Artist Revealed: WWU’s Rebel Whiteboard

Throughout the last school year, many students pondered an essential question: Who is "Rebel Whiteboard," the artist creating the beautiful dot art on the university’s whiteboards?

The answer to that question: Rebel Whiteboard is a rising sophomore aspiring to be a Design major named Brandon Doak, and his anonymity was a conscious choice.

“You could call it theatricality,” said Doak. “I guess it is more exciting to have the art be the focus as opposed to me.”

 During his first year at Western, Doak sat in the Mathes lounge with friends doodling on an empty whiteboard. On that board grew the first creation of Brandon’s dot art, an image of Darth Vader. Each of his creations are composed with thousands of small dots of color from a whiteboard marker.

Doak dedicates his time away from school practicing his self-taught art form.

“It was just me every day messing with dry erase markers,” said Doak.

Doak’s love of Star Wars comes out in his art by regularly featuring images from the films; when not drawing images from Star Wars, Doak is recreating Matisse and Van Gogh paintings as well as comic book scenes.

His artwork has been featured on whiteboards in Mathes, the library, Miller Hall and Academic West.

Although this art style is new to him, he said his passion for art began at an early age. He has also experimented with creating digital art with programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Doak’s creations will be back in the fall with a new piece every week that will be located in the library.

“I think my favorite thing is the reaction I get because people are like, ‘there is no way that is done on a white board.’ I like the challenge of it,” said Doak.

With the help from photographer Reece Budinich, who is also an undergraduate at Western, Doak sells his artwork on Etsy.com and is on Instagram at rebel_whiteboardart.

“I hope to make a career out of my art,” said Doak. “I’ve always loved art, so to make an entire career out of it would be a dream come true.”