I love playing with color with my felt pens, using gradations of color, sometimes in a limited color scheme, sometimes playing with the whole spectrum.

One day, I was drawing with Spirograph ring 144/96 and wheel 84, the biggest one, using the odd-numbered holes – hole 1, then 3, then 5, then 7 etc. up to hole 31 or farther, lining each hole up with the same spot on the ring, using my collection of fine tip felt pens. It creates a spider’s web pattern with 8 arms.

Here’s an animated gif with 18 of the variations.

I was separating the colors with a dark grey line, enjoying the effect. As you can see in the first image, I drew hole 1 grey, 3 and 5 orange, Hole 7 grey, 9 and 11 yellow, 13 grey, and so on. I did many variations on this theme.

Then I started to notice the star that formed on the inside. Some color combinations really brought it out, like the one at right. Others obscured it, as you can see in the animation.

I started keeping notes in the margins. Usually I work from the outer holes (low numbers) towards the inner holes of the wheel (the high numbers). Starting with the inner holes instead helped me figure out that the star was being formed by holes 27, 29 and 31.

I found that if I stopped at hole 17 and then jumped to 27, it would isolate the central star, as in the last picture.