Doodling With Fountain Pens: Shapes Pattern

The next pattern in my Doodling With Fountain Pens series is one that is fairly easy to draw, but has a few variations that are possible. I’m calling this one Shapes. If you’re ready, grab a pen and some paper and let’s get started!

Thoughts On This Pattern

If it seems familiar, it’s probably because I copied this pattern from the sidebar of the r/fountainpens subreddit. I find it’s a really fun little pattern to do with a bit of spare space in a planner or bullet journal, but also makes a great full-page spread.

How It’s Done

This pattern is very similar to the Circles pattern in my previous post. I think it is a little more difficult, though, as the straight lines tend to line up or overlap in strange ways that can make it tricky to draw.

I like to use a fine or medium nib for this pattern. Broad and stub nibs work, but due to the big line size I sometimes misjudge where to start or end my outlines and find that they end up touching. I like using both shading and sheening inks for this pattern.

You can work with any shapes you’d like, but I find that triangles, squares and pentagons tend to work best. Irregular shapes can work as well, but I’d recommend starting off with more simple shapes until you get a feel for the pattern.

To start, draw a straight line on your paper. You can use a straight edge if you want, just be careful of smearing wet ink when you remove it from your paper.

Once you have a line, draw your first shape, using the line as one side. Now expand that shape by drawing larger and larger “outlines”. I usually do 5-6 total lines per shape, counting my first center shape.

Now you can move to a different point on the line and repeat the above process. The next shape can be the same as before or something different. It’s totally up to you.

Once I have a few shapes on my line, I start adding in shapes above the line. Similar to how I did with the circles pattern, I like to have the shapes in this pattern close enough so that they intersect the initial shapes. You can also start some shapes far enough away so that they don’t intersect other shapes.

Continue drawing shapes to get some overlap in the pattern. Use your judgement on when to stop.

I like to fill in any closed spaces between the shapes with color. It’s definitely not required to make the doodle work, but I like the way it looks. I also sometimes like to fill in the center of each shape.

Variations

This pattern has a few variations that you can try out. Of course, this isn’t all of the possible variations you can do, so feel free to experiment and see what else you can come up with!

• Start without a base line. Instead of starting with a base line to work off of, just start drawing shapes in the middle of your paper. This will give your doodle a different feel, but will play out the same way.


This version has no starting base line

• Add variation to your outlines. Instead of faithfully following the outline of your first shape, add some zigs, zags, or squiggles in as you get further from the center.


This version has squiggly lines

• Round your corners. Change up the original pattern and use some rounded corners. You can still have sides to your shapes, so don’t draw circles, just round out your triangles and squares.


This version has rounded shapes

Wrapping Up

This pattern is one of my favorite space fillers. Whenever I have some empty space in my bullet journal or just on a piece of paper, I draw a line and start drawing shapes. It is satisfying because it is somewhat self-contained and still looks great with just a few shapes. It also doesn’t take a lot of planning like some patterns. I hope you give it a try and enjoy it as much as I do!