Walking backward to a series

I have taken many steps in my series project -- most of them backward.
First, I pinned my plan to the design wall. The plan taunts me. It seems I've picked exactly what I cannot bring myself to do: inspired by Beatriz Milhazes, I have set out to make precise, geometry-inspired designs in square format, with palette and imagery based on Florida nature.

For my first piece, I picked a drawing in my (rectangular, 11" x 14") sketchbook. It is a watercolor, based on a sketch of flowers against the window blinds in my studio.

The blinds would work as stripes, which Milhazes uses so effectively.

 I traced the image, rearranging the blossoms just a bit. I went to Staples and enlarged and also minimized the flowers. I made tracings of these, then played with them on my design wall, where I had pinned a striped 19" x 19" square for my base. I rearranged them over and over, many times, many days, including just  before I went to bed and as soon as I got up. I added a vase, put stars on the stamens, and took a few photos when something seemed close to good. What I'm looking at now is what a bird would see if he approached the flower upside down. A hummingbird, maybe. No, no! don't let me add a hummingbird!

Milhazes color copies on right, my tracings on left, and trash can handy for many rejects

I also played with the colors of blinds and grass and sky.

What I have been able to do is stick to flowers. A series is supposed to concentrate your thoughts, so give me one point. All this time, I've been drawing and painting flowers, real and make-believe, exact and abstract.

It's not that I adore flowers (I like chocolate and butterflies and bridges better.), but flowers are teaching me so much about everything else: color and line and shadow and impact. I'm afraid I'm also learning I love messy edges and incomplete thoughts. Precision, as in Milhazes' art, drives me wild. Not when I look at it, but when I make it.

But it's true I learned how to cook intuitively by first following many recipes; and I trust my series project will give me the same kind of good grounding. I have the feeling that once I start cutting fabric, the series might practically make itself. I can hope.