Struggling with a design for the next “black, white and a colour” exercise. For the first time, this doesn’t feel like effortless play. I don’t have designs just flowing out of my brain, through my fingers, straight to the paper.

“Make a design with five squares/rectangles (four-cornered shapes), four circles, and three triangles.”

They don’t fit! Especially the triangles. I could easily and effortlessly throw out sketch after sketch consisting of rectangles and circles. But then trying to find a place for the triangles… just didn’t work.

I could pair up rectangles with circles, both of them full and convex.
I could pair up rectangles with triangles, with angles everywhere.
I could pair up circles with triangles, playing with the contrast between sharp angles and round shapes.

But with all three in the same design, it felt like they were working against each other.

In the end I blew up the triangles and hid them in the background. Still not entirely satisfied, but I can continue tweaking things when I interpret this with fabric and yarn.