All I needed was a reason to do it. It leaped inside my brain like I had just downloaded the finished file. Spoonflower.com lets you make your own designs and patterns and display them -- and sell them, if you want -- onto fabrics and wallpapers. They have weekly contests, and the next deadline was a day away. With a theme like "Family Portraits" I couldn't resist, and that's when I decided to do it all in one day; mainly because I wanted an excuse to draw these guys, and I wanted to try my hand at making a pattern.

I didn't want my family's faces to be on fabric. That's kind of lame and creepy, and no one would ever want to own fabric with the faces of those I know so well. Instead, I thought of a different kind of family ... the musical ancestors of our previous generations. For those who love music, without these men (and many other geniuses I didn't have time to draw), we wouldn't have the brilliant array of music we have now. So, this is my tribute to them.

Patterns are way harder to make, I quickly found out. Deadline was midnight, and it was inching closer and closer as I tried to wrap my head around what this thing would look like repeated over and over. 

This is what I ended up with. I'm not overly stoked with the pattern, but I am certainly excited about the portraits. I have been really, REALLY into drawing and shading with lines, and these guys were perfect to put both my weekly life drawing practise and new found inspiration of line to the test.

 

And it goes on like this ... forever and ever and ever.