Behind The Pattern: Linear Cloud
Linear Cloud began in my sketchbook with a thin brush and a quiet moment. There’s something so satisfying about drawing closely spaced lines. As I began, I noticed how calming it felt to paint slowly and steadily. The brush would glide across the page, sometimes becoming darker, sometimes lighter, depending on how much paint it held or how my arm moved. There’s a kind of rhythm that happens when you’re really paying attention, and I found myself repeating the same small, arched shape over and over, watching how they collected on the page.
The arches mimicked the movement of my hand. They felt natural. At first, it was almost a doodle, but as I kept painting, they started to remind me of clouds—specifically, cumulus clouds, though the pattern itself doesn’t try to represent them literally. It’s more abstract and about the rounded, linear shape than the volume of a cloud. I was thinking about the idea of a sky and clouds: the repetition, the softness, the way they fill a space. I was also thinking about the beauty of fine linework in old etchings, even though this is looser and less precise. The feeling is there.
After working in my sketchbook, I moved to a large sheet of paper. I didn’t want the repeat to feel too small, and I wanted to let the pattern grow more organically. When I’m painting like this, I’m also solving problems—what to do when a shape feels off or when two areas don’t quite connect. I like figuring that out with paint before scanning it and refining digitally. The visual language really develops on paper, as I’m painting, merging shapes, and finding the spacing I want. I paint a good amount of the repeat by hand, sometimes even the full thing, before I begin working with it on a computer.
The final design has an evenness to it that feels soft, layered, and atmospheric, like a quiet backdrop to daily life. On wallpaper, you can really see the hand-painted lines and the subtle variations. In fabric, the design takes on a new texture. I simplified the artwork a bit—removing some of the finer lines and giving the pattern more space so it could translate well as a woven. It still holds that same spirit, but through yarn and structure instead of brush and paper.
Clouds have always felt like a natural source of inspiration. They’re ever-present in the background—shifting, soft, easy to overlook, but hard to forget. As children, we look up and search for shapes. Painting this pattern felt like that: following the line that came before it, adjusting slightly, and letting the repetition become its own kind of meditation.
