Drawing, Creativity and Pattern Recognition

Cultural patterns

This summer I discovered a very interesting e-book, available on Amazon Kindle:
Fast Freehand Fills - Vol. 2 Cultural Flair by Dawn Summerall.



This e-book catalogs a series of patterns, fills and motifs used in various world cultures including; African, Egyptian, Mayan, Indian and Polynesian. Almost all of these doodles are simple and easy to use.

I was interested especially by the cultural aspect of this patterns and started, as you can see on the photo above, to draw various of them. These are signs belonging to a specific culture, signs that often precede historically the writing.  
Dawn Summerall did a lot of research on cultural imagery that translates well into black and white doodles: For this book I found myself browsing hundreds of websites looking for designs and motifs that were simple, line friendly and culturally defining. What makes Egyptian stuff look Egyptian? I found that a lot of cultures have designs that overlap. For instance, both Polynesian and Mayan love to use crosshatch but I gave it to Mayan because it was more defining to their style.... " she says.

Fast Freehand Fills - Vol. 2 Cultural Flair will help you to create beautiful images, to increases focus and creativity, and to relax.



But beyond these benefits, there are many essential skills we can train by drawing these designs and motifs. Reproducing simple and universal patterns will help us to improve pattern recognition, a key skill for Visual MappingProblem Solving and Management.

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