I have been wanting to make a pattern using the grevillea flowers and the noisy minor birds (that come and eat them) for a while. In the past I have found the idea a bit daunting because its hard for me to achieve the level of detail when I draw up the design in illustrator.

1. I took some photos and picked some flowers from our front garden to draw. For the birds I used a few images from the internet to look at, because to get a close photo of them using my phone is a bit tricky.

2. My vision - I wanted the final design to be a detailed sketch but at the same time stylized. To be able to be used in a repeat pattern but also potentially for a t'shirt design (my kids love these birds :)

3. These are a few of the the sketches I made. I did many more until I felt comfortable with the subject matter.

4. I then traced them on tracing paper. Some I had to trace a few times before I was happy with them.

5. The final result. I did scan the tracings in and vectorise them, but in the end I decide to redraw them in illustrator. Regardless of this, this process really helped me! I felt by the end of it I new the design better before I took it onto the computer and that helped me to achieve the look I was after. For detailed designs this process works really well!

Thank you was another wonderful class!!