Foliage Pattern Design

Common Sowthistle

Foliage Pattern Design

This design was inspired by the leaves on a road-side plant, which was Common Sowthistle. I was intrigued that the leaves were roughly circular shapes positioned along a thin stem.

Simplified Leaf Design

My version of the plant has a series of curvy lines for the plant stems, then a series of seven-sided heptagons along the stem to represent the leaflet edges of the leaves.

Allover Pattern Design

My aim was to create an intricate pattern with ideally no obvious pattern repeat. The template has just seven twisty stems with leaflets.

Pattern Repeat

The pattern is flipped horizontally and vertically so that the stem from the first iteration aligns with the second and then repeatedly moved and duplicated again. Finally achieving a usable pattern repeat after being duplicated four times. Making the pattern repeat far longer than I would normally design!

Useful Markers

I found it useful to colour each end of the leaflets differently, making them easier spot. So I could keep track of which stem I needed to adjust.

Creating Variations

Not surprisingly the rough sketches had green leaves, but there was no reason for the final version to appear in much more interesting combinations. These examples show the most successful ones, there are plenty more not shown!

Testing The Pattern Repeat

The full-screen versions use actual pattern repeats, set to repeat using my CSS style sheet. This is the ideal way to test if a pattern repeat works. There is also the added bonus that I don’t need large, full screen images taking up extra time to download.