Seriously -- you could have fooled me. After last week's temperatures, I would have sworn that I had taken a vacation in the tropics rather than a stay at my parents' house in Mequon, Wisconsin.
Temperatures were in the 100s, and I was wilting under the summer sun.
It's been a while since I've been on a real vacation and this was as close to a week of rest and relaxation as I was ever going to get.
I spent my time swimming in the pool, eating vegetables from my parent's huge garden, and bumming around the house. Both of my parents are go-getters. They have an incredible amount of energy and they never skip a beat. This year their project-pride-and-joy was their 30 x 45 foot vegetable garden. I spent a couple hours out there picking radishes, harvesting beets, (delicious, I know.) and taking the occasional instagram photo of a head of cabbage.
I was definitely impressed by their efforts and even more impressed by the dozens of canned, pickled radishes and beets my mom made after the harvest.
Seriously, they never stop.
Here is my pattern in repeat. Pods! Everywhere!
I actually had a great time just
being.
So, in honor of hot days and relaxation. Here's my 101 florals pattern of the week, the center part of the Banana Flower in repeat. A little tropical, a little seedy.
A little bit of both.
And where it all started. Yeah, my sketches are a little messy... can you tell I use photobooth to "scan" my sketches?
This flower is even more alien than the last it's insane if you ever get a chance to see one you should. If you are really serious about seeing one you should just go to the Como conservatory here. Otherwise there's always google maybe with a human next to the picture to give you an idea of the size of these things.
On to the pattern itself I wanted to make a damask pattern with this flower because the shape kind of lends itself to that but it needed something more so I drew a ton of paisley-esque icons to fill up the background space. I also wanted to include banana leaves because they are real cool themselves, but I didn't want to draw them realistically so I made them look more like a place holder for the flower stem. This one was a real challenge just because of the length of the actual flower.
For the next flower we will have the feathery Chrysanthemum as our flower, and the wonderful Olivia Mew will be joining us as a guest artist, so keep your eyes open!
