Ligularia Sketch & Pattern

This year I bought a plant I had never seen before called Ligularia dentata.  I bought the plant for its beautiful foliage.  The stems and underside of the leaves are a gorgeous red/purple and the shape of the leaves are like lily pads.  I planted it next to my mill stone fountain and it looks perfect there...giving the area a pond/bog feel.  The plant loves water and will wilt in the middle of the day when it is in mid-day sun.  But it usually springs right back in the evening...especially if you water it daily.

I was super excited because in mid-July these strange-looking leaf pods sprouted up that were very distinct from the other foliage.  As you can see in the sketch above there was a main pod that held both a fly-trap-looking leaf and another pod of yellow flower buds.  It is really very stunning.  Every day I would examine the progress when I watered and at the end of July I was rewarded with bountiful, yellow, daisy-like blooms.

I have been meaning to sketch this plant for a while and I thought instead of using my usual black pen that I would try colored pens.  In the end I thought maybe I shouldn't have used pens at all...but it is always good to try different things.  And some times if I am not satisfied with a drawing it is fun to try and find a way to like it better.  So in that spirit after I finished scanning it I decided to play with the image even more.  I cropped the image two different ways and then experimented with rotating the image.

After I looked at all the options I chose my favorite one shown below.

Then I took that pattern and again made repeats of it to create a wallpaper.

I don't know what I will do with this but you never know when Ligularia wallpaper might come in handy! (Oooh, maybe as a the interior lining of a home-made book!...or wrapping paper!...or maybe a cell phone cover!...the possibilities are endless!)

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”― Alan W. Watts