During last year’s 365 Drawing Experiment, I spent a lot of time drawing grids by hand with a 005 Micron pen (see very small sample below). I love the textured quality of grids and find drawing them almost meditative.

Trying to replicate the experience in Photoshop to create a seamless pattern is less meditative and more of a finicky process, but it’s worth it in the end, as it makes it easy to use the result in my designs (as some of my latest images can attest).

So I wanted to work a little further on the idea of grids by playing with colors, and more especially gradients. I tried all kinds of colorways, dark like this one, or bright like a rainbow. I found the results interesting, and I would definitely wear a scarf made of this:

But then things got even more interesting when I accidentally changed the blending mode of the wrong layer in Photoshop: two layers of the grid pattern in two different scales and colorways (one yellow and one blue) got mixed. Interesting!

The two samples on the bottom almost look like tweed, don’t they? They would make a nice couture jacket.

But just make the scale larger and it looks more modern, I think it would look great on tee-shirts.

Or on a mug?

I’m definitely not done playing with grids. I love the idea of subdued patterns that only reveal themselves when you look closely, and grids, just like halftones, work very well for that.