Simple Bullet Journal Doodles Anyone Can Draw
Nine small doodles built from circles, rectangles and curves, a potted plant drawn in four steps and a set of tiny icons you can use as category markers in your notebook.
Tutorial at a glance
Materials
- Pencil and soft eraser
- 0.3 mm fineliner
- 0.1 mm fineliner for tiny icons
- Mild-color highlighters or colored pencils
Simple bullet journal doodles are built from shapes you already know how to draw: circles, ovals, triangles, rectangles and short curved lines. You do not need drawing skill, only the habit of seeing a mug as a rectangle with a half circle on its side.
This guide covers nine small doodles, a potted plant drawn step by step and a set of tiny icons you can use as category markers. Once you have drawn each one a few times, it takes roughly a minute or less.
Tools and the pencil-first routine
Two tools are enough: a pencil with a soft eraser and a fineliner of about 0.3 mm. A finer 0.1 mm tip is useful for tiny icons, and one or two mild-color highlighters or colored pencils add color without soaking through the page.
The routine is always the same. Sketch the basic shape lightly in pencil, ink the lines you want to keep, wait about a minute for the ink to dry, then erase the pencil. Color goes on last. Erasing too soon is the usual cause of smears, so if you are unsure about a pen, test it on a back page first.
On a dot grid, use the dots as a size guide. A doodle that fits inside a block of 4 by 4 squares, about 0.8 inch (2 cm) on a 5 mm grid, sits comfortably beside a header without crowding the text.
Nine doodles from basic shapes
- Leaf. Two curved lines that meet in a point at each end, like a narrow eye. Add one line down the middle.
- Star. Draw the classic five-point outline in one continuous line, or cross three short strokes through a center point for a quick asterisk star.
- Cloud. A flat line for the base, then three bumps above it, the middle one tallest.
- Mug. A rectangle slightly taller than it is wide, with a half circle on one side for the handle. Two wavy lines above it suggest steam.
- Potted plant. A tapered pot with a stem and two leaves. The steps are in the next section.
- Sun. A circle with short straight rays all around. Alternate long and short rays for a livelier look.
- Moon. Pencil a circle, then a second curve inside it, and ink only the crescent.
- Heart. Two bumps at the top that meet in a point below. Drawing each half separately keeps it even.
- Envelope. A rectangle with a V running from the top corners to the center.
Draw each doodle five or six times in a row on a spare page. The first two will look uneven; by the fifth, your hand knows the order of the strokes.
Step by step: a potted plant
- Draw the pot. Make a short horizontal line for the rim, about 3 squares wide. Add two lines slanting inward below it and a shorter line to close the base. A thin band under the rim is optional.
- Draw the stem. Add one gently curved line rising from the middle of the rim, about 3 squares tall.
- Add two leaves. Place a leaf shape on each side of the stem, one a little higher than the other, each with a center line.
- Finish. Ink the outline, erase the pencil and add color: for example, a warm tone on the pot and green on the leaves. Leave a thin white strip down one side of the pot as a highlight.
Once the basic version feels easy, vary it. Three stems instead of one, round leaves instead of pointed ones or a taller pot give you a small family of plants from the same four steps.
Tiny icons as category markers
Doodles become useful when they carry meaning. A tiny icon in front of a task tells you its category before you read the words: an envelope for email, a phone for calls, a house for home tasks, a book for reading or study and a shopping cart for errands.
Keep these icons about one square high so they fit on a single line, and draw them with as few strokes as possible. The house is a square with a triangle on top. The phone is a tall rounded rectangle with a dot at the bottom. The book is a rectangle with a vertical line near one edge for the spine. The cart is a small tilted box with two dots for wheels.
Icons work alongside your rapid-logging bullets, not in place of them. The dot still marks a task and the X still marks it done; the icon sits in the margin as an extra signifier. Add each one to your bullet journal key so its meaning stays the same from page to page.
Tip
Limit yourself to four or five category icons. Beyond that, you spend more time remembering what each one means than you save by using them.
Where doodles belong on a page
Decoration is optional, and a page works without it. If you do add doodles, place them where they do not compete with your writing:
- beside a title, to mark the start of a section; they pair well with these bullet journal headers
- in one corner of a spread, as a single small cluster
- in a box left empty at the end of a week
- on a monthly cover, where a repeated motif sets a theme; these seasonal bullet journal themes suggest motif sets for each season
One motif repeated three times looks more deliberate than three different motifs used once each. The same goes for color: two colors across a whole spread are easier to keep tidy than six.
When a doodle goes wrong
A wobbly line is rarely worth a new page. Thicken the outline slightly to hide the wobble, add a second leaf to cover a stray mark or turn a blot into a small filled shape. For bigger slips, the guide on how to fix bullet journal mistakes covers paper patches and correction tape.
Keep a practice page at the back of your notebook, too. Trying a new doodle there first takes a few seconds and keeps the experiments away from the pages you use every day.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be good at drawing to doodle in a bullet journal?
No. Every doodle here is built from circles, rectangles, triangles and short curves. Drawing the same shape five or six times on a practice page is usually enough for the strokes to feel familiar, and small uneven lines tend to disappear once the doodle is inked and colored.
What pen is best for small doodles?
A fineliner between 0.1 and 0.3 mm gives clean outlines at small sizes. Sketch in pencil first, ink over it and erase once the ink is dry. For color, mild highlighters or colored pencils are less likely to show through thin paper than heavily inked markers.
How big should a doodle be?
For decoration beside a header, a block of about four by four squares on a 5 mm dot grid works well. Category icons that sit in front of a task should be about one square high so they fit on a single line of writing.
