Sunflowers in a vase, surely someone in the history of art has also approached this subject? I can't for the life of me think of a famous example though.
Anyway as with nearly all my work I start by leafing through my art books in the studio, looking at prints and paintings I admire to see what I can take from them. Sometimes it's the composition, sometimes the colour palette and sometimes its just vibes.
For this drawing I wanted to lean heavily into the pop art style so I grabbed Patrick Caulfield 'The Complete Prints 1964-1999' published by the Alan Cristea Gallery and Roy Lichtenstein 'All About Art' which is the show catalogue from his retrospective at the Hayward Gallery.
With the style in mind and to an extent the colours decided by the subject matter and composition it was time to start. The image started as a photograph of the sunflowers on the window ledge in my kitchen.
Initially I wanted the print to be three colours but it felt flat, I dropped in the grey and it suddenly gave the drawing life and depth. I removed the fourth flower, it felt unbalanced with it in. I finally moved the flowers over to the right and it was done.
I'm happy with the final postcard print, if I had to be critical of it I'd say the yellow is a bit lemony and not warm enough.
Often the postcards are a precursor to a larger print, I'm not sure that'll be the case here but that's the good thing about postcard club, you get a glimpse into the process and get a moment from the studio. Something that might only have been a quick drawing becomes a thing and who doesn't love a lovely thing arriving in the post every month!