Illustrative Dilemma

This week's project for my illustration class was driving me batty, so I thought I'd share. Originally, what seemed to be quite a rudimentary exercise instead unseated my brain from its usual hiding space in my skull and floated it about 30 feet high into the air, because that's where I imagine it was as I could not find a suitable solution. Why so hard you might ask? I really have no clear answer.

Our assignment: to design 3 separate illustrations, one 2 inches by 2 inches, another 4 by 4 inches, and the last 6 by 6 inches. Three squares even, dealing with different themes, using different color schemes. The first two were relatively easy, but when it came to do the last, I was dumbfounded.

Now, one would think that doing a simple black and white pattern, with any theme at all would be easy, but not I apparently. For some reason or another, the prospect of outdoing myself each and every time I complete a project made this impossible as I wanted to make something mundane terribly complicated. Black and white made me think of Escher, and when one thinks of Escher, one starts to go mad. After perusing many, many, MANY images of Escher on Google Images, and even trying to ape a few myself, I decided it could not be done. So what did I do instead? I consulted an old habit of mine: Tilemachine.

For those who don't know, Tilemachine is a flash-based website that allows the user to create a number of patterns using a simple interface and then submit them to the gallery. It's mindless fun, and helped me to flex a creative muscle I hadn't used in quite a while. For once, I actually stopped trying so hard, and just let it happen. Fancy.

There must be a lesson in here somewhere, but in most instances, I like to think to myself, "Let it be." Ack, that IS the moral.