Monday 26 March 2012

The Humble Daisy and Exotic Mock Orange Blossom!


The daisy is, apparently, the Birth Month Flower for April. 

According to one website I found, so is the Sweet Pea. But April seems a bit early in the year for either of those flowers here; though when I mowed my little lawn a few days ago, hoping that my wrap-around sunglasses would protect me from the pollen, I noticed a couple of little daisies in the grass. And they inspired this April Birthday Card design.

I painted it with gouache on blue sugar paper so that I wouldn’t need to paint the blue background. Sugar paper absorbs the water rather quickly so I used the paint much thicker than usual. It almost felt like using pastels and it freed me up from the rather ‘tight’ approach I’ve had to use recently when making repeating patterns. I was almost able to revert to my ’fast and furious’ ways that I feel so at home with when I use both oil pastels and soft pastels.

But I really do enjoy making repeating patterns, in spite of all the extra stages they take, and the accuracy they demand, even though that doesn't come naturally to me. And I was really delighted that a customer ordered a phone case with my primrose repeating pattern earlier this week.



It just happened that on the same day, I was tidying up – something I have to do occasionally when I run out of flat surfaces! – and came across a whole sheaf of papers with drawings of flowering plants that I made in my Norwich garden, in the days before the pollen began to affect me.

It seems miraculous to me now that I could have taken the time to make a careful study of probably my all-time favourite flower, Philadelphus, or Mock Orange Blossom without any pollen problems. In the days before its wonderful fragrance began to have this adverse affect on me, I used to have jugs and vases of it all around my house when it was in season, but sadly, now I mostly just admire it through the window!

So this series of plant drawing was a terrific ‘find’ and it included the daffodil drawing I mentioned a few posts back. I couldn't wait to make a start on a repeating pattern with Mock Orange and Weigelia and here is the tracing:

'Can you see what it is yet?' - as Rolf Harris would say!

I seem to have a horribly busy week ahead, dentist check-up, appointment with the bank, and the newsagent wanting some of my Easter Cards, featuring our local  St Mary’s Church, with the greeting in Welsh.


All these things are extra to my normally very full schedule of uploading cards and, currently, organising my Weddings category on Zazzle – a rather huge and tedious task!

But I really hope to have the Mock Orange Blossom design ready to post next week - if only because there are so many more flowering plant drawings just begging me to make them into designs!



7 comments:

Betsy Grant said...

I think I know what you mean about repeating patterns. There's a certain love and appreciation that goes into doing a pattern more than once. I find the same thing happens when I write music.

Judy Adamson said...

That's interesting, Betsy. I expect there are quite a number of similarities between making music and making a piece of visual art.

I think one of the reasons I am fascinated by repeating patterns is the way that repeating a pattern produces, not only more of the same but new, sometimes unanticipated patterns!

jeanlivingsimple said...

I really like the first card. The iphone case is pretty. Makes me want an iphone just to get the case.

Judy Adamson said...

Thank you, Jean :) And I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only person in the world without a smartphone!

UmSuhayb b David said...

The primrose pattern is gorgeous. And now I'm doing a lot of poetry, I can see parallels that the form of the poem (e.g rhyme, rhythm) brings out words and meanings you'd have never thought of.
Does Welsh put adjectives after nouns? as Happy Easter in Swedish is Glad Påsk which is looking similar, if you change the order around.

Judy Adamson said...

Hi Louise - glad you like my primrose pattern! And interesting that 'repeats' play their part in all the Arts!

I don't know enough Welsh to be able to say whether the adjectives always come after the nouns but they often seem to. And yes, most of the European languages use similar words for Easter - Italian 'pasqua', Danish and Norwegian 'paske', Portuguese 'Pascoa', Spanish 'Pascuas'. Only German and English base their word (Easter and Ostern) on the Germanic Pagan Goddess, 'Ostara'for some reason!

architecture associate online said...

Color and combination is nice but first one card is awesome.