Grundlagen in Adobe Illustrator: Radial-, Grid- und Spiegelwiederholungen

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hello! My name is Melissa Lee and I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer living in Northern California. I have a class called "Surface Design in Adobe Illustrator: a Beginner's Guide to Pattern Building" In that class, I go over all of the essential tools that I regularly use to make patterns and illustrations within Illustrator. As time has gone by though, I have noticed little nuggets of Illustrator know-how, if you will, whether it's a tool or feature that I forgot to cover or something new and useful that I've learned and implemented into my practice since making the class, all of which has led me to start making bite-sized classes on all of those missing bits of Illustrator knowledge. This is the first of those mini-classes. All of that said, some familiarity with Illustrator is recommended for this class. "A Beginner's Guide to Pattern Building" is a great class to start with, even if you're not interested in making patterns. If you are brand new to Adobe Illustrator, I recommend taking that class first. Otherwise, in this class, I cover everything you need to know about duplicating and repeating objects in Adobe Illustrator, including how to use the Radial, Grid, and Mirror repeat tools, as well as a deep dive into the Rotate and Reflect tools. Using these tools has been hugely beneficial for my art practice, and I promise you that there will be at least one technique learned here that will benefit you in your practice as well. 2. Duplicate Command Basics: I'm not going to go over every single tool that I use because this class is not meant to be a comprehensive Illustrator class. But I do go over literally every single commonly used tool, and the common mistakes and tech issues caused by those tools, in my class, "Surface Design in Adobe Illustrator, a Beginner's Guide to Pattern Building." If you're not interested in learning how to make repeating patterns, but you do want to learn Illustrator, that class would still be beneficial for you. All you would need to do is skip the two or three videos that focus on building patterns. All of that said, I do want to quickly go over the duplicate keyboard command since it is the easiest and quickest way to duplicate or repeat objects in Illustrator. I've selected the rectangle tool or M on your keyboard and if I click and drag while holding down Shift, it makes a perfect square and same thing with the Ellipse tool to make a perfect circle. If you need help remembering keyboard shortcuts, I've included an Adobe Illustrator keyboard shortcuts quick reference guide PDF for you to print out and reference along the way, and you can find that under the Projects & Resources tab. First, you can simply select an object, tap Command or Control C to copy it, and Command or Control V to paste it somewhere on the artboard. If I'm not mistaken, it pastes it on the direct center of the artboard that you're currently working on. You can also tap Command C to copy it and Command F to paste it directly in front of the original object, or Command B to paste it directly behind the original object. I like to have control over where exactly my duplicate object is placed, so you can also select an object and then once you've clicked on it and started to move it, you can then hold down Option or Alt on a PC to duplicate it. It will pop up the original object like so, so that you can see where in relation to it you want to place the duplicate object. Then release the mouse before you release, or take your finger off of, option and there you go. It duplicates it. If you want to perfectly align the object on top of or next to the original object, click and drag the square, then hold down Shift to align it perfectly with the original square and once again, Option to duplicate it. The order is click and drag, click Shift and Option. Release the mouse. Then lastly, release Shift and Option, then tap Command D to duplicate that action. That command is actually technically called Transform Again, but essentially what it means is it duplicates the last action you took. So clicking and dragging an object while holding down Option duplicates that object, while Command D duplicates the last action. If I just tap Command D over and over, now I can make a row of perfectly aligned squares. Then I can also select them all, click and drag down, hold Shift to keep it aligned and Option to duplicate it, and Command D once again to duplicate that action. [MUSIC] 3. Rotate & Reflect: We'll start with Rotate. You can actually rotate an object without activating the rotate tool by using the bounding box, with the selection tool. Here, I'm just using the bounding box, and the little rotate symbol shows up when you hover the cursor by a corner. If you hold down Shift, it will snap into position in exact 45 degree increments, which can be really useful. You can find the Rotate and Reflect tools over here on the toolbar. Click Rotate or tap R on your keyboard. A small reference point appears to mark where the object will rotate from. The default is in the center, so start to rotate it and, again, hold Shift if you want to snap it into place. One thing you can do with the Rotate tool that you can't do with just the bounding box, is you can move the marquee or crosshairs, so that it will rotate from wherever that point is now, instead of from the center. Say you want to make something like a clock interface, or a sun like this. I'll select this shape and tap R on my keyboard to activate the rotate tool, which will put the marquee in the center. But like I said before, you can drop it somewhere else, like the center of the sun, for example, and then you can rotate it around that point. I have Snap to Point checked. That's under View, then down here at the bottom is Snap to Point. I always like to have it checked because it makes placing things a little easier. With this shape selected, I'll tap R to activate the rotate tool again. Then when I tap down here, to drop the marquee points. If I slowly click and drag around where I think the center is, you should see it, ohp there it goes. You see it snap over to an invisible point. That is the direct center point of the circle. That way when I rotate the original shape, it will rotate around the circle perfectly. If you click and drag the object and then hold down the Option key, it will once again duplicate the object, which I don't think I mentioned it before, is denoted by the double arrows. If I click and drag...single arrow, hold down option, double arrow, release option, single arrow. I'll hold down Option, release the mouse first and then release option, and that drops a copy. Then I can tap Command or Control D for the Transform Again action, to duplicate that action over and over like so. It's difficult to eyeball where the duplicate would need to go, in order for them to be spaced perfectly equally. So I'll just undo those. I'm in rotate, and if I hover over the marquee with my cursor, and hold down Option, you'll see four little dots on the bottom right of the crosshairs. I can then click once, and that will bring up the rotate dialog box, or it's also called the options menu. Hence, why you hold down Option...on a Mac at least. Anyway, you'll want Preview on, so make sure that's checked. This is the degrees that I want to move the object. If I wanted to make an entire circle, I can let Illustrator do the math for me. It's really cool, you can just type in 360 for a full circle and then forward slash, so divided by, however many copies you think it will take. I'm going to try 10. It's a bit of a guessing game at first, but it's still much easier than trying to eyeball it. Instead of clicking Okay, we want to click Copy. Then you can tap Command D to duplicate that action. Actually, I think I want more so I'm going to undo those, hover over the point, hold down Option, click once. I'm going to try 15 this time, so 360/15, click Copy and Command D. There we go, I like that better. Because I did that with the correct math, it's a perfect rotation of 15 of those objects. If you were to do a clock interface, you would just need to divide 360 by 12 instead. Cool, huh? I want to show one more example, this time, though, I want to make a flower. I've got this little petal here, with this selected, I can tap R to activate rotate. I'll drop the point down at the bottom, maybe a little bit past the bottom of the petal. You need to click on the marquee so that your cursor turns into the crosshairs again, by the way, because if your cursor is still a black arrow from dropping the point, the four dots will not show up when you hover over the points and hold down Option. I'm holding down option, as you can see, the double arrows show to indicate the Duplicate action. If I take my finger off of option, click the marquee so that my cursor is now a crosshairs. That's when you can hover over the marquee, and hold down Option to bring up the four dots. Click once, this time I'm going to try 360 by 8. Click Copy, then I can tap Command D to transform again the last action I took. I have quickly created a little flower. I can easily add stamen to this if I wanted to. It reminds me of a Cosmos flower which I love, so that's fun. Next I want to show you how to use the Reflect tool, to do something similar to what the Mirror tool does, which I'm going to cover in the next lesson. Reflect is O on your keyboard, you can remember that because an O is a perfect reflection of itself, you can reflect an object vertically by clicking and dragging up to down, or horizontally by clicking and dragging from left to right or right to left. Once again, holding down Shift while doing so will snap it into place, perfectly reflected. Now I'm going to show you how I mirrored this leaf illustration with the Reflect tool. If you move the crosshairs by clicking somewhere to the side, you can then click and drag your motif over to reflect it on the other side of the crosshairs. If you hold down Shift, it will align and mirror the other motif perfectly. If you hold down Option or Alt, it will once again duplicate like so. Remember to release your mouse first before the other keys. I did the same thing with all of the foliage motifs here in this deer illustration as well. The font itself is not symmetrical, but most of the foliage is perfectly symmetrical, and I think that creates a really nice frame for her. You can also make a frame that's reflected from top to bottom as well as from side-to-side. I reflected it over at a different angle, then I'm selecting both and tapping Command G to group them. I'll tap O again to activate reflect, drop the marquee here, and reflect the grouped leaves up to the top, holding down Shift to snap it in place and Option to duplicate it. It's not quite where I want it to be, if I click on it, drag it down and hold Shift to keep it aligned. There we go. That's what I wanted. Now I've made a really nice frame relatively quickly and easily. [MUSIC] 4. The Radial Repeat Tool: The more you use Illustrator, the more you'll come to find that there are multiple ways to do the same thing. You can use the Radial and Mirror tools to do some of the same things that the Rotate and Reflect tools do. It just depends on your preference, really. We'll start with the Radial repeat tool, which rotates and duplicates an object into a perfect circle. Sort of like we did with the rotate tool, but it's more automatic and more easily editable. That is a hard word to say, editable. Try saying that five times fast. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, select an object and open the Radial repeat tool under Object > Repeat > Radial. This immediately pops it out into a radial repeat. The white circle button allows you to bring the repeat in or bring it out, or in other words, to expand or contract it. The other handle on the circle allows you to split or subtract from the circle. That might be useful if, for example, you wanted to make a sun on the horizon illustration. Like a half circle of sunlight. There's another white button on the bounding box with little up and down arrows that adds or subtracts the number of objects in the repeat. If you need to undo this, you can release it by going to Object > Repeat > and click Release, which takes you right back to where you were. Similar to releasing a clipping mask. Now I'm going to apply radial repeat to this leaf branch to give you another example. So Object > Repeat > Radial. This expands and contracts, this splits the repeat, and this adds or subtracts the number of objects. If you go to Object > Repeat > Options, you can access the Options panel to control a repeat that's already in progress like this. These controls do the same thing as the handles that I just showed you, but you may prefer controlling it from here because you can be a little bit more precise. You can type in the exact number of objects in the repeat, for example. You can actually access the same controls in the aptly-named Control panel up here without opening the Options panel. If your control panel is missing, go to Window and click Control. As long as the motif is in a radial repeat, you can always go back and edit it. Even if you click off of it, you can click again and access the handles. Once you're happy with the effect, I suggest expanding it, but I'll talk more about the importance of expanding in another lesson. For now though, just know that once you expand it, you cannot access the radial repeat controls anymore. Make sure that you're happy with the repeat before expanding. [MUSIC] 5. The Grid Repeat Tool: Select a motif and go to Object > Repeat > and now we're going to select Grid. It pops the motif out into a Grid Repeat. Something that's really cool about the radial, grid, and mirror repeat tools is that you can use other tools within the effect. If you double-click into it, a horizontal menu at the top of the document shows up. Just like when you click into isolation mode and, just like with isolation mode, you have to double-click somewhere on your workspace to exit the grid mode. Double-click back into Grid Mode, and you can rotate, scale, reflect, etc. To use the actual Grid repeat controls, you need to exit Grid Mode and select it again. There are a few different handles you can use. There are these sidebar handles that you can use to expand the grid repeat down and to the side. Then these two round buttons with the up and down and right and left arrows control the spacing between the motifs. The grid options panel is the only options panel of the three that actually has more features than the control panel. Up here in the control panel, you have access to these spacing controls. But if you open the actual options dialog box via Object > Repeat > Options, it has these other controls as well. The default is a standard Grid repeat, but you can switch it to a Brick by Row repeat, or a Brick by Column repeat. Then down here, you can flip the rows or columns horizontally or vertically. If I click here, every other motif is flipped horizontally by row. If I click here, every other motif is flipped vertically by row. You can toggle them both on at the same time as well as one at a time. Here you flip the columns. You can turn all four of them on, or just three, and so on and so forth. You can also hover over the spacing controls and scroll with your mouse to change the spacing that way. I like how that looks. I think I like this better. That looks cool. When you're done, click OK, and then if I double-click into Grid Mode, I can select one of the motifs and rotate it. I like this. This looks pretty cool. Then I think I can make a rectangle, send it to the back and yep, I can test how different background colors would look. I can also select the repeat itself and change the color, which is the same for the Radial and Mirror tools as well. That is a fun and easy way to find some cool simple repeats that would probably take you a little bit longer if you were to do it from scratch. One more thing I want to mention is that you can use the Align panel to space or align objects similarly to how the grid tool repeats objects. I'm not going to demonstrate it here though, because I already created an in-depth demonstration on how to use the Align panel in the other class I've mentioned. If you don't know how to use Align or you need a refresher on it, go check out that lesson in my Surface Design in Adobe Illustrator class. [MUSIC] 6. The Mirror Repeat Tool: The Mirror repeat tool is a little bit different from the other two repeat tools. When you apply the Mirror repeat effect, it automatically pops it into Mirror repeat mode. Go to Object > Repeat > Mirror, and you're automatically in mirror repeat mode. Just like with the grid and isolation modes, you can double-click in and out of mirror mode. Within mirror mode, I can tap O to activate the Reflect tool, click and drag and hold down Shift to snap it into place. Then I can tap R to activate Rotate, and rotate it. If you click and drag the white button in the center from right to left, you can control the spacing between the mirrored objects. If you click on either white button on the top or bottom, you can control the angle. Once you're happy with the mirror effect, be sure to tap V to activate the selection tool before trying to exit mirror mode, and that goes for the grid and radial modes as well. If I were to try to double-click while rotate or reflect was still activated, I would just move the marquee, see so this is the point where the object can rotate from, so tap V for the Selection Tool, or click the black arrow button over here, and then that's when you can double-click out of mirror mode. You can also click the arrow up here twice, to take you back even when using Rotate or Reflect and that's true for any mode like this. You can also combine repeat types. So if I go to Object > Repeat > Radial, it pops both of them into a radial repeat. So I'll just play around with this. I don't know why you'd want to do this exactly, like what it would be useful for, but it's good to know and it's worth experimenting with. You can release it just like you can with the radial and grid repeat tools, by going to Object > Repeat > Release. Which again brings it back to its original state. I'll use this moth to show you one more example. I'll select the wing and delete it, and then I'll select this wing which is grouped, and I'll go to Object > Repeat > Mirror. If I want a bit more of a dramatic look, I could play with the angle here. But I think I'm happy with this as it is so I'll undo that, double-click out and boom, we've got ourselves a beautifully reflected moth. [MUSIC]. 7. Expanding Repeat Tool Effects: Once you're happy with any Radial, Grid, or Mirror repeat, you'll want to expand it. When you use these three repeat tools, you are applying an effect to an object. It's a little confusing because the repeat tools are under the Objects menu not the Effects menu, but that is essentially what you are doing. They are effects applied to the motif you are repeating. You technically don't have to expand all objects with effects applied to them but I've personally gotten into the habit of doing so because it makes for a much cleaner Illustrator document that is much less likely to become laggy and difficult to work in. Using a lot of effects in a single document without expanding them once you're happy with them can slow down processing and cause issues when recoloring and scaling. Trust me, I know from experience [LAUGHTER] it is a pain and a half, let me tell you. [LAUGHTER] Especially with patterns, not fun. Anyway, it's also important to note that if you ever plan to use a cutting machine, like a Silhouette or a Cricket, or a laser cutting machine like a Glowforge, the Illustrator files have to be fully expanded. It's really good to know how to do that. In my Surface Design in Adobe Illustrator class, there is a lesson that goes into more detail on the Expand function, as well as a downloadable graphic that can help you to more easily identify when you need to expand an object. However, I am going to go over how to expand Radial, Grid, and Mirror repeat effects. The way you expand something is by going to Object > Expand and make sure the object is selected before you do that or expand will be grayed out and you won't be able to click it because Illustrator won't know what you're trying to expand. This is really easy with the Radial repeat tool. All you have to do is go to Object > click Expand, and click OK, then right-click and ungroup if you want to ungroup it. That is, if you want control of each object without having to double-click into isolation mode. But you might want to keep it grouped, which is fine. The way that the Mrror and Grid repeat tools work though is, once you've expanded them, they turn into clipping masks. I've expanded this grid repeat. Now I need to right-click and release the clipping mask. Then after you've released the clipping mask, there is an invisible box with no stroke and no fill applied to it that you need to delete. That box was what the clipping mask was constrained to. If you're not familiar with clipping masks, that might not make sense to you, but just trust me that it does. [LAUGHTER] Apparently I need to make a mini-class on clipping masks as well. Anyway, once you've released the clipping mask, it's still in a group, so you can right-click Ungroup and then delete the box. I like to toggle into Outline mode by tapping Command Y so that I can see where the box is. Now I can select it and delete it. Tap Command Y again and we're back to normal mode. With Mirror repeat, you have to release two clipping masks, one for each motif or grouped motif, like in the case of the moth wing. Then make sure to delete both of those invisible boxes created by the clipping masks. Expand it. And first you need to ungroup it, so right-click and Ungroup it. Then I do not know why you need to ungroup it again, but sometimes you do. [LAUGHTER] That's just something that I've found. Sometimes you need to ungroup things twice. It's still a mystery to me but you do. Honestly, I just right-click and ungroup until it gives me the option to release the clipping mask instead, which I then do. Then tap Command Y for Outline mode and delete the invisible box. This is how you can tell that the object is finally ready. This one doesn't have a rectangle, and this one does. I need to select the one with the rectangle and repeat the process. This is one reason why you may decide you prefer using Rotate, Reflect, and Duplicate. They don't require that you expand them because they're not effects. But I personally love using all of these tools. It just depends on what I'm doing. Sometimes it's easier to just reflect and duplicate than it is to use the Mirror tool and have to go through the rigmarole of expanding, ungrouping, releasing clipping masks, and deleting invisible rectangles. But sometimes I love using the Mirror tool. It's just so much easier to preview the different options with the Mirror tool and all three of the repeat tool effects. You can come up with some really cool stuff that you might not have been able to come up with otherwise. [MUSIC] 8. Class Project & Thank You!: Now it's time for you to practice repeating motifs in Adobe Illustrator and post your results in the class projects as either exported jpegs or screencaps. I've created an Illustrator file titled "Repeat Tools practice," that includes motifs and directions on which repeats I want you to create with those motifs. This is an option to help you practice and get used to using the tools covered in this class. Friendly disclaimer! Any artwork made from my motifs is for educational purposes only, and may not be further used or sold, including in professional portfolios. Sharing here on Skillshare in a project, or on social media with clear and obvious credit is totally fine though, and if you'd prefer, you can create motifs via repeats from your own imagination, and post those results instead. Remember, with practice comes competency, and with competency comes confidence. If you get stuck or come across any issues, please feel free to post questions in the discussions section of this class, and I will do my best to answer them as quickly as possible. To access the downloadable resources, go to the Projects & Resources tab, and on the upper right-hand side underneath the Create Project button, you'll find the list of resources that you can click to download. Once again, there's a keyboard shortcuts PDF included that you can print out to use for reference throughout your class project. I've also linked to additional resources, including my recommended Skillshare class in the main body of the Projects & Resources tab. When you're ready to share your class project, just click the big green Create Project button, and from there, there's a button that says "Upload Image," which is the cover image uploader, not where you upload full-sized images. Below that, there's a project title box, as well as the box that says Project Description, which is where you'll post the majority of your content. There's an "Add More Content" section directly below that, and this is where you can click to upload full-sized images, including screencaps, into the main body of the project. One important thing to note is that you can only create a class project via a desktop computer or laptop. You cannot create one via a mobile device, or the Skillshare mobile app. If you enjoyed this class, please leave me a review. It helps me so much. I really cannot express how grateful I am to people who leave reviews [LAUGHTER]. If you want to stay up-to-date with what I'm posting here, like if you want to know when my next class is coming or when I post updates to old classes, or do membership giveaways, that kind of stuff. Don't forget to hit the Follow button. You can also follow me @MelissaLeeDesign on Instagram or sign up for my quarterly newsletter on my website, MelissaLeeDesign.com. Thanks again for joining me, and as always, I can't wait to see what you create! 9. Blooper Reel: [CLEARS THROAT] Hi, my name is Melissa Lee and I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer living in Northern California. I think I made some sounds that shouldn't have been made so I'm gonna just do that one more time. Okay. Hi! Hi. [LAUGHTER] It's too much. Hi. Should I get this close? Hey everybody! [BLOWS RASPBERRY] Whether it's a tool or feature that I forgot to cover or something new and useful that I've learned and implemented into my practice since... ...or something new and useful that I've...since [CRICKET NOISE] I go over all of the essential tools that I regularly use to make patterns in illustrator within...[BEEEEP] One more take because that wasn't bad. That wasn't bad. But let's get options. Let's have options. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggghhh Okay. Hoowah, wahwah. Hi, my name is Melissa Lee [BEEEEEP] Eff. [BIG SIGH] Okay. Channel your inner peace [LAUGHTER]. Hello! Hey there! Hi! [SLIDE WHISTLE SOUND] Hi! Frig! It doesn't even sound like a word anymore. Okay, okay, one more. One more. One. ONE. [CLEARS THROAT] Oh no. How long was it not recording? No. I turned it on just to capture my suffering because I think my best take might have not have been recorded. [SAD LAUGHTER] Hello, my name is Melissa Lee and I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer living in Northern California. I frig. I frig, frig. FRIG. Frig. [CRICKET NOISE] Oh, hi there! Hello. Hi. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC] [POP NOISE]