This Skull is Tropical

When I initially came up with this illustration, I pictured it as a full maximalist tapestry pattern. I also knew I wanted to create it with a more minimalistic color palette. Upon creating the layout of all the tropical elements I found that creating a fully covered piece (where-in the background is sparsely seen), it started to take a way from the tropical feel itself and become a mush of green. Because of that, I opted to the let the background peek more through the illustration itself.

For this illustration I wanted to use neutrals, as well as variants of both cool and warm greens. I initially started with finding tints and shades of "eggshell" like white that could be used for the skull for a more aged affect. Next, I settled on cool green colors that would give off a rich tropical feel, and finally in order to balance the cooler green plants, I added in pops of warmer more yellow tinted colors to allow for some of the plants to pop a little bit more.

When coming up with the botanical set that would represent the tropical part of the illustration, I knew I wanted to use leaves and ferns most people would easily associate with the tropics, such as: the fan palm, the areca palm, monstera, etc. The original sketches and full color rendering were created in Procreate on a 10''x10'' scale at 300 dpi.

On top of being a possible stand-alone illustration, I also wanted this piece to be a seemless pattern. The final pattern and stand alone print were edited and finished in Affinity Designer, as well as, Photoshop.