Mushroom Forest Pattern
Featured in Millersville University Art & Design Department's Annual Juried Student Exhibition
Overview
The goal behind this project was to create a conversational pattern with a coordinated design. Along with this goal, I challenged myself to experiment with a new way of printing, although I do not have access to a Risograph machine I used brushes in Procreate to simulate the effect.
Brainstorming
The challenge with this project was going to be the relationship of the patterns themselves. One was to be the main hero pattern and the other a more subtle supporting pattern. I started my brainstorming for this project by creating a mindmap and listing out a variety of different ideas and elements that go with the main idea. This would allow me to generate both ideas for patterns but also for elements to be included in either the hero or the supporting pattern. Once I completed my mindmap exercise, I began looking for inspiration and creating my moodboard. In my moodboard, I tried to look for a variety of different patterns that ranged from more simplistic to more detailed.
Sketches
After brainstorming and creating a moodboard I moved onto sketching. Although I sketched out various concepts including an underwater and "milky way" theme I found myself being most interested in the forest and bug themed sketches. These themes would ultimately be my inspiration and main concept for this pattern project.
In-Progress
For this project I found myself being inspired by what for me at the time was a new medium, risograph printing. In summary, risograph printing is when a limited number of inks are used in printing. The inks are semi-translucent so you can overlap 2 colors to create a third. By determining when and where colors overlap is how the piece being printed is built up. Since I do not have access to a risograph printer I was attempting to simulate the effect using Adobe Photoshop. Initially, I had wanted to stick with the pure coloring of the risograph style but I was struggling so I decided to move away from it as I worked on the coloring of the pattern for the final piece.
Final Piece
Below you can see the patterns in their entirety as well as mockups of them in use on various items.