'Cracked-Earth Print'

To begin my print designing excercise, I tried to think of prints in nature. Particularly african prints in nature.  Here were some of my findings...

  

While I did like some of these: hte bark in the top right corner I really liked, but it reminded me of camo wear, and I'm not a big fan of camo and I don't believe my target market would wear too much of it!  The sand dunes were also nice too, but a little too wishy washy wavey for me.
Although I like animal prints on the animals themselves, I am not the hugest fan of animal prints on clothing, especially if it is not done well. I feel that often it can look distasteful and tacky - I feel there is a fine line to cross and it is easy to get it wrong...

What I really want, is a print that comes from nature and is not necessarily recognisable as that print when it is put out of context... eg, animal prints would be no good as everyone knows what they are when being worn in apparel...I also want something slightly geometric to continue my african/maori geometric patterns from last project...

I really like the idea of cracked earth!
-it is geometric in a strange kind of way
- it isnt really recognisable when taken out of context
-it has a very african connection and feel to it when you know where it originates from...

After a little play on photoshop these are some of the prints that I have come up with... The colours are not quite ruight but they give an idea of the look/feel that I am going for. It was the first time that I learnt to use the pattern making tool on photoshop and I am so happy I know it now, it works really well, is very straightforward and there is so much you can do!!!

The image at top left was my sort of starting point after I had traced the shapes from a photo of cracked earth, I then went about applying different colours and backgrounds and extra outlines etc etc... The top middle image shows how I have combined to completed prints and changed the trasnparency to get the look - at first I really disliked this print but it ha grown on my heaps and I think it could look bangin' on a a pari of pants!! I'd wear them!!! Hopefully my target market will too....

 Still lots of  development to be done I feel, although I am on the right track...