One summer, the flower was winning

One sunflower, drawn side-on in charcoal line with a warm yellow head, planted in a plain terracotta pot. Beside it, at the same scale, a small child in plain outline. The flower stands taller by about a head. Nothing else is printed.

It went into a yoghurt pot in March. Nobody expected it to win.

Why is the child drawn standing next to the flower, rather than the flower alone?

Because the flower on its own is just a flower — next to him, it becomes a measurement.

A sunflower with nothing beside it says nothing about size; scale needs a second, recognisable object to read against. Put a child at true relative height next to the stem and the drawing stops being a picture of a plant and starts being a record of who was ahead by August. The comparison is the entire reason both figures are on one shirt, rather than the flower by itself.

Why does the chewed leaf stay in, instead of being drawn whole?

Because a slug got to it, and taking the hole out would turn a record into an idealised sunflower that never actually grew.

The stem leans slightly under the weight of its own head; a leaf has a hole clean through it. Both are what happened to this particular plant in this particular pot. A drawing that tidies the damage away is drawing a different plant — a generic one, the kind on a seed packet, not the one that came up in the garden this year.

Does anyone need to give permission for a design like this?

No — nothing here belongs to anybody else. It's an invented illustration of a family's own child and their own plant, not a reproduction of a photograph, seed-packet artwork or a trademarked variety.

That's the opposite of a restriction: because it's original, there's no licence to chase and nobody to ask. That changes if the starting point is somebody else's photograph of a sunflower rather than a drawing made from life — at that point it's their composition being copied, not the family's own garden.

Does this work if the plant grows slowly, or loses?

Yes — what does the work is a real comparison, not a guaranteed win for the flower.

A tomato plant that stalls at knee height beside a child who's already taller tells its own true story; a bean plant thin as a pencil against a broad-shouldered child is a comparison in the other direction and just as worth drawing. A handprint kept at its true size works from the same logic: the real measurement is the content, not a flattering one.

Does this work with two children measured against the same plant?

Yes — draw both children in, each at his own true height against the stem, and the comparison becomes two results on one shirt instead of one.

A shared sunflower measured against children of different ages produces two different readings from the same plant: the older one might already be ahead, the younger one losing by more than his brother did at that height. That isn't a complication, it's more information for the same design to carry.

Isn't this just a photo you could take instead?

A photo records the moment; a drawn illustration decides what to keep and what to leave out, and that choice is a different kind of record.

A snapshot would show the same two figures, plus the fence, the washing line and whatever the light happened to be doing that afternoon. A charcoal line strips that away and keeps exactly the comparison that matters — stem against child, head against head. It sits alongside whatever he brought home from school that week: kept for what it argues, not for the background it happened to have.

Does it print well?

Yes — a single ink line with one block of yellow for the head is about as clean a print as this material handles.

Keep the charcoal as a hard line rather than a soft sketchy one, and the head as flat yellow rather than shaded, on a pale blue or oat tee. The bend in the stem and the hole in the leaf both read fine because they're shapes, not gradients — flat colour with a hard edge is what survives fabric, where a soft wash would go muddy.

How do I get one made?

Describe the plant at JustOG — how it was grown, roughly how tall it got, and whatever marked it as this one and not a generic flower. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Next August it'll be his turn to be the taller one, and the flower won't see it coming.