Spirograph

Does anyone remember this. It came with pins to hold the circles down that you drew around. You had to use thick card board to pin into otherwise as you used the small circles the paper would slip. Over the years I did hundreds of these patterns, I could almost draw them without the plastic circles and getting pens to fit in the little holes. I liked some patterns more than others. Maybe it explains my obsession with them now?

Pattern

Drawn in ArtRage oils. A picture made up of dots then mirrored to give it symmetry. This took about half an hour to draw the pattern (a quarter of the image). I used the metallic pen option. The colours are darker with this but you get a rippled affect on the surface. I decided to draw a rainbow of colours that gradually move across the screen. It could also be used as a pattern on fabrics.

Table pattern

What do you see? I see a butterfly, a bears head, an owl, a rabbit head, moths on either side, a goats face, probably other animals and things too…. I met someone yesterday who has the same thing going on with their mind.

I used to have a shower curtain covered in an overlapping bubble pattern. I swear I could make cartoon characters out of them. There were four people I made out of the bubbles, a mum, dad son and daughter. I even think I could sometimes see a bubble dog.

As a child I could see things in the patterns on our wallpaper. I imagined fairies and elves with leaves making their limbs and hair. When I watched rain drops on the cobbled stones in our back yard I also saw fairies, or ballerinas in tutu’s. I have a strange imagination.

Clematis faces

If you duplicate or mirror an image, then turn it on its side you can get some quite interesting images. This was clematis growing along a fence, but something magical happens when you add some bilateral symmetry. The fence spikes look like goats or sheeps horns. There is something that looks like eyes and if you look closely you might see faces? This is an example of my Pareidolia. I see faces in a lot of patterns.