Patterns & X-scapes

Casually Blending In

For a while now, I've had this problem of hoarding stationery and art supplies: sketchbooks, pencils (from B to 8B and from wood cased to just the graphite), coloured pencils, watercolour pencils, pastel pencils, felt tip pens, liners, coloured liners, watercolours - both in tubes and dry pigment, acrylics, gouaches, etc.

It sure is nice when working on a mixed media piece to just pull out the right shade of orange from the coloured pencils pile, or take the acrylics out when in need of a fluorescent streak, or - or! -  have a sketchbook for all bag shapes and sizes, for every room, but... but: the sketchbooks aren't really "going" anywhere - the covers are worn and torn and the pages have two doodles and two dozen notes on menus, shopping lists, things to read, etc.; the ink dries or the binding agent separates on liners and paints and, above all, all those beautiful pencils, liners, pigments aren't really used to their greatest potential. And that should make us all sad. Very, very sad.

So, because I'm an organized bear and I'm also smart, I came up with the plan to have more than one sketchbook going and (this is the smart part!) each of them has a particular technique or theme (more or less, let's not play the dictatorship here).

Today I'll introduce you to my Patterns and X-scapes sketchbook.

Patterns! - What, Why Patterns?

Well, it's something more along the lines of repetitive elements. I don't have anything the likes of the cat or gloves collections you saw last week in my 365 doodles. I have spots, dots and lines and stripes and dotted lines and waves and all that jazz.

X-scapes? Oh, this is quite simple, algebraic! as one might say: X belongs to the {Land, Forest, City, Imaginary, ...} set. So instead of having a Patterns and Landscapes and Cityscapes and Imaginary-scapes and Dream-scapes and ..you get the point scape, it's easier to put an X on it.

The good part about doodling daily is that you gather a nice collection of ideas. Quite like putting seeds in the ground. Some sprout, some don't, some look better dry, on display.

The one above is a sprouted one.