Creativity Journal - Day 15 (Dollar Bill)

What can you do with just a dollar? Use a dollar bill as your medium or inspiration today.

Using a dollar bill is a little difficult for an Australian. If I actually owned one, had had the forethought as a teenager to save one, it might be worth too much to be playing with it. Luckily, I didn't keep one, so no conflict of values.

As I am Australian, I decided to work with a dollar coin.

According to my new Celco circle template (why haven't I bought one of these before), it has a 25mm diameter. Drawing around a coin is an annoying task, so I used my lovely new template (quite fond of this bit of plastic).

My first attempt was to replicate a Sashiko pattern I like. Shashiko is a form of Japanese quilting. It's usually done with a thick white thread on navy or dark blue. The patterns are often repetitive or overlapping patterns.

The pattern I was aiming for is the circles in the bottom right-hand corner of the above sampler. Only, I thought I could draw it without looking it up. I can't even draw it when it's sitting right in front of me, so I don't know why I thought that.

Attempt one:

I overlapped too many circles (didn't realise that at the time). I did notice that each circle ended up with 12 'bits' as you went around the edge. I started to colour them rainbow-like, with 6 colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. At some point, in the above colouring I got a little confused.

I thought, if I did it in Paint, I could fix my mistakes. In Paint I also noticed that using the 6 colours around each circle led to a secondary pattern, which totally hides the first pattern.

And just for fun, I inverted the colours. I think this one looks a little like fish.

I wasn't particularly happy with my efforts, and as I was enjoying a day on the couch being a sloth (an ill sloth, but a sloth nonetheless), I started doodling. I started with some random overlapping circles; wasn't happy with those (bottom centre). Then tried a "Hungry Caterpillar"; wasn't happy with that (bottom right). Finally, I just started drawing circles and filling them in.

When I ran out of room on the page, I moved on.

It was difficult to come up with a different pattern for each and every circle. I'm pretty sure some are repeated, particularly those hidden in the background. My Teen is a keen zentangler, and much, much better at it than I am. She was a little concerned I was 'taking over her thing'; she need have no fear. Needs too much patience for me.