It's nice to be caught up with the birth flowers, and next will come the purple aster. But, before I file the paintings and drawings away, I thought I would write a bit about my process and share some photos.
The first drawing turned out like a drawing for a tattoo!
This was too refined to use for the watercolor wash that comes next, so I made sure I scanned it to keep for future uses. Then I lightened the drawing by pressing down on it all over with my kneading eraser, then scanned it again. After that I printed the lightened drawing onto Arches hot pressed watercolor paper. That way I could use it for painting the original. It worked! This was my first time painting from a print of my own drawing.
Earlier, I had painted a practice drawing of the main flower head. Here it is cut out and laid onto the print of the lightened drawing just for fun.
I went on to paint the entire piece.
Next morning I scanned the painting into Photoshop, refined it and brought it into Adobe Illustrator for printing. As soon as I saw the first test print I knew I had to add another leaf. That was accomplished by going back into Photoshop; copying the top part of the left leaf, reversing it (or it's called reflecting horizontally in Photoshop) and finally pasting it to the bottom right corner of the design.
Back to Illustrator for the final layouts.
Here is the design laid out in 3 sizes. You can find it on Etsy.