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.

Birds

Multiple bird images drawn ib black ink fine line pen. I tried to fit the shapes together. Clearly I can’t compete with Escher and his wonderful tessellations, but it was fun to try and think about how the shapes fit together. I looked at patterns as well as shapes, so each bird is an individual. They all seem to swirl round each other.

Mermaid

You are strong and ethereal, the light glints on your skin, like a dolphin, sleek, slipping through the waters, twisting coral and seaweed in your hair.

Siren songs, calling out to passing boats and ships, but ignored as diesel engines drown your subtle music. You have lost your sisters to giant nets, trawled from their watery beds by fishermen that know no better.

Mystery surrounds you, mystic, mythological, mesmerising. No soft fairy story of prince’s and princesses. You are more powerful, a trident carrying warrior.

Scales/tessellations

Try and draw a pattern that fits together, so regular shapes interlock. It’s easy with squares or diamonds, triangles or even hexagons, but when you get onto irregular shapes it’s more difficult. Interlocking shapes made up of the same shape over and over are called tessellations I think. Although I’m not sure because tessera are the little squares or oblongs they use in mosaics I think? I really need to look these things up before I write them down!

Anyway I’m working towards drawing dragons, and they are usually covered in scales, like snakes. That led me to realise that ideally I would like an interlocking pattern. I could look at a snake, or a fish, or a lizard, but I just made my own up. I added some crosshatching for shade and patterns for interest. I hope people aren’t getting bored with my experiments!

Cat

I started digitally drawing and I can’t stop…

I do love cats and this ginger cat doodle cheered me up. I’m still learning how I want to use the various tools. I have to think about opacity when I’m using this app which is called sketcher free. It seems to be about line drawing rather than a more painterly app like ArtRage oils. But that makes this more of a drawing app. Hope you enjoy?

Structure

I never waste things if I can help it. These castellated bits of paper are actually the off cuts from the ends of perforated sheets of paper. It’s where I have cut pages out of a sketchpad. One of the bits has black ink on it. The image was then mirrored four times in the Layout app I have on my phone. I don’t think I had glued these down, but I used some off cuts like this to turn into a block of flats (apartments) for a college project.

Frost

Frost on the bonnet of my car. How does it grow like that? Feathers created by a mysterious creature called Jack Frost. Water frozen in amazing patterns, crystallising into flakes or swirls or swooping spirals. Beauty in nature, patterns from tiny water molecules.

This photo is from a couple of years ago. I haven’t seen frost like this, this winter. We have has snow, and some passing frosts, but nothing to build up a deep layer of ice like this. I would love to try and draw it if it happens again, particularly when it builds up on the windscreen of my car…