Day 293: Paisley Begins

I’ve been wanting to learn to draw proper paisleys for ages now. So, today is the day I begin.

After spending hours yesterday looking up Zentangle designs and pattern instructions on Pinterest (rather than actually drawing something), I decided that a fun way to practice them might be with paisleys as the string. So, I spent several more hours today on Pinterest looking up paisley designs and instructions.

For some reason, I’ve never been completely happy with my earlier attempts at paisley. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but my attempts just looked wrong somehow. So I did what any art student would do. I looked for something online that I could use for practice. Happily, Pinterest has about a zillion images tagged as paisley, only some of which are of people or animals named paisley. While a huge percentage of the non-critter/people paisleys are of fabric, clothing or accessories, there are also lots of pictures of individual designs. There was even one helpful site with a tutorial on how to create paisleys using Inkscape.

The nice thing about paisley is that there is no “correct” way to draw it. In my searches, I found hundreds of different designs, some of which didn’t even register in my brain as “traditional” paisley. Which is great, because that opens up a lot of creative latitude for me. Basically, I’m looking for a sort of “comma” or elongated teardrop shape, usually with a little bend in the pointy end (the tail). Sometimes it has interior decorations, sometimes exterior decorations, but most often it has both.

I started playing with the shape, and here’s what I came up with at first:

I couldn’t find my black Micron pen, so made do with red. The only one I really like is in the upper left corner.

So, I thought about trying to make a digital version. I found a blank paisley shape at VerySimpleDesigns.com (use that link up above), and thought I’d try to see what I could come up with. Unfortunately, my hand isn’t very steady, and I wasn’t happy with any of my attempts to draw. But I did manage this digital version:

Not great, but I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t. And of course, I noticed that some paisleys are drawn as a yin-yang shape, with the heads and tails fitting into each other, so that’s another option to explore.

Ah, the laundry is calling my name. Again. I really need a wife! But my Spousal Unit won’t let me get one, so I suppose I’ll have to keep doing the laundry myself. ::sigh::

I really don’t mind doing the laundry, but it really eats into my creative time. Hmmmm…