpture for Paignton Zoo. He took me 18 months to complete as he was under a purpose built awning at my house. Too hot and the pens dried up, too cold and my fingers froze! He now sits at the zoo and I miss him terribly! He Was decorated using acrylic markers on a white gloss base then varnished with car varnish.
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.
Ruskin believed that ornament was never decoration for its own sake — it was evidence of attention, a record of the hand and eye slowing down enough to truly see. These kaleidoscope name designs are built the same way: a name broken into line, repeated outward with discipline, until pattern becomes a kind of patience made visible.mandala, kaleidoscope, radial symmetry, pattern art, geometric art, name art, marker art, hand drawn, meditative art
Club XXS was exposed at a music festival in the netherlands and used as a mini club, with dj booth inside and a line-up! :) It's my biggest doodle till now and it was amazing fun to do! my focus was allready on trying bigger stuff, so then a chance came by to do this huge caravan. Awesome.
