Spring in Bloom: The Creative Process Behind My New Licensing Collection

Mosaic art has been around for millennia, and I love to see how neatly and purposefully arranged small square-ish pieces of stone can create beautiful works of art. The first time I attempted to create an illustration with this type of technique was back in 2020, during an online watercolor class. I just fell in love with the meditative aspect of “coloring” a piece with small shapes, each with its own shade. I got inspiration from Van Gogh’s style of painting skies with swirling colors, made a simple drawing on watercolor paper and proceeded to happily paint each little shape. It looks quite simple and it is most definitely not technically perfect, but this is how my love for this technique started:

My first humble attempt at mosaic-style art

I have used this technique a few more times, but had never attempted to do it digitally until last year. I decided to create a mosaic-style collection inspired by spring, and sketched a few animals and flowers that I thought could make cute illustrations. I ended up chosing four main characters: Dave the Hedgehog, Brian the Bird, Lane the Swan and Three Little Bees. (I can tell you how I chose the names of my characters in another blog post, you might be surprised!)

Each character was paired with their own favorite flower: a lavender branch for Dave, some tulips for Brian, water lilies for Lane and three sunflowers for the Three Little Bees.

I painted each illustration in Procreate and oh, what fun that was! I created big and small mosaic tiles, and loved playing with textures and colors to create a cohesive collection.

Main character energy from these guys!

Of course, the fun did not end there! I was able to use different elements from each illustration to create some patterns and highlight some spot illustrations. Those water lilies and that sun had to shine in their own canvas! They all came together to create a cheery Spring in Bloom Collection!

If you are looking for spring-inspired prints and patterns to license on your products, look no further! This collection is available for licensing =)

I hope you like it! Happy Spring!

Elsa