"Nurse Log Conifers" Unisex Longsleeve T-shirt

A fallen trunk carries the whole drawing, lying on a diagonal from a torn-up root mass at the lower left to a splintered break at the upper right, where the wood ends in pale, jagged spikes. Three conifers have taken root along it and stand straight up from the slope, each one smaller than the last, so the eye travels up the log by steps. Their boughs are dark forest green with sage tips laid over them in short feathered strokes, and their trunks are the same rust orange as the wood they grow from. Each young tree holds on with thin forking roots that run down over the bark like fingers, and the tallest one sends a single root almost the full depth of the log.

On this unisex longsleeve t-shirt the lichen is what rewards attention: pale grey-green scalloped patches, drawn like small overlapping fans, that follow the curve of the trunk and continue down one thick root as it leaves the base. Below them the upturned roots turn cream and tan, tangled over orange and near-black green, and they thin out into dozens of fine hanging tips. The palette stays to five or six earthy colours throughout, which gives it the look of an old woodcut or a field guide plate. It suits hikers, foresters and anyone who has stopped on a trail to study a log like this one.