Llew Mejia: Nopalitos!

  Prickly pears as they are commonly called in English are a Mexican delicacy and I am sure they are used in any other area they are found. But I have fond memories of my mother de-spining the flat oar-like leaves of the Nopal(as it is called in Spanish) and thinly slicing the the leaves in strips. Then mixing it with various other ingredients to make a very mucousy salad that tasted like heaven but felt like you were chewing on puke.

Either way this plant is nostalgic to me, and I decided to go real simple/abstract with this pattern, letting the textures kind of make the distinguishing factor behind plant and background. It was fun just free styling a pattern this way, and I think I am going to make more of these types of patterns in the future. The repeat has this weird pulsating feeling to it too, real trippy like.

 Stay tuned kids for tomorrow we have one of my personal favorite artists, Meg Hunt joining us!



     

Teagan White: Nostalgic Magnolias

Magnolias were always my favorite trees when I was a kid. I remember being disappointed almost every year when a frost came overnight just as the flowers started to bloom and killed them, so that instead of those nice fleeting couple of weeks of beautiful giant flowers in the tree in my neighbor's yard, I'd be faced with a couple of weeks of walking across soggy brown petals plastered to the sidewalk on my way to school. I did a little bit of research on magnolias before starting on this pattern, and learned from wikipedia that magnolias are really really ancient plants and were actually first pollinated by beetles because bees and other pollinators hadn't evolved yet. For more beautiful work by Teagan check her out here!

Zoe Keller: Rippling Asters

Zoe grew up in New York, studied Graphic Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and moved to the Twin Cities in early 2012. She is currently working as a pattern designer and tinkering on her bicycle. Here's a link to her site she does great letterpress work too check it ya'll!

Llew Mejia: "Chinese" Zodiac Aster

This week's pattern is inspired by the Chinese Aster. To me it was an opportunity to get a little more ornamental, and what started as just a few shapes turned into adding a rabbit, and then a snake/dragon type of thing, and finally the Asters themselves. I guess in the end it turned out being more of a meld of Mexican, Norwegian and Chinese folk art styles all blended into one.

Most cultural pattern to date, so cultured. This was also the most monstrous of files because the repeat was so immense....computer went so slow, it was asking for an execution Office Space style.

Hope you all are having a great week, enjoy!

Llew Mejia: Titillating Tulip Toiles

This week tulips are the subject and I thought they were a suitable flower to make a couple of toiles out of because of the Dutch countryside being a perfect subject for the landscaped nature of the traditional toile pattern.

 I ended up with two patterns this week because I made a couple larger tulip icons that didn't really fit into the dutch scenery pattern. I wanted to use the classic blue color to resemble Dutch dinnerware. It was actually pretty challenging trying to render something that had to appear like a loose semi realistic landscape, I am no Van Gogh, but I tried my best.

Tomorrow we will have the talented Alyssa Nassner  joining us for our guest post of the week, it should be good, stay tuned!

Olivia Mew: Chrysanthemum Kaleidoscopes

This week the fabulous Olivia Mew is joining us.Olivia is an illustrator and textile designer based in Montreal, Canada. After obtaining a BFA in Fibres from Concordia University in 2011 she turned to the illustrative / surface design side of her field. Since then she's worked on building up her own brand of printed textile products which she sells through her online shop as well as through various shops worldwide.

I have always loved Olivia's patterns and textures, so I am really glad she is part of this project. It's also great that we got to kick off the guest artist part of this whole blog with her, which like I said before is now being posted on Thursdays. So always check back when you can!

Llew Mejia:Tweenie Chrysanthemums

Hello everybody, so for starters I would like to say that we are beginning the most exciting part of 101Florals this week. Which is having guest artists join us weekly to show their personal interpretation of the weeks flower, this week we will have wonderful Olivia Mew with us, but you will have to wait until tomorrow. Guest artists will be posted Thursdays on every week from now on, So keep your eyes and ears open for every week we will have a different artist!


 Usually I feel like I go a little overboard with details on some of these florals simply because that's what I like most about drawing. But this week I really wanted to go for a more girly looking pattern to see if I could even do it, sometimes I feel like my patterns are a little too serious. I could see this pattern on a tween girls bedspread while she is asking a magic 8-ball  whether Scott, or  Blake, or Chet, or Chad, are still in fact in love with her, so I think I really accomplished my goal of diversity in pattern making this week.


To create this pattern I made around eight different icons in all different mediums from pencil, to brush pen and scanned them in with their respective textures which gave it a better flow. I then did a half drop repeat with a few of the icons and then filled in the rest to give you what you see now.

Lindsay Nohl: Chrysanthemum Wallpaper

Well, I waited til the last minute to make this one, but went the extra mile to make it into something I loved. I spent my day yesterday waking up late, running over to St Paul and going to meetings -- then getting a moment of solace at a coffee shop with good friends.

So, as I stared this pattern around 10pm last night I cursed myself for procrastinating. Mondays are tough and today is no exception. I've finally transitioned to listening to the 50's station on pandora, which made working late so much easier. I spent a good 5 hours or so drawing, re-drawing, and singing at the top of my lungs into the wee hours of the morning while I finished this guy.



Chrysanthemums are fun to draw. They're weird and curly and yellow (one of my favorite colors). They remind me of outdoor, spring weddings and of vintage wallpaper.

My plan, today, is to walk over to the coffee shop next door and buy myself a giant latte in celebration of late nights, getting things done and waking up early the next day!

Llew Mejia:The Bulbous Banana Flower

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!