Doodling For Pain Relief.

I like to doodle. I've been a doodler all my life. As far back as I can remember, in times of stress, I'd doodle some nonsense creation or other. I got through school with doodles - I avoided the physical attention of the bullies by drawing weird looking characters to amuse them and they'd laugh instead of punching my lights out. If only they'd known that some of the doodles were of / about them!

In later life, through protracted meetings about targets and growth, I'd doodle obscene caricatures of the meeting attendees! It has kept me sane, or possibly insane, throughout my life.

These days I doodle to focus on something other than my pain. Writing in general tends to set off pains in my hands and fingers, but doodling needs a more relaxed hand to let the creativity flow so I can doodle for far longer than I can write.

I'm definitely no artist - though I do try, but sometimes what's intended to be a human eye turns into a slug, and most of what I doodle turns out cartoonified or bizarre. The thing is, it relaxes my mind. Helps me focus on something different and, for the breifest of times, takes my pain away.

Over the years I built up quite a collection of nonsense art - but most of it was accidentally thrown away last year - so I set up a web site to store my creations safely, for posterity and to allow others to share their ridiculous creations should they wish to do so - www.sillyart.co.uk is the site, if you'd care to take a look at some of what my odd mind churns out. (It's in development but will be updated soon with even more of my madness!) You might even want to share some of your doodles there.

Not all of my creations turn out to be doodles, some I'm actually quite pleased with, like this one: 

. But most turn out to be bizarre - like these:

How do you relieve the stress of being in constant pain?

If, like me, you find yourself doodling some mad creation, or even an actual, real, work of art, I'd love you to share it with me on the site - you can upload your art at www.sillyart.co.uk/contact.html .

Happy scribbling!