I’d taken a number of medium-sized Wild Gears patterns, scanned them at high resolution, cleaned them up in Photohsop and shrunk them. Then I arranged them on a page in a triangular shape like a Christmas tree. When I printed it off, I thought, “It’s too fine, too small. Who’s going to want to color that?”

But then I put on my mother’s old reading glasses and started coloring it. I tried my fine-tip felt pens and some gel pens, and decided it was OK after all.

I’m a long way from done, however. It’s kind of like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. We do one a year, over the Christmas holidays. I may not be doing a jigsaw puzzle this year; I’ll be too busy coloring.

You can too. The page is available to buy as a printable instant download.

The post Christmas Tree Coloring Page appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

It took 2½ hours to complete the intricate colouring page, which you can buy here if you want to try it yourself.

I had planned to speed up the video, because no one wants to watch me colour that long. My software (Adobe Premiere Elements) can speed up my footage 8 times. It made me look like a colouring whiz, but it was still 20 minutes long. It needed to be under 5 minutes. What to do, what to do?

So I cut out bits – lots of bits – and replaced them with a “clock wipe” transition to indicate the passage of time.

I used glitter gel pens for the foreground patterns, to make them pop, some metallic gel pens for highlights (the silver can actually cover the black lines), and dollar-store markers for the rest. At the end, I shot some footage at an angle to see the glitter catching the light. We didn’t have glitter or metallic pens when I was a kid.

Such frenzied activity required a fast, jazzy soundtrack, so that’s what I gave it. Sorry it isn’t very relaxing! But I’m getting over the cold, and at least I have something to show for it.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post High-Speed Colouring Video appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Then the fun began. I have to say I was surprised at how much I got into it. At first I wanted to give each “square” (never really square) a different colour from its neighbour as in a patchwork quilt. Then my sister Pam visited. She found a human-like figure in one of the designs, and brought it out with her colour choices and thickened some lines….

Well, duh! She showed me that you can take this much farther, if you have a true artist’s eye. Colour outside the lines!

Anyway, here are some examples that I’ve done. If you find this inspiring, you can buy my colouring pages right here. Give me encouragement and I’ll make more!

The post Colouring Wild Gears Designs appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I’ve kept the footage in normal time, not speeding it up, so you can hear me talk and see exactly what I’m doing. I’ve been spirographing for so long that it’s hard to put myself in the shoes of someone new to Spirograph, so perhaps a video is worth 1000 words – or 1000 subscribers, the number my YouTube channel reached on the day I posted the video.

Then I made three designs. The first two patterns are similar to ones in the instruction booklet, but with different colors.  The third design is one I made up on the spot. The video shows my thinking process in choosing what to do next – and when to stop.

This video is especially for people who are new to Spirograph. If you find it helpful or have questions, I’d appreciate hearing about it in the comments here or on the YouTube page.

Buy the Spirograph Deluxe Design Set here  (affiliate link to Amazon)

The post New Basic How-To Spirograph Video! appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

The deck and view of the Minas Basin

Last week I was lucky to be staying at a beautiful spot on the Noel Shore of Nova Scotia, overlooking the Minas Basin.

I took my Wild Gears along.

One morning I set up my tripod on the table in the photo to make some videos.

The direct sunlight created sharp shadows through the clear acrylic gears.

As the sun progressed through the sky, I had to keep rotating my setup around the round table so that the tripod and camera did not cast shadows on the paper.

The house is down a long driveway from a quiet road, so there was no sound except for the distant waves and the singing of birds.

While recording the following video, I had no interruptions at all, so I have preserved it with birdsong and all.

I was using the triangular gear with 120 teeth that comes with the Strange Shapes Gear Set, inside ring 210 in the frame of the Full Page Gear Set – the largest Wild Gears ring that fits on 8½ inch paper. Pens are Stabilo Point 88, in colors to match the scenery.

You may observe my left hand gently pushing the triangular gear when drawing the outermost holes. When working those holes with a larger gear like this, there isn’t quite enough leverage for the pen to make the gear “turn the corner”. The trick is to preserve the shape at the tip of the pattern while so doing, which requires a light touch.

The post Video: Quiet Time with Wild Gears appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

There are 4 wheels that give you a 7-pointed design when used with ring 150/105, as I discussed in a previous post.

If you’re new to Spirograph, you may find it helpful to watch someone else draw with it in real time. There’s nothing speeded up in this video. I talk about pens and putty and playing with color as I go. Hope you like it.

The post Video on Drawing 7-Pointed Spirograph Designs appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

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.

The post Spirograph Color Play with the Spider Web: Ring 144/96, Wheel 84 appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Wheel 52 inside Ring 150/105, hole 1, changing pens

Back in the day, when I was a kid and the only pens we had to use with our Spirograph sets were the ballpoint ones that came with the set, I dreaded Wheel 52 with Ring 150/105!

Why? Because the pattern it makes has 105 loops – that’s one loop for every tooth inside the ring! The pen went over the same area of the paper over and over again, saturating it with ink. Eventually, before you finished the pattern, the ballpoint pen would be tearing the paper. Yuck!

No more, with fine felt tip pens. You can get great color with a light hand, and the paper stays intact!

In the blue and green design, I changed color every 5 loops, dark blue, light blue and green, making quite a pleasing design. There’s lots of room for experimentation, so here are some of my experiments.

If you change color when the pen is in the middle of the ring rather than when it is close to the edge, the color changes are less obvious.

The post One Loop for Every Tooth: Spirograph Wheel 52 appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.