Well, unlike last week, when I posted a heart-based sketch a little too late for Valentine’s Day, this week I’m posting four-leaf clovers just in time for St Patrick’s Day!

I started with the same heart shape from last week, but I replaced the large orange peel shape with a nine-patch in which only three diagonal squares are coloured in (the rest are coloured the same as the heart shape). Then it made sense to connect the strings of diagonal squares with more strings of diagonal squares…. Haha! Four-leaf clover shapes in an Irish chain design seemed too good an idea to pass up this close to St Patrick’s Day.

Maybe if I colour more of the foursomes in green, they’ll seem more clover-y? (I’m using an on-point layout here, so I’ve also used my usual colouring scheme for such layouts, where alternate blocks on the diagonal are coloured differently.)

   

    

I wondered if the Irish chain-iness was overpowering the clovers a bit (and obscuring the indented centres of each leaf), so tried removing a few bits and pieces… the squares inside the clover, or between them, or both. I tried adding a third colour too.

   

   

Hmm, I think maybe the big one in the middle of that last set might be my favourite of that bunch. Plainer clovers but with echoes of the Irish chain motif too.

I could’ve removed one more layer of small squares in the crosses between the clovers, but that would’ve left them as nine-patches floating in those spaces, and I wanted to keep the direct connection between the clovers.

And as much as I love a simplified palette, I kept coming back to this bright multicolour palette of happy colours. I liked the idea of colouring the nine-patches in the clover centres but leaving the inter-clover crosses ‘plain’.

Even with only a few elements, there’s so much potential for play here!

Like last week’s sketch, this one is super-simple but just playful and joyful. I also think it’s funny that I recently posted a series of Irish chain-inspired designs (Sunday sketches #497 to #501) – clearly that concept is still in the forefront of my brain 🙂

Watch out for some related sketches in coming weeks. And in the meantime, Happy St Patrick’s Day!