I was happy enough with my first abstract painting in black and white to keep going. Actually, I prepped four canvases at the beginning, making sure they had a solid coat of white paint. While I was working on the first one, waiting for layers to dry, I taped the second one with painter's tape in a similar pattern and painted the rest of it black:
After the canvas dried completely, I applied my scribbling aesthetic, drawing with black on white and white on black:
In my next painting session I'll destroy this neat pattern and move on toward something more complex.