Oodles of Doodles

To pass the time, senior Maddie Winters creates drawings to share on Instagram

When most people are bored on their Zoom classes they scroll through Instagram or TikTok feeds, however senior Maddie Winters created art doodles for her friends. 

In fact, Winters said she started her doodle Instagram account because of boredom in class. 

“I started the doodle account on January 20th because I was bored and needed something to do during my online classes,” she said. 

She said the idea came to her when she drew a picture of her friend for his birthday. 

“It didn’t take long so I thought I’d start an art account just for fun,” she said. 

The popularity of the account soon exploded. To date, she has 96 followers. 

“The account gained popularity from people who already followed me on Instagram. People like free drawings so I think everyone got excited at the possibility of their pictures becoming art. It kinda just spread like a game of telephone I guess,” she said. 

Winters said her inspiration comes from pictures people send to her, 

“I draw pictures in my camera roll and pictures that people DM me on Instagram,” WInters said.

he does this using the app Procreate on her iPad. Since she started her hobby in late January, she has not been bored since, because she has so many doodle requests. 

“I’m not sure how many requests I’ve gotten, but the account is only about two weeks old and I’ve uploaded almost 60 drawings. I’ve drawn pretty much every request I’ve received (besides a bunch of spam photos my friends sent me-although I drew a ton of those too),” She said.“The crazy doodles are always my favorite to draw.” 

Winters said most of her doodles do not take long to create.

“I actually timed myself on how long the doodles take me. I finished about 9 doodles in an hour (so less than 10 minutes each). People tend to think they take much longer but I’ve always been a fast worker,” Winters said.  

Winters said she has been making art her entire life. 

“One could argue that living life in itself is art but we don’t have to go that deep in a simple yearbook spread,” she said. 

She sometimes takes creative liberties with the doodles she does for people. 

“Some doodles have more creative liberty than others. If a close friend requests a doodle I typically have a little more fun with it. Possibly just to mess with them since they know they can coerce me into giving them more drawings,” she said.

Winters said she  has even experimented some with her doodles., 

“I sometimes use some more fun colors to exaggerate the “doodlyness” of the drawings,” Winters said.

She is currently attending St. Louis Community College for some of her art classes and says that she is planning to major in art.

“I would love a future in it, so a business isn’t out of the question!” 

You can see Winters’ cool drawings on her Instagram, @dood_uls.