At the beginning of August illustrator Melanie Johnnson launched her pattern challenge on Instagram. Participants were provided 15 prompts to complete over the course of the month — 2 a day. While I love to draw and make digital creations, I’m not a pattern maker. It is, however, a technique I’ve been wanting to explore for a while. The reluctance was two-fold: what and how.

Sam Larson, aka Steel Bison, is what I’d call prolific. Someone called me prolific once. It was in reference to the number of emails I sent. To be clear, he’s the good kind. That makes me the “I’m sorry” kind I guess.