Here's to Pattern!

An inherited box of pencils from my Grandfather, a draftsman

The start of the year has kept me thinking about ways to improve.    While cleaning out the house on Saturday night, I listened to This American Life, and thought  about all the ways in which I could capitalize on this annual feeling of renewal.  Not wanting to set myself up to fail, I considered my options.  My friend Margie enlists the help of an annual motto. For example, one year, her's was "Hot and Zen in 2010"  Katy and I  briefly considered adding "Neat and Clean in 2013" to our to-do list, which has resulted so far in a lot of vacuuming with our new Hoover (which has been SUPER satisfying, after living vacuum-less for two years)  My friend Megan has dubbed her plans experiments instead of resolutions, adding less weight to her plans which I can appreciate.   With so many ways to improve and so many ways to structure your improvements, it can seem overwhelming.  But exciting too- don't you think?  I mean, think of the POSSIBILITIES!

In the end (or at least in the here and now) I've got two resolutions. The first is to cook more, and more specifically to start the year out by cooking a recipe from each of my cookbooks.  One book a week.  So far, this has been really fun, and the Balsamic Roasted Portobellos and Sesame Snow Peas were delicious!   I've got a lot of cookbooks, so this one should keep us out of a food rutt for awhile.

My second resolution, which relates more closely to why you probably show up here is to draw more, and specifically to focus more on Pattern and Color.  To know me is to know that I like things busy, colorful, textured and bright.  I was looking at my own Pinterest Pages today and thinking about how much I want to make this space and my sketchbook space more like my Pattern page over there.  After a few months of dumping lots of great patterns onto my page, I was excited to open it for once and see so many great things!

I would like to draw everyday, as many of my artist friends have committed to doing.   As part of a giant studio clean-out that happened (is happening now) I sorted through all my fabric and re-organized it into neat and tidy rows.  I wouldn't say it's "Neat and Clean in 2013" quite yet, but it's getting better.  More on that later this week.  After all that sorting and folding, there were a few little piles of scraps too small to fold and too good to toss.  These were mostly vintage pattern pieces saved over the years and rescued from studio floors and classrooms.  They are probably too small to make anything out of, but man are they inspiring.  So, as a sort of assignment  I piled them up and resolved to glue one into my sketchbook everyday and draw around them.  Here's the first example.

Having said all that I've got a toast.  To a New Year.   Here's to colorful patterns.   To collecting them and drawing them and stumbling over them every which way.   To paying attention to what matters......Cheers!

In the spirit of finding pattern every which way, check out the Pattern Treasury I just created over at Etsy.  Here's a link.