Very first pattern

There was this super cool project posted on Indiewalls the other day that just matched up so well with what I wanted to do that I couldn't resist. The project was for the restaurant of a hotel in Plano, Texas and the clients were looking for a wall covering, preferably a seamless pattern that represented a chinoiserie but with Texan elements. I've been wanting to understand pattern and work with motifs for a little while but never really followed through. With a deadline this close, I knew I would push myself harder to try.

The palette the clients were looking at was the Chinese porcelain (blue & white) and the brief images had a picture of cowboys. While I was planning out my pitch, I didn't have any idea as to how many motifs I would have, how large each tile would be. Nothing technical really. Thought I'd just swing it. Which is why I ended up wasting an entire day on drawings that didn't matter.

By the second day, I had almost given up. And then I decided to move away from the cowboys and try to create something I could use in my own portfolio and print myself. I also decided to go with a palette that wasn't as traditional, a little more colorful and that would still work with the design aesthetic of the restaurant. The Texan elements I incorporated into this motif was the Longhorn Skull, a lasso wrapped around the horns, the Monarch butterfly (which is the state butterfly..how awesome is that?), a striped-back Oriole (Texan bird), and for pure design purposes, I added a few branches, berries, and leaves. The pattern behind my motif is a popular Asian pattern, which I thought wasn't overbearing and would allow my motif to breathe. Here's what the motif looks like

I remember when I used to look at all the gorgeous scrapbooking paper in the world, they used to be packaged in collections and themes, which I thought was really cool. That is definitely something I would want to work on later. I did create 2 additional themes with the same motif though. Check it out.