Karolful Karolful

Peacock Forest

First design in a group inspired by the theme of an enchant­ed for­est. The “Pea­cock For­est” design is aimed at kids and hence has a more elab­o­rate palette of deep greens, com­pli­ment­ed by cream and an accent of pink. It evokes the idea of fol­low­ing mag­i­cal but­ter­flies through tan­gled thick­ets of veg­e­ta­tion, made up of plumage-like ferns.

The sec­ond one, despite the shared theme, presents quite dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion (View the “Wood­land Scene” HERE). Both are part of a com­mis­sion for a Client’s Autumn-Win­ter Col­lec­tion aimed at chil­dren aged 0–36months old.

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.

Overview

This pat­tern com­bines images of large fern leaves and tall grass with more exot­ic ele­ments like pea­cock feath­ers and but­ter­flies. This com­pos­tion was meant to be illus­tra­tive of the expe­ri­ence of explor­ing an enchant­ed for­est, whilst mar­vel­ling at its’ extra­or­di­nary fea­tures and creatures.

The ren­der­ing of these ele­ments involved dig­i­tal manip­u­la­tion of pho­to­graph­ic mate­r­i­al that were fur­ther touched-up with my hand-draw­ing. The aim was to sim­pli­fy the ini­tial image to arrive at a flat, vec­tor design that was able to be screen-print­ed onto fabric.

Pattern 1

This take on the “Pea­cock For­est” was inspired by images of lush mead­ows, hid­den away deep with­in the for­est. For this rea­son addi­tion­al ele­ments such as reeds and long grass­es were added. To dis­rupt and ener­gise the colour palette occa­sion­al spots of bold colour were intro­duced along­side the now famil­iar forest-greens.

To bal­ance out the now con­trast­ing green and pink notes I also added some neu­tral creams. This pat­tern was intend­ed to be used as a place­ment print on a girl’s dress. For this rea­son its arrange­ment is more free-flow­ing and organ­ic than oth­er examples.

Pattern 2

This alter­na­tive, slight­ly mut­ed, ver­sion of the “Pea­cock For­est” reduces the main ele­ments in size, places them on a pale-green back­ground and arranges them into ver­ti­cal stripes.

This inter­twin­ing of the ferns, pea­cock feath­ers and but­ter­flies high­lights the sim­i­lar­i­ties between the for­est foliage and the bird’s plumage. This mim­ic­ry cre­ates a depth that is fur­ther devel­oped by using a spec­trum of blend­ing greens. 

Pattern 3

This vari­a­tion on the “Pea­cock For­est” is a bold, full-print ver­sion that is built around a pro­fu­sion of for­est foliage and plumage ele­ments. These ele­ments are medi­um size and arranged close­ly together.

The pattern’s green­ery is off­set and made more vibrant by bring­ing in the sec­ondary colours (pinks and cream) via the but­ter­flies. These over­lie the main ele­ments and thus appear to be ‘flit­ting’ across the ver­dant background.

Pattern 4

By lay­ing the pat­tern over a much dark­er back­ground its mood changes entire­ly. Now it is more illus­tra­tive of dusk in a deep­er, wilder for­est, thick with lux­u­ri­ant foliage, in which the pink flut­ter­ing but­ter­flies seem to act as allur­ing guides and draw the eye in.

Here I’ve visu­alised the pat­tern in an enlarged size and dis­played it on an autum­nal jack­et.