Using doom scrolling as a sketch prompt

In mid April I was really hating my relationship with social media. I was finding I was wasting a lot of time scrolling, and then feeling really bad about it. It was like I was in search of something but only finding irritation and despair. And then I had an idea, what if I try to turn that mindless scroll into a sketch prompt?

I was worried it might be a really terrible idea, but I decided to give it a go anyway with some basic parameters.

My rules

• Once I notice I’m doom scrolling I need to pick something that catches my eye and sketch a response to it. Ideally taking no more than 5 minutes to pick something that will act as a prompt.

• These should be done loosely and quickly. I’d like to use this as idea generation to make new and interesting things inspired by what I’ve seen. The aim here isn’t to produce finished work, but rather to work out my drawing muscles. If i’m feeling extra inspired or particularly happy with the sketch I might create a cleaner version or even a full colour illustration.

• If I decide to share my sketch I’ll tag my references to connect the dots. I just hope no one gets annoyed that I’ve used their post as an initial reference.

• I’ll tag everything I do for this as #doomscrollsketch on instagram.

In the example above the original post was from @piccolinadoublebay. When I was sketching it I thought it looked a bit like a bird so I’ve emphasised that, and feel like it makes sense for a coffee pot to be a morning lark.

Initially I just posted when I felt like it. I didn’t want to place too much pressure on myself. After a couple of weeks I found that I was beginning to look at things a little differently. I was replacing the empty despair with something that was beginning to feel a bit more playful and fun. A bit more like a game.

In the example above the original post I saw on instagram was from @hiromitsu.430. I then I made some rough pencil sketches followed by a colour version as I found I got really into drawing Japanese theatre masks.

I mentioned this sketch prompt project to my mentor Pilar Garcia de Leaniz Rodriguez and she suggested that I join the #100DaysProjectScotland2024 challenge with it, so I did. Last week was my first week of posting daily and after an initial feeling of dread I actually quite enjoyed it.

I’m not sure what will come out of all this. Some days I’ll be really into it, some days I’ll be too busy with client work and will only have time to post a scrappy little doodle and I’m sure there will be days when I just won’t feel like it at all and it’ll be really hard. But hopefully it ends up being fun and interesting, and helps be curb my bad scrolling habit.

Here are a few of my favourite doom scroll sketches and illustrations so far.

If you’d like to follow along and see my progress you can find me at @thunder_and_icecream on Instagram.