As a kid, Sam Cox used to cover his books and school work in inky doodles.
It’s a hobby the 28-year-old from Kent, England never outgrew. He studied illustration at the University of The West of England in Bristol, then gained social media fame by opening a “Mr. Doodle” pop-up shop in London in 2017. Two years later, Sam purchased a neo-Georgian mansion for £1.35 million (about $1.5 million U.S. currency).
Sam’s goal with his house was to transform it into a “Doodle House,” with every surface inside covered in his hand-drawn artwork. It’s an idea that came to him as a teenager, and he spent two years working on it. In October 2022, Mr. Doodle showed off the finished project in a two-minute stop-motion video.
“So happy and excited to have finally doodled my house,” he shared on Instagram. “I used 900 litres of white paint, 401 cans of black spray paint (for the outside), 286 bottles of black drawing paint (for the inside) and 2,296 pen nibs (I only used four different sized pens but they were refillable and the nibs were replaceable.”
“The animation was created entirely by me and it consists of 1,857 photographs, painstakingly taken between September 2020 and September 2022,” Sam continued. “The whole house is real, everything is doodled, the doodles were all hand doodled for the animation, it’s not CGI.”
Sam and his wife Alena plan to live inside the house, which he calls a living artwork.
“The completion of the Doodle House is just the beginning of my childhood dream to doodle the entire planet and to encourage the art world to recognise doodles as an art form,” Sam said, adding, “I am so excited that my doodles now have a permanent home in the UK.”
This is the longest project Sam has ever embarked upon, and he’s thrilled with the results. He did every single drawing himself and covered every square inch of the house, even the ceilings and kitchen dishes. He didn’t have a set idea in mind when tackling each section, but he did make sure each room has a theme.
“I had a rough idea of the theme but the individual doodles are spontaneous,” he told The Daily Mail. “My main inspiration still goes back to when I was kid watching Tom and Jerry, Wacky Races and SpongeBob SquarePants, and video games like Crash Bandicoot. I always wanted to draw characters for video games.”
Sam has no plans to quit being Mr. Doodle anytime soon. In fact, he’s hoping to take his talents to the next level by creating an entire Doodle Town. We can’t wait to see it!
Watch the video below to see all of Mr. Doodle’s incredible Doodle House, and don’t forget to share.
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