Karolful Karolful

Autumn Forest Floor

Inspiration for this series came from images of undisturbed, solemn forest floors, caught in the grip of a chilly autumn morning. Imagine the undergrowth swathed in early morning mist and layered in a thin, crisp layer of as yet unthawed frost. Fittingly this pattern is populated with detailed close-up studies of items you’d expect to find scattered on the ground in this setting: leaves, pine sprigs, bits of fern, moss and pinecones.  

As a dig­i­tal print com­mis­sion the design exper­i­ments with mixed media tech­niques, blend­ing dig­i­tal­ly manip­u­lat­ed pho­tographs with out­line draw­ings. The colour palette, con­sist­ing of a beau­ti­ful ensem­ble of grey, beige and blue, was select­ed by Kidspattern.

This project was a part of my ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kidspat­tern. If you’d like to learn more about them please vis­it their web­site HERE. Alter­na­tive­ly, view the archive of our pre­vi­ous projects HERE, in which I dis­cuss in detail the his­to­ry and nature of our work.

All cloth­ing-mock­ups pre­sent­ed here are pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Kidspat­tern and are used for visu­al­i­sa­tion pur­pos­es only.

Horizontal Arrangement

Visu­alised on this shirt for a boy (18 to 36 months) is the main select­ed pat­tern. The use of a dark aegean blue as the pri­ma­ry back­ground colour makes this ver­sion of the pat­tern more fit­ting for use in the Autumn part of the collection.

To make the base mod­ule for the repeat­ing pat­tern the com­pos­ing ele­ments were arranged into hor­i­zon­tal stripes. Then, to high­light the intri­cate details of the ele­ments with­in these stripes, they were dis­played in a rel­a­tive­ly large size. The cool light-blue used for some of the leaves con­trasts won­der­ful­ly against the warmer rust colour­ing used in oth­ers. I think it makes it seem as if some of the ele­ments are gen­uine­ly touched by a fine sil­very coat­ing of frost. It is iron­ic that this effect seems to work par­tic­u­lar­ly well on leaves from a plant known as Sil­ver Dust.

Please feel free to browse through oth­er colour and arrange­ment solu­tions of this design below:

Version 1

This ver­sion of the pat­tern is much soft­er and fresh­er because the dark back­ground has been sub­sti­tut­ed for a lighter blue. The com­pos­ing ele­ments are also arranged a lit­tle more dynam­i­cal­ly because the order­ly lines have been bro­ken up and instead the pieces are more nat­u­ral­is­ti­cal­ly scat­tered around in their placement.

Version 2

As stan­dard this pat­tern was applied onto a basic white back­ground, although it worked equal­ly well in all colour com­bi­na­tions. To the left you can appre­ci­ate the full colour palette that was used because it is dis­trib­uted across all the com­pos­ing ele­ments here. The colours and ele­ments com­bine well in this design to cre­ate organ­i­cal­ly flow­ing stripes that smooth­ly tran­si­tion across the mate­r­i­al of the jacket. 

Vertical Arrangement 

This com­po­si­tion took inspi­ra­tion from the con­cept of a botan­i­cal herbar­i­um, which is full of dried-up spec­i­mens that are cat­a­logued sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly into an impres­sive and ency­clopaedic trea­sure trove of nat­ur­al won­ders. Con­se­quent­ly, in this ver­sion the com­pos­ing ele­ments are spaced-out more and arranged in ver­ti­cal stripes. Thus gen­er­at­ing the impres­sion that they are being pre­sent­ed to the view­er con­scious­ly as part of an organ­ised col­lec­tion. 

Colour Options

This ver­sion of the pat­tern places it on a grey back­ground that, giv­en it is a win­ter pat­tern, makes it feel appro­pri­ate­ly heavy, rich and moody. This colour­ing also makes the pat­tern feel more mut­ed and reserved and thus more mas­cu­line. This impli­ca­tion was impor­tant as this it was a pat­tern aimed at boys.

Below I’ve added a much lighter white-back­ground option.