How doodling unlocks your imagination

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Joe Whale |

Play@TED

• May 2026

Artist Joe Whale used to get in trouble for doodling in class, until a local restaurant let him cover an entire wall with his artwork … and the internet took notice. He traces his unlikely beginning to a bigger story: your imagination is a muscle, and it weakens when you hand it off to AI. Through a live doodling demo, he shows in real time what it looks like to let a thought become a drawing, one line at a time.