Mr Doodle!
When you meet someone in their home, the décor will tell you a little about their personality. Sat in the living room with Mr Doodle in the Doodle House is a window into the imagination of a tirelessly creative mind.
Sam Cox AKA Mr Doodle in this Doodle House
“Pretty much all the time I’m awake, I’m spending it doing something related to what I do as an artist, as a doodler. I make sure that I draw every day.”
When did doodling enter your life?
Sam. From the age of three or four, I used to draw pictures of frogs, aliens and waterfalls in sketchbooks my parents gave me. Cartoons and video games inspired me. I played a game called Crash Bandicoot, which changed my life. It made me want to draw characters all the time and create environments for them to live in. The colours, how the graphics looked, and the character design inspired me, and I wanted to be a video game creator. I thought that the characters I was drawing would become part of video games at some point, and I could design levels and develop the games around an interactive world where the characters would live.
I got my first recognition for drawings when I was about ten. I won a competition to design a mural for a building in our school. This mobile building was where they taught music. So my design had instruments, people playing the guitars, and stuff like that. That was my first public piece of artwork, which was cool to see. From then on, I wanted to see my work on walls and in public spaces.
When I was 11 or maybe younger, I covered my bedroom walls with sheets of A4 paper with little drawings all over the place, characters and comic book pages. I started drawing on small things like my wallet and ornaments in my room; I covered them with drawings. My parents ran a furniture shop at this time; they gave me old pieces of furniture. So I could draw on different things and test my drawings on tables, chairs, etc. So I started to create characters to fit the various spaces around the object, down a chair leg or across the arm. Everything would fit into the shapes and become a pattern; I call it a happy doodle virus that consumes everything in its path. I asked my mum if I could draw on the walls of my room, and she said, could you cover it with like lining paper first and then it is removable? I didn’t want to do that; it doesn’t look as real if you do that. So I just started doing it on the wall, and after a few hours, she came and saw it and said that’s kind of all right.
I had great teachers at school. I did a project called Obsession in graphics class. You had to choose something you were obsessed with and create a project out of it or document other people’s obsessions. My teacher, Morgan, said to me you’re obsessed with drawing. Which was true; I would spend all night drawing. I’d stay up till four or five in the morning doing drawings and see how the process of staying up late would change them. I’d draw on all sorts of different things my parents’ furniture, walls, scraps of paper, lamp posts and all kinds of bits, all over the place. So I built this work ethic where I knew if I was awake, I wanted to draw and be creative.
Some days I could spend 16 or 17 hours drawing, which continued until I went to university. And then, at uni, I would stay up all night in my room, just drawing on stuff, then going into the university and drawing on the walls around the campus. One day, I drew all over my clothes, and I went to university wearing them, one of my tutors, Phil took a picture of me and said on Instagram, this is Sam Cox, The Doodle Man. I thought that was a cool name. I went with The Doodle Man for a few years before shortening it to Mr Doodle.
Starting on this path from an early age, how did your style develop through university and beyond?
Sam. Looking at my doodles today, I can see a clear link to what I did when I was 15. It is the same thing for me, but it has developed and grown as I’ve grown and maybe become more like icons, simplified in a good way, and less fussy. But it’s constantly been of this ilk since I was about 14 or 15 when my teachers would show me books on graffiti and street artists. So that encouraged me to want to create work in this way. It felt the most natural and the best way to express myself.
At school in the sixth form, Morgan suggested I should go on to study illustration because he thought that was the best fit for what I did rather than fine arts or maybe graphics, which is what I was studying at school. So I went to UWE in Bristol. The course asked us to try out different things and include a narrative within the drawing, which I struggled with because I don’t like to put meanings or stories within what I do. I want to create a collage of many characters doing different things without political meanings or narratives.
“To me, the best living artist is Banksy, he does political stuff, and everyone knows of him for doing that. As much as I admire his work, I purposely want my work not to be about politics. I want my work to be the opposite, with no real message; it’s just meant to be fun and happy.”
As time passed, I developed the Mr Doodle character and created an evil twin and an anti-doodle squad who want to erase all of Mr Doodle’s creations. So these elements of the storytelling came into the work but not physically. That’s the way I found of working, which came in the third year of my studies, the concept and branding for the Mr Doodle character. There was a lot of stuff on the course that didn’t feel natural to me, I tried a bunch of different styles, but I always gravitated back towards doodling.
How did you start to introduce your work to people and get it noticed?
Sam. At university, in my first year, I drew on a kebab shop and fish and chip shop in return for meals. I wasn’t charging much for my work; I was creating work to build a portfolio. So, I did a bunch of shops and murals for schools to practice and gave myself canvases to roam free all over. No one was particular about what themes I had to do or including specific items and things, I could draw what I wanted, but I’d always try to make it relevant to the environment.
I started putting my work on social media, Facebook and Instagram, and people started asking, could you come and do like my son’s bedroom, or can you come and paint our work van? So, I started by doing these low-level commissions, which was fantastic; it gave me a bit of money. Then I got in touch with some agencies in London. Outside Collective, at the time, did a lot of graffiti and street art installations for brands. I started painting with them, and we collaborated with some artists I’d already heard of. It was cool to meet them and work together. They got me gigs like painting a wall for Converse and a JD Sports store on Oxford Street. This led to me being appropriately paid for work and getting my work out there.
Those projects were happening whilst I was on my course at university, and I was using that work as part of my projects and making it all fit. This gave me a foot in the door when I left university because I already had a mini network of people. When I graduated, my parents said they’d support me for a year; if my career wasn’t going well, I needed to get a different job. Luckily it went well, and jobs came in; a tunnel in Shoreditch was my first year after leaving uni, and I painted many big available walls in London, in the Shoreditch area.
I contacted a company called Global Street Art, which has hoardings and walls available; they let me paint a bunch. So, I would always write Doodle Man or Mr Doodle next to the work. So that led to loads of bloggers and other people taking and posting photos of themselves next to the work. It spread the word and got my stuff out there. People were asking me to come and paint bits of furniture, their hallways and other things. I started getting the work I wanted.
I got offered exhibition space at Hoxton Gallery, off Old Street at the time. That was my first solo show in London. I lived in the space; they said I had three weeks or something like that and could do whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to pay for the gallery space. I just split the profits when the work sold with the gallery. So, I lived downstairs in the gallery and worked all day and most of the night, painting all the walls, making some canvases, and creating a story of Mr Doodle and his evil twin who had his room out the back.
“I think good things happen when time is restricted, and you just go for it.”
That led to many collaborations with companies and brands; I have covered phone covers, clothing etc., just seeing how it can fit doodles into a commercial brief. And those projects have allowed me to pursue personal projects like the Doodle House.
How did doodling a Tesla come about, and what’s the feedback been?
Sam. We looked at different cars we could get, and I knew I wanted to draw over whatever we bought. I’m into what Elon Musk is doing and the Tesla brand, and I thought it’d be a cool thing to draw all over a Tesla. At some point, I want to get my doodles into outer space. I thought it’ll be a great link with Elon’s SpaceX. So, I drew on the Tesla and made a mini video. We drive it around, and I thought Tesla might hear about it and get in contact, but not yet. We still love the project, and I love it as a car.
We get lots of waves when we are out in the car. Seeing all the kids enjoying looking at it and taking pictures is great. What’s important to me is that anyone can look at the car and consider doodles a valuable work of art, not just think of them as throw-away drawings. So many people can doodle and choose not to because they might think it’s not a valid way to express themselves. By drawing over things like the Tesla or the house, people know how much something like that is worth; they can see that doodles are worthy of covering that surface. I think it helps the whole movement of doodles become more of an accepted form of art.
You mentioned dreaming of living in a doodle environment since you were young; how did it become a reality?
Sam. I saw this house in May 2019. I was looking at houses constantly at that time. It is only five minutes from where I was living with my parents. It’s perfect; my parents are close by, it’s in the town I grew up in, and I wanted to draw on it. We looked around the place, and I was inspired by it. When I saw the rooms, I immediately thought about a time-lapse video for the whole space and how I could do different rooms. The ideas have slightly changed, but the basics of how I initially thought it would look are still there. It’s been a dream project.
I started storyboarding the time-lapse before we bought the house. I’d drawn how it would work with each room, how the drawing would flow, and where I would be standing. I planned how I’d interact with the drawing and make it splash over different surfaces. Initially, I thought it might take two months to turn it into a blank white space. And maybe another three months to doodle over the building. So, I thought it was only going to be a five-month project. I invited Morgan around a couple of weeks after I got the keys to the place. Morgan, my former graphics teacher back at school, is now my creative director. I told him my plan and how long I thought it would take.
He burst my bubble, but for the best reasons, he said, you’ve got to be careful about it and strip everything out properly, get a project manager in. Because I was going to get someone to come in and blast everything with white paint, as it was like any furniture that was there, just anything and everything; just blast it white with a paint gun. But there were fittings and things within the rooms that were a bit fussy. It was so much better to take the time and strip everything out.
My Uncle Graham, a carpenter by trade, became the project manager for the whole project. Following Morgan’s advice, he got a team of people in and stripped back the rooms and made the space much simpler and more accessible for drawing. That process took seven or eight months, and I started drawing in September 2020, which felt like a long time after December 2019, when I bought the place. Then the drawing process took two years to complete. I was not going to rush; I treasured the time to make it the best thing I’ve ever done by taking my time.
This last week the global media visited you at home in Tenterden; how have you been with this constant attention?
Sam. This week has been one of the best of my life, after my wedding and other important milestones. In terms of my work, it’s been great, and I’ve loved it. Even though we have had a lot of people in the house and TV crews, photographers and journalists, it’s capturing my baby, my project, and it’s been so worthwhile. I haven’t found it stressful; I just loved every minute. It’s been a celebration.
I couldn’t be happier with the location and the house’s appearance. But, of course, you don’t know how everything will look until the end. So, I took the bins out this morning, and I walked back down the drive towards the house and just looked at it, and I feel overwhelmingly happy and proud about what I’ve done.
• Watch a video of the making of the Doodle House.
Sam Cox AKA Mr Doodle
www.mrdoodle.com
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