You can either do a basic project, which is joining two painted pages (eg. a sketchbook spread) together, or a more advanced project, which is joining multiple painted pages together and then creating a half-drop repeat.

Either level is fine, the basic project is a great skill to have if you work in a sketchbook and often paint across the spine, then realise you love the painting and want to make it into a print or a card.

The advanced project will take you step by step from your multiple painted pages, to a seamless pattern tile ready for uploading to a site like Spoonflower. How cool is that?

How to do it?

Download the step-by-step pdf from the class resources and print it out as it will help you follow the process. If you can't see it, make sure you're watching Skillshare in a browser window (eg. Chrome/Safari) and not on the Skillshare App, where it might not be visible!

Why do the project?

It is soooooo satisfying to turn your own art into actual products like chair coverings or scarves or blankets!

And, you can get a lot more mileage out of your painting by using different colored backgrounds.

Process:

If you haven't already watched Part 1 of the class, I strongly recommend you go back and watch that first.

1. Scan or photograph your work.

2. Align: Create your canvas in Photoshop, then trim and align your panels.

3. Create one painting: Use the clone stamp tool to hide the joins, to create one large seamless painting. If you’re doing the basic project, use the clone stamp tool to fix your central seam, and you’re done! Please share your project in the class project gallery!

4. Separate foreground from background: Use the freeform pen tool to separate the foreground motifs from the background.

5. Image file to pattern tile: Crop your image, then resize it ready for making into a repeat.

6. Top and bottom join: use offset filter and clone stamp tool to fix top and bottom join.

7. Side Join: Set up guides, use offset filter to see side join, swap top and bottom quadrants, then fix the side joins.

8. Check your pattern works (!) - I'll show you how! Once this is done, you can use the Pattern Preview tool to see how it looks!

9. Build the final repeat tile with separate layers. Make any final tweaks, then prepare the file for uploading to Spoonflower.

10. Celebrate!!

How to Share your Project:

Basic project: please share a quick photo of your sketchbook painting, and then a photo of your finished painting with the central seam removed. (You have permission to say "ta-da!!!")

Advanced project: Please share a photo of your starting point (separate painted pages) and then your finished pattern all joined up in repeat!

If you want to show it on mockups, or, even on actual physical products, that would be AMAZING!

And if you want to show steps you've taken along the way (eg screenshots) that would be awesome as it would encourage others to keep going.

Above photo: me cutting out the fabric for our chairs (first time I've ever upholstered anything!) If I can do it, you can too.

Yulia Kachan

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