Doodle art is spontaneous, often meditative drawing that ranges from notebook margins to structured Zentangle and mandala patterns. Learn its history and practice.
In 1938, during a particularly dull faculty meeting at Princeton, the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam began doodling numbers on a sheet of paper. He arranged integers in a spiral and started circling the prime numbers. The pattern that emerged, primes clustering along diagonal lines, became known as the Ulam spiral, and it revealed something about the distribution of primes that mathematicians had not previously noticed. A doodle, made during a boring meeting, produced a mathematical discovery. This is not the usual outcome of doodling, but it illustrates something fundamental about the practice: when the conscious mind is occupied with something else, the hand can produce patterns and connections that deliberate thought does not reach.
Doodle art is spontaneous, often unconscious drawing produced while the mind is focused elsewhere, or deliberate pattern-drawing that mimics that spontaneous quality. It ranges from the idle marks made in notebook margins during meetings and phone calls to structured practices like Zentangle and mandala doodling, which use repetitive pattern-making as a meditative discipline. Doodle art has moved from the margins of visual culture, literally the margins of notebooks, into a recognized practice with growing research support for its therapeutic and cognitive benefits.
This entry covers what doodle art is, how it developed from marginalia to structured meditative practice, which practitioners and researchers defined it, and how it functions today in art therapy and popular culture.
The word "doodle" originally meant a fool or simpleton, dating to 17th-century English. By the 20th century, it had shifted to mean absent-minded drawing. The core characteristic of doodling is that it is produced without a predetermined plan or representational goal. The hand moves, the pen makes marks, and patterns emerge from the repetition of simple elements: loops, spirals, cross-hatching, dots, waves, geometric shapes. The doodler may not be looking at the paper. The marks are often small, confined to the edges of a page, and made while attention is directed at something else: a lecture, a phone call, a meeting.
Doodle art, as a deliberate practice, takes this spontaneous quality and turns it into a method. The most prominent structured form is Zentangle, developed in 2003 by Maria Thomas, a calligrapher and illustrator, and Rick Roberts, a former monk with 17 years of monastic training. Thomas noticed that she entered a state of focused calm while drawing repetitive patterns, and Roberts recognized this state as meditation. Together they designed Zentangle as an easy-to-learn, relaxing method for creating intricate images through structured patterns, accessible to people with no prior drawing experience. A core principle of Zentangle is the absence of mistakes or predetermined outcomes, fostering a non-judgmental approach to creativity.
A 2026 randomised controlled trial published in Mindfulness evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of a mindfulness-based Zentangle intervention for parents reporting depression or anxiety symptoms. The study found that two weekly 2-hour Zentangle sessions demonstrated feasibility, high acceptability, and non-significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and stress compared to a waitlist control. The authors concluded that a fully powered trial is required to evaluate effectiveness, but the intervention showed promising exploratory signals. Read the study at Mindfulness.
Doodling is as old as writing itself. Medieval scribes filled the margins of manuscripts with small drawings: animals, faces, spirals, and grotesques that had nothing to do with the text. These marginalia were not commissioned illustrations. They were the spontaneous productions of hands that needed something to do while the mind was occupied with copying. The Book of Kells (c. 800 CE) contains marginal doodles alongside its formal illuminations, and the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1325-1340) is famous for its marginal images of daily life, some of which have the spontaneous quality of doodles.
In the 20th century, the Surrealists formalized spontaneous mark-making as a technique. Andre Masson's automatic drawings (1924-1925) were produced by allowing the hand to move without conscious control, creating images that emerged from the unconscious. While Masson's work was deliberate in its commitment to automatism, it shared with doodling the principle that meaningful images can emerge from the hand without a predetermined plan.
In 2009, Jackie Andrade of the University of Plymouth published a study in Applied Cognitive Psychology showing that participants who doodled during a boring audio recording recalled 29% more information than those who did not. Andrade argued that doodling occupies just enough cognitive capacity to prevent the mind from fully wandering, thereby improving attention to the primary task. This study transformed the perception of doodling from a sign of inattention to a potential aid to concentration.
The Zentangle method, developed by Thomas and Roberts, formalized doodling into a teachable practice. The method uses small (3.5-inch square) paper tiles, micron pens, and pencils. The practitioner draws a light pencil border, adds a "string" (a random line that divides the tile into sections), and fills each section with a "tangle," a repetitive pattern with a specific name and step-by-step instructions. The process takes 15-30 minutes per tile and is designed to be portable and accessible.
Zentangle has spawned a global community of certified teachers and practitioners. While it is not classified as clinical therapy, it shares key principles with mindfulness-based art therapy (MBAT), which combines creative expression with mindfulness techniques. A systematic review reported the effectiveness of MBAT in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as in improving physical function and quality of life.
Mandala doodling applies the repetitive pattern principle of doodling to circular formats. The mandala, a Sanskrit word meaning "circle," has been used in Hindu and Buddhist traditions for centuries as a meditative and ritual object. Carl Jung introduced the mandala to Western psychology in the early 20th century, describing it as a symbol of the self and using mandala drawing with his patients as a therapeutic tool.
In the 2010s, mandala coloring books became a global phenomenon. A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Public Health examined digital mandala coloring as a mental health tool for university students. The study involved 60 students across two experiments and found that digital mandala coloring demonstrated efficacy in reducing self-reported state anxiety, with no significant difference from traditional paper-based coloring. Digital mandala coloring induced a higher level of flow state and showed stronger physiological calming effects, including greater reductions in heart rate and skin conductance. Read the study at Frontiers in Public Health.
Thomas and Roberts created Zentangle in 2003. Thomas brought her expertise as a calligrapher and illustrator, Roberts his background in meditation and monastic practice. Their collaboration produced a method that has been taught to thousands of certified Zentangle teachers (CZTs) worldwide. The Zentangle method is documented in their book The Book of Zentangle and a series of instructional publications. Their work represents the most successful formalization of doodling as a structured practice.
Andrade's 2009 study on doodling and memory was the first rigorous experimental evidence that doodling can improve cognitive performance rather than detract from it. Her finding that doodlers recalled 29% more information than non-doodlers changed the conversation around doodling in educational and workplace contexts, where it had previously been treated as a sign of distraction.
Jung's use of mandala drawing with patients, beginning in 1916, established the connection between circular pattern-making and psychological self-exploration. Jung created his own mandalas daily from 1916 to 1919, documenting them in his Red Book. He described the mandala as "the center that symbolizes the self" and argued that creating mandalas helped his patients access and integrate unconscious material. Jung's work laid the theoretical foundation for the therapeutic use of mandala doodling and coloring that research has validated in recent years.
Brown is the author of The Doodle Revolution (2014), which argued that doodling is a cognitive tool that enhances creativity, problem-solving, and information processing. Brown's TED talk on doodling has been viewed millions of times and helped shift public perception of doodling from a waste of time to a legitimate thinking tool. She distinguishes between "informational doodling" (doodling while processing information, as in Andrade's study) and "generative doodling" (doodling to generate new ideas).
The therapeutic applications of doodle art, particularly mandala-based practices, have been extensively studied in recent years. A 2026 randomised controlled trial published in Cancer Causes & Control investigated the effects of mandala activity on postoperative pain, anxiety, and analgesia use in gynecologic oncology patients. The study found that mandala activity significantly reduced both pain and anxiety levels postoperatively. Read the study at Springer Nature.
A 2026 cluster randomised controlled trial published in the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine examined the effects of mandala coloring on caregivers of palliative care patients. The intervention group participated in mandala coloring sessions 4 days per week for 4 weeks. The intervention group showed significantly lower perceived stress and state anxiety scores, and significantly higher quality of life scores compared to the control group. Read the study at Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine.
A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry explored the effects of mandala drawing therapy on social interaction disorders in children with autism. The experimental group received mandala drawing therapy alongside standard rehabilitation training for one month. The experimental group exhibited greater improvements in language, communication, and social skills compared to pre-test scores, though no statistically significant between-group differences were detected. Read the study at Frontiers in Psychiatry.
While doodle art is often associated with amateur practice and therapeutic use, it has also entered fine art contexts. Artists like Jon Naar, who photographed graffiti and doodles on New York streets in the 1970s, and Keith Haring, whose chalk drawings in New York subway stations in the early 1980s grew from a doodle-like impulse, demonstrated that spontaneous mark-making could produce work worthy of gallery exhibition. Haring's subway drawings, made on blank advertising panels, were not planned compositions. They were produced rapidly, in the flow of the moment, and their visual language of radiant babies, barking dogs, and dancing figures grew directly from the doodle tradition.
Contemporary artists continue to work in this space. The Zentangle-inspired work of artists like Maria Thomas has been exhibited in galleries. The mandala drawings of artists like Kathy Klein, who creates temporary mandalas from flower petals and natural materials, extend the doodle tradition into environmental and ephemeral art.
Doodle art connects to gesture drawing, which shares the emphasis on spontaneous, unplanned mark-making. It relates to automatic drawing in the Surrealist tradition, where the hand moves without conscious control. The meditative dimension links it to sumi-e, Japanese ink painting, which also emphasizes mindfulness and the quality of the brushstroke. The pattern-making aspect connects to Islamic geometric art, where repetitive geometric patterns serve both decorative and spiritual functions. For more on drawing as a practice, read our post on drawing fundamentals, or explore our guide to doodle art explained for a deeper look at styles and history.
Doodle art is not typically collected in museums in its raw form, since the most authentic doodles exist in notebooks, on napkins, and in the margins of documents. The Morgan Library in New York holds literary and historical manuscripts that contain marginalia by writers and artists, including doodles by Sylvia Plath, John Keats, and others. The British Library holds similar collections of annotated manuscripts.
For Zentangle and structured doodle art, the Zentangle website hosts galleries of work by certified teachers and practitioners. For mandala art, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York holds traditional Tibetan Buddhist mandalas, including sand mandalas that are periodically created and destroyed as part of public exhibitions. To understand how doodle art connects to broader drawing practices, read our entries on gesture drawing and sumi-e, or explore our post on doodle art explained for a comprehensive look at the practice.
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