Of that variety, Helianthus mollis, The Downy Sunflower, became the focus for this collection. Why?  Its flowers were the perfect sunflower shape and … it stood sturdy at 3 to 4 feet rather than towering over me at 6 and 7 feet as did most the others. 

I loved seeing them and watching the variety of insect life they attracted. It became the inspiration behind this collection.  I started taking lots of photos and struck out to make my first surface pattern design collection.

All went well – until it didn’t.  It turns out designing in collections is different than how I had created art before. It taught me much.

New computer programs.

Techniques to try and the ones to let go. 

Consistency of line while keeping the scale of each piece in mind. Oh my. Scale. Scale. Scale.

Style consistency between pieces. 

Basically, what worked.  And a lot of what didn’t.

I struggled with scale and repeats and colorways and the stiff hairy helianthus leaves and stems that I couldn’t figure out how to put into a flowing repeat.  

I struggled with “it has to look like the real plant” verses allowing for artistic license.  

I worked at wrapping my head around the concepts of hero, coordinate and blender prints.  I’m still working on that.

And I had to acquiesce to the fact that learning can't be rushed.  One just has to build the skills and knowledge one bit at a time.

So I gave it the time it needed and shelfed it a year before picking it back up to rework the pieces I liked and create a finished collection.

Here are the first two colorways of my first collection. Are they perfect? Nah.  But they are progress on this journey of life.  Enjoy!