I invite you to doodle little rodent burrows, for your health

A zentangle alternative for people with worldbuilding proclivities

An invitation… to draw little guys

You, there: Have you drawn any elaborate underground tunnel systems lately?

Now, my audience is mostly oddballs, so it’s possible a quarter of you are going, “Of course we have, Natalie.” But for the other three quarters of you, I put together this how-to post about a fun (I think) and quasi-narrative-based doodle formula for when you’re listening to your podcasts or decompressing from your work.

Is that a thing people want?

I don’t know. It just struck me that it was a formula I sometimes go back to for process-doodling,¹ and which is kind of fun and funny, besides being effectively no-skills-required. And while I think it’s in some sense simply a more figurative cousin of zentangle-doodling, maybe it hasn’t occurred to everybody as an option.

So, in case you need a doodle prompt, I give you: Burrow Worlds.

Get hype to draw your own little guys

Mandatory lore

At² some point when I was, say, seven years old, my parents had a weekly evening commitment for which they had to bring my brother and me with them to a very dull office building. They then left us with printer paper and pencils for an hour or so.

Possibly they were taking German language lessons. (We lived in Austria at the time.) No doubt someone in my family will tell me I’m misremembering all of this.

Somehow—I’m not sure how it started—my brother and I ended up drawing the same kinds of elaborate, whimsical rodent burrows on our printer paper every time. It was always in cross section. It always started with establishing where the ground started, then drawing the long loops of the burrow chambers, then filling them up with seed hoards and rodent guys.

The final results were not really noteworthy in any craft-based sense, but they were sort of fascinating in being extremely detailed.

The whole process invited a pretty formulaic step-by-step building up of the burrows (likely why we kept coming back to them), but you were also completely free to add anything you could think of (or at least, anything you could figure out how to draw really small) to your Burrow World of the week.

It’s the kind of drawing you default to because the process of making it is fun, not because you have any particular plan for the finished version. I think it’s because the page is divided up into all the discrete little parts (chambers and tunnels), no one of which is particularly hard to fill.

This kind of drawing doesn’t demand any kind of complex problem-solving or advanced skills. It just asks for your attention.

The steps

No expert finished product intended here—I did this one on my phone. I definitely recommend you try the same if you need a replacement for scrolling.

1. Draw the burrow system

This forms the groundwork… very literally, I guess… for everything else. It’s also best if you don’t plan at all and just let the architecture emerge. Try not lifting your pencil.

Here’s the one I did this time:

The burrow outline. Try not to think ahead too much; it’s fun later to adapt to whatever’s on the page.

Some notes you might find helpful:

• I like including the surface of the ground, but you don’t have to.

• If you have more than one exit, just be careful about connecting the right side of the burrow-wall line to the right edge of the exit (i.e. not crossing the lines representing the walls of the burrow).

• You might want to include both narrow bits (tunnels) and wide bits (chambers).

• If you mess up (i.e. cross the lines), just erase, baby, erase.

• Try not to calculate too much. The weird bits you accidentally create are a feature, not a bug.

2. Fill in the negative space (i.e. soil)

This is optional, but it helps you avoid sticking your characters in soil instead of in their burrows.

Here’s mine:

Establishing the negative space will help you avoid confusion later.

If you’re planning on some kind of creatures-live-in-the-walls effect, then ignore this.

3. Add seed hoards

This is completely optional, but also, according to the process from my childhood, absolutely mandatory. Your guys will need some seeds for the winter.

Here’s my take:

So help me, my mice guys will not starve

It feels a bit mindless drawing all the seeds, but that’s kind of the point.

4. Furnish the burrow

Here’s where things get real: we’re going to start putting things in the rooms.

Take your time. Take it little room by little room. It definitely helps if you anthropomorphize the future residents.

Here’s mine:

Mice need couches. Also lecture theatres.

You’ll notice a lot of repeated items: beds, couches, climbing ropes… I think this is a good approach, and it’s great to have little motifs you can repeat.

This is also an opportunity to make decisions about the logic of your burrow: for instance, I decided the residents would need ropes/ramps occasionally, but they’re supposed to be able to get around pretty easily, even through vertical tunnels.

You might also want to be consistent with scale. Or not, I guess—maybe your residents are going to be a variety of shapes and sizes. I tend to go with a pretty uniform population who could all use each other’s stuff.³

Some more tips:

• Just one or two items in a burrow chamber tends to make it look full. You don’t have to go nuts. (But… you may, of course.)

• If you’re drawing on your phone/tablet, I recommend making liberal use of the “Zoom” feature at this point.

• Nothing is going to look super accurate at this scale (unless you’re doing a very formal version of this activity). A visual shorthand works great.

• I think you could have fun making little stamps (electronic or physical) to insert repeated elements; let me know if you try this.

5. Maybe add some stuff on the surface

Totally optional.

I went with some shrubs:

Don’t ask where the roots go.

6. Add your guys

This is it!! It’s finally time to populate the burrow.

I did little brown mice:

Party time for tiny mice

As you can see, my mice are basically a bean shape with ears and a tail. I highly recommend using a super simple and repeatable design for the individuals populating the burrow, assuming that you’re just enjoying the process of filling the drawing and not trying to craft a perfect work of art. (Feel free to use this mouse style.)

A mouse can look like this (a mango with spaghetti appendages)

General tips

• If you’re drawing on paper, trace over the burrow outline in ink (e.g. with pen/marker), and then fill it in with pencil drawings so you can erase if needed without losing the little chambers and tunnels.

• If you’re drawing on your phone (I use Sketchbook), create the burrow outline as one layer and then fill in the details on separate layers.

• In the Orwellian spirit,⁴ break every one of these rules/instructions rather than do something outright barbarous.

• Show me your little burrow guys if you ever actually do this… 👀

1. I don’t know if this is exactly the right term, but I mean something like, “doodling in which the person cares more about the process as a leisure activity than the result as a finished work of art.”

2. “Where’s the ‘Skip to Recipe’ button,” they mutter.

3. “Is Burrow World A Socialist Utopia?” discourse looms.

4. I mean in the sense of his rules for writing—not, like, create Mouse Oceania.