I’ve been watching several YouTube videos and drawing some doodle fill and border patterns for inspiration as I’m often stumped when it comes to choosing what patterns to use and I tend to revert to a limited well-tested vocabulary! I also found some interesting videos with instructions for mandala patterns which would also work well as general border patterns.
My first efforts were a bit messy but I did improve with practice. Not all the patterns were successful and I struggled with some, to the extent that I probably won’t bother to use them. In most cases it’s a question of spacing, and possibly scale and proportion but again, maybe I can perfect these patterns with more practice.
Here are the basic mandala patterns I’ve done so far.
There are still a lot more to try on that video and I shall return to them in due course.
These are the doodle patterns, fills and motifs that I did. I began by doing them fairly randomly, and outlining them once they were done.
On the next page, I added some rather attractive seed heads and fish motifs I found on one video. The seed heads are reminiscent of the Florabunda designs I did a while back, using my Zentangle Florabunda book. I love these shapes – they are just as interesting and attractive as flowers.
I added the roses later – I discovered how to do these yesterday – you draw them with a single stroke of the pen, not lifting the pen at all until they are finished. Thickening the lines and adding some shading afterwards gives them a bit more dimension.
After completing these two sheets, I decided I might as well make the pages look a bit more attractive, and followed the lead of several YouTubers who put the patterns in a regular grid. I filled in the spaces at the sides with border patterns.
My final sheet was filled with floral motifs which all came from the same video, and I added some embellishments of my own to several of them. They are endlessly variable and you can use the basic shapes just as a starting point.
All these patterns are really fun and relaxing to do, and should be a good source of inspiration for future art pieces. They should get me out of a rut, anyway.
All these drawings were done in my Rhodia notebook.
I bought this when I got my Tombow Dual Brush Markers, on a recommendation from someone online when I started practising lettering for brush calligraphy. I wasn’t very keen on the results and abandoned that pursuit. The pad has smooth white paper marked in small squares which is great for lining up designs of all kinds, and it is very nice to write and draw on. There is no bleed-through from the pens, either, which is a great advantage. Each page has fine perforations so can be torn out with a smooth edge, not from the spiral binding. The only disadvantage is that unless you handle it fairly carefully, you can inadvertently tear the paper along these perforations. The sheets are A4 so plenty of room to play.
