I have been working on a new project for awhile in my head, but had not got far enough with it to start to put it down on paper. For better or worse I am really good at visualising and will play with images in my head before I even start to rough them out. This is a great bonus for me, but the down side is that I don’t jot things down as much as I should and can sometimes forget, also there are many benefits to roughing things out and having working drawings for the design process.

Trumpet Passion Nancy Blum

Trumpet Passion Nancy Blum Detail
Anyway, I have been wanting to combine my drawings of flowers with the patterns and to make these into really big drawings, but would they work, could I do such big pencil drawings and would anyone else like them? In my wandering around Pinterest (yes I am a little addicted to this site, but so many wonderful images, really inspirational) and found this American artist who was doing all these things.
Nancy Blum is an artist who works across a variety of mediums and has created these enormous pencil works of flowers against an intricate world of pattern and layered images. I was spellbound by them. The size was larger then I had dared to dream of and she had layered flowers over patterns and repeated images and they look fabulous. Could I use her as inspiration for my own work?

Converge-detail Nancy Blum

3 Rectangles Nancy Blum
Well I am going to give it a right good shot. I have drawn my background pattern and am getting ready to draw the Sturt Desert Pea to go on top of it. I have decided to do it with cut outs, I like the layering of the work, and if gives me greater freedom to add and subtract from the work until I get an overall image I like. If it doesn’t work out I will be able to use the images in other ways.

Desert Pea Background Pattern Detail
The background is deliberately muted so that it will work behind the other images. Crossing my fingers and hoping it will work.
Karen
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