I thought I could make a good image from a poem about snow melting. I'm not a big fan of snow. Also, the flowered dresses—I knew that would produce some good imagery. I like fashion and clothes, and I like color a lot.

At first I had a totally different layout, more like a montage, with a couple of different sized women and different flowered apparel. But something about it didn't say, “This is it!” So I kept on drawing. It was just a lot of sketching until I liked what I got.

I laid out the figures first, the shapes of the girls, and then I found patterns that I liked in some old Japanese block prints and Sears catalogs from the '50s. I like the line work and the flat colors. I've always painted like that.