Category: Doodles

Doodles — The First Installment

My father, Peter Robertson, loved to doodle.  We knew this and marveled at his hilarious and complex doodles. What we did not know is that he saved many of them — over 700 of them!  He passed in 1997 and I’ve been gradually – very gradually – scanning his notes and papers since then. This year, I finally got around to scanning his doodles.  My favorites – culled from the mid-700s down to just over 120 – are all here on Flickr:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterclendeninrobertson/albums/72157716169142263

Here’s a timely example for any of our readers in Georgia!

Doodle that looks sort of like a complex cornice, with the word "VOTE" across an oblong part of the middle.

I wanted to start with a couple of specific thoughts and doodles, and will add more to the blog over time. 

There were only three sets of doodles that he had grouped by time period:  1955-56; 1977-78; and 1979-81.  The remainder were loose, though he added dates to some of them, generally dates in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the latest dated 1994. 

This is, as near as I can tell, the first; that is, it’s the first page of the binder labeled 1955-56.  He would have been a junior in college:

Very random and dense set of curved lines, randomly intersection, with many of the intesticies filled in with red or black ink.

His style remained . . . unformed. 

Most of the 1955-56 doodles are in this sort of ink — fountain pen?  By the next dated doodle — 1967 — he had discovered Flair pens, which would his preferred medium — for doodling, drafting analyses of fair employment laws, and writing long newsy letters to his kids — for the rest of his life. 

Most of his doodles seem to start with a random curvy line, and then go from there.  Some not very far:

Very basic line drawing of either a fish or torpedo.

Doodle consisting of single looping line, with a face (eyes; eyebrows; nose; smile) sketched into the loop.

 

Doodle consisting of single looping line, with a face (eyes; eyebrows; nose; smile) sketched into the loop, a heart sketched where the body would be, and lines suggesting (?) hands or feet.

Others were incredibly complex.

Doodle of an hourglass, the top of which reads "Policy" with arrows flowing toward the bottom, which includes the words "Implementation Staff." There is a face at the narrow point of the hourglass, and a face in the "O" in Policy.

He mostly doodled on notebook or legal paper — and for a while the groovy colored notebook paper I favored in junior high school — but the collection also included hotel letterhead, conference folders, a page of statutory language,

Bird-like doodle over top of an exerpt from the statute governing disclosure of confidential information by government employees.

a paper plate,

Very abstract doodle of squiggly lines drawn on a paper plate.

and a place mat — from, of all places, Moncton, New Brunswick. 

Abstract doodle of curving lines filling in the empty space of the Chinese style drawing from on a paper placemat from the Palace Grill, 871 Main Street, Moncton, New Brunswick.

Many of the doodles were abstract, but there were recognizable themes.  He was a train buff, so

Doodle in the form of a train engine. From left to right, the cow-catcher reads, "discrimination," the body of the engine reads, "Guidlines Special," the cab reads "Dept. of Justice," the wheels read P I Gs, CRC, EEOC CSC, and OFCC.

Doodle of a locomotive with train tracks appearing to swoop over the top of it from bottom left to rop right of the doodle.

and many seemed to represent fish in one way or another

Doodle of fish -- with very roughly the triangular shape of an angel fish -- with a green nose, and red, green and blue fins.

Doodle of a large fish with pointy teeth eating a much smaller fish. The large fish contains the word "Reorganization;" the small fish contains the letters EEOC.

Some of my favorites were ones that incorporated words.  — some obviously related to the drawing itself:

Doodle of a watch (top left to bottom right) crossing what may be a horn (bottom left to top right). The watch face reads 11:30, and above and below it the word "Here's . . . ."; on the horn, the word Johnny.

(He was a big Johnny Carson fan.)  With others, I could picture him bored in a meeting, hearing a phrase, and passing the time by doodling it, like the “Guidelines” train above, or: 

The words "Policy Implementation" doodled into the shape of what might be a plane or bird, with the P and the O in Policy, and the A in Implmenetation containing faces.

Complex abstract doodle of an airplane, with the words "But Will It Fly?" scattered throughout, along with several nervous-looking faces.

I’ll close with the doodle I found to be the most touching:

Doodle of a stylized number "73" with the words, "Ruth Is The One I Love" woven into the numerals.

Ruth is my mother.

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Coda: I found the alt-text descriptions fun and very very challenging.  I hope they are helpful to blind readers.  If you’re sighted and feel like weighing in on my descriptions, that would be fun, too.