Freeing facets

In 2012, I added a story to an ongoing project called I am not actually a butterfly, that included a diagram of one character’s heart. I drew it like this:

These days, I'm on a drawing-a-day journey, and I recently found myself playing with the idea of crystalline shapes. After a page in my sketchbook of relatively ordinary crystal shapes, I began to wonder what would happen if I broke a few rules. Maybe the idea was sparked back in 2012—when many of the characters in the story seemed to travel between worlds. They were indifferent to dimensions.

I began to explore crystalline structures that were similarly indifferent. Here is how a few of those turned out:

Oh, that's right! This set was done while I was drawing only with my non-dominant hand. I wonder what would have happened if I had not been compelled (by a shoulder injury) to do this with my right hand.

I tried some with color, too:

Revisiting these now gives me a couple of ideas for more things to try. If you like, follow this and other personal meta-projects on instagram, and maybe ello.co.

Curious about the top drawing and the story it illustrates? Visit iamnotabutterfly.wordpress.com (I'll be migrating it to a sub-site on this domain soon. Please let me know if I forget to fix the link!)