Arranging Shapes and Flowers

A few months ago I designed a collection of 12 greeting cards featuring new patterns and new floral vase compositions.

A common thread in my creative process is arranging — starting with small pieces (shapes, flowers, motifs) and moving them around until the composition develops and settles into place.

I go through phases of painting a lot, collaging a lot, designing in Photoshop a lot, and I as I work I save the ideas I like, even if I don’t know exactly what I’ll use them for. To create this card collection I pulled bits of ideas from my archive of past sketches and artwork and rearranged the pieces into these new designs.

And of course, I love playing with color!

I'll share some of my design process below.

 

Creating rhythm with geometric shapes

This pattern started out by painting all the shapes by hand — I used a wide flat brush to get the parallelograms and rectangles — and I liked the pattern, but the spacing was a bit wobbly since I had just eyeballed the pattern as I worked.

I recreated the same pattern by arranging cutout paper shapes, and this version felt more like me — the pattern still felt organic because the shapes were cut out and arranged by hand, but the rhythm and spacing was more consistent.

I think the white and navy pattern of my original piece is quite striking and could work well in certain use cases or products, but for my card design, I had fun creating with a multicolor pattern.

 

Arranging paper flower bouquets

I really enjoy creating vase compositions because I get to dream up a cool patterned vase and also arrange flowers.

This design started one day when I was experimenting with new flower motifs. I had a huge sheet of white paper and black ink and started painting without a clear idea in mind, and this whimsical flower emerged. I painted tons of them, trying out different gestures, angles, sizes, etc. 

I cut out the flowers I liked best — based on the shapes of the petals, the inkiness, or the gesture of the stem — and then created different arrangements of the flowers. Some of the resulting bouquets felt too busy or too centered, so I tried a lot of arrangements before settling on my final designs.

I enjoyed the flexibility that came from being able to arrange the flowers one by one, and add or subtract flowers until I liked the composition. If I was just trying to paint the bouquet in one go, I wouldn't have been able to "undo" a decision and move things around, but I did get that flexibility by arranging the cutout flowers. 

 

Playful iteration and discovery

I love circles and by slicing a circle into quarters you get more directionality and movement from the shape. You can make some pretty cool patterns just by arranging quarter circles in different ways, as you can see in the little video I made below. 

 

The pattern for this anniversary card started out by experimenting in Photoshop. I was using the "symmetry fill" tool to prototype what different kinds of arrangements I could create with quarter circles and squares. (I'll add a footnote below with more details if anyone is interested in how to do this in Photoshop!) Most of the prototypes were way too chaotic for my taste, but I really liked the calm and dignified feel of the one on the left. My name for this pattern is "Temple" because it makes me think of dome architecture.

I saved a screenshot and then forgot about it for a while, until I was looking for some pattern inspiration! I dug into my box of colorful painted papers to recreate the pattern by hand. I like making geometric patterns by hand because I think the imperfections from cutting and arranging the shapes by hand adds a nice organic quality to the final pattern — it's not too perfect. 

 

Balancing florals and geometry

This folksy, kind-of-Scandinavian flower pattern pulled from a couple of my past pieces.

The flowers came from a hand-painted pattern, shown above on the left. I like this piece — especially the flowers and the colors palette — but I felt like the leaf shape didn't quite fit with the playful flowers and geometric elements.

I tried different shapes of leaves and types of geometric shapes before settling on this "bowtie" motif interspersed with the flowers. The "bowties" actually came from a stationery design I developed for a Minted contest (fingers crossed it gets picked!). 

By arranging the bowties in alternating directions, the pattern becomes really dynamic and interesting. Orangey-red is one of my favorite colors, and I was happy with how this design looked with a vibrant orangey-red background.

 

Discovery by arranging

Across all of these designs, I usually don't have a clear idea of what the final outcome will be when I get started. I really enjoy the process of arranging pieces — sometimes literally arranging paper shapes or flowers, or revisiting past sketches and drafts — and seeing how they can come together to create something new and interesting.

I recently "rearranged" my kitchen and got to enjoy this same process of arranging and discovery in a different context. I didn't map out ahead of time which utensils or bowls would go where, but instead started arranging and rearranging things as I discovered what fit well in each drawer or shelf. One small detail I love is that a little ceramic jar I made 10 years ago in pottery class now holds my phone charger, and another small bowl holds garlic. 

In both art and home, I find that arranging things with thoughtfulness and curiosity can lead to compositions I wouldn't have anticipated ahead of time, but that end up feeling new, useful, and beautiful.

 

* For the Photoshop nerds, here's a brief description of how to explore different symmetries easily in Photoshop. You’ll first want to create a simple motif on a transparent background with a little bit of an empty border (e.g. a flower). Save this file as a pattern (Edit > Define Pattern). Next, you’ll go to Edit > Fill then select Contents = Pattern, Script = Symmetry Fill, and select your motif as the Custom Pattern. In the next dialog box, you can click through the 17 wallpaper groups, plus other types of symmetries, and adjust the sliders to see how the resulting pattern could look. I find this to be a helpful tool for getting ideas, and I screenshot the ones I like best so I can refer back to them in the future.