Transcripts
1. Course Trailer: Have you ever looked at a damask pattern and wondered how it's done? Perhaps you wanted to create a damask pattern yourself, but don't know how to do it or where to begin. Well, damask patterns can be really complex designs with elaborate and symmetric medallions that seem to intertwine and overlap, and it's difficult to see where the repeat begins and ends. I am Barbel Dressler. A pattern designer living in Stockholm, Sweden. I thought damask designs were a bit of a mystery too at first. But when I started studying this classic pattern style and could identify its characteristics and components, I didn't think it was that difficult to eventually make them myself. In this course, I'm sharing everything I have learned about the damask pattern style. From the history behind it, to how to draw the motifs and create the pattern repeat. We'll take a closer look at some typical damask motifs and you'll get a bunch of drawing exercises to learn how to create them yourself. You'll also learn how to create reflected motifs and medallions that are integral in a damask pattern, but also useful for creating other types of patterns. Then, you'll learn how to arrange them into a repeat using Adobe Illustrator. Actually, you'll learn how to create three different damask types. From a very simple one to a quite complex one. Studying the damask pattern style will also help you how to create more advanced patterns. How to manually create a pattern repeat, more or less the way the pattern designers did back in the days before computers. At the end of this course, you will have your very own damask pattern to include in your portfolio or print on your own products if you wish. This course is for you who love historic classic patterns styles and want to learn how to create them too. It's for you who have already started creating pattern designs, or have been at it for a while and now want to take on something more advanced and develop your design skills further. With this course, you'll also get a ton of inspiration and ideas for creating your own damask. I will guide you step-by-step all the way from planning your pattern and drawing the motifs, to arranging them and creating the final repeat. With this course, you will also get your very own damask workbook. Does this sound exciting? Well then, come join me in class and learn how to create another classic pattern style. I hope to see you on the inside.
2. Welcome & Intro: Hi and welcome to class, and this course about how to create Damask patterns. I'm so happy you've found this course and decided to join me. I'm Bärbel Dressler, pattern designer from Sweden. I run my own design business, Bear Bell Productions from my home studio, just the South of Stockholm. One of the pillars of my business is creating patterns and artwork for companies and their products. I've worked with companies both in Sweden and other parts of the world within the interior design and home textile industry, and also with clothing and shoes. I've also created patterns for branding and promotional assets for all kinds of industries. I truly believe in helping my fellow designers and artists and share my knowledge and skills and the experiences I've picked up along the way. That's why the second and very important part of my business is creating courses just like this. This course about Damask patterns is a result of my own design education. The thing is, I never went to design school. I went to art school for a year, way back in the days and I've taken a countless row of drawing classes over the years and also a whole bunch of online courses, a lot of them here on Skillshare. But at a point, I felt that I needed to get more knowledge about design from a more academic and broader perspective. I also wanted to learn how to create these classic designs that inspire me a lot and are my absolute personal favorites, for example like Toile de Jouy, and Indian Floral, and Paisley, and Damask. None of the courses I took on pattern design touched on that, or the origins, or the history behind these patterns, and how they came to be so popular and eventually classics. So I designed my own higher pattern design education by studying these design styles up-close and learning everything I could from them. After gathering all this knowledge and information, I thought, "Well, why not share all this with others and give them some shortcuts into how to create these classic patterns styles as well?" I started producing this series of courses called Classic Pattern Styles, where this course about Damask patterns is included. It's the fourth class in this series. This is what we'll cover in this course and what you will learn. First, we'll take a look at the definition of a Damask pattern and the name itself. What is the Damask and why is it called that? I'm going to tell you the history behind the pattern, where it comes from, how it originated, and what its been used for. Also, along the way, we're going to see some really beautiful Damask examples. You will also learn about how the Damask patterns style has evolved over time. We'll look at some different Damask styles, both classical and contemporary, to inspire you and get your own ideas and running. We'll take a look at some of the most typical and characteristic motifs and elements that are commonly used in Damask patterns. With a bunch of exercises, you'll learn and practice how to draw these. I'll show you some techniques for drawing these motifs that are necessary for later creating this specific style. We're going to go through some different types of Damask as well and how they can vary in complexity and composition. Then, we'll practice how to create three Damask types in some more exercises. Studying the Damask pattern style will help you how to create more advanced patterns with reflected motifs and diagonal or diamond layouts with intertwine motifs and working with monochromatic color palettes, how to manually create a pattern repeat, more or less the way the pattern designers did back in the days before computers. After we have covered the background, and theory, and done some practicing, it's time to start making your own Damask patterns. For that, I'll guide you through my process step-by-step so that it's going to be easy for you to follow along. At the end of this course, you will have your very own Damask pattern to include in your portfolio or use for your own products. This is also going to be your class project, of course, to create your own Damask pattern. At the end of this course, I'll talk some more about the class project and what you can include there. For following along with the exercises and creating your own Damask pattern, these are the tools and materials you will need. Pencil and eraser, paper, both ordinary A4 or a letter size and a larger size like A3 or any equivalent is what I recommend, ruler and if you have one of these triangular angle rulers, grab that one as well. You'll need a fine liner and I recommend a medium to large sized nib, for example, from 0.5 to 0.8 is what I usually use. You'll need some pen with a thicker nib too. I really recommend you use a brush pen where you can alter the thickness of the lines a bit. The pens that I'm using in this course are this Bimoji Fudo brush pen from ZIG Kuretake and also this Sakura brush pen from Pigma. In the about section of this course, you will find links to where you can get these pens if you want to get some too. A black marker will also work fine as long as it creates a thicker line. You will also benefit from using a light box or light table. This is a really great tool to have for the techniques I'm teaching in this course. You can also use tracing paper or just ordinary paper and get up against a window, but I will also show you a trick how to accomplish the same result with only paper. If you don't have all that extra equipment or materials, you will do fine too. You'll also need a scanner and I guess you can use a phone camera, or an iPad as well, as long as you can take an image of your artwork and your line work in really good daylight in order to digitalize your lane work properly. You will also need a computer and Adobe Illustrator. If your a Photoshop fan, you can most likely translate my process to that software as well. The same goes for iPad and procreate users, but I'm only using Illustrator in the lessons. Next, you'll learn about what are Damask really is.
3. What is a Damask?: In this lesson, I'm going to define what a Damask is and what the name refers to. I'll also clarify a bit more about the Damask pattern style that I'm teaching in this course. A pattern in a Damask style is typically a pattern with elaborate reflected motifs of for example, scrolled leaves, florals and fruits, arranged in medallions in a more or less dense and diagonal layout. It's mostly in a single color, using two different tones to create the contrast between the background and the motifs. The motifs are solid shapes with no contours or outlines and both the background and motif colors are also solid with no gradients or shades or washes. The name Damask originally refers to a specific type of reversible fabric that to a large extent was produced and traded in the city of Damascus in today's Syria. In the next lesson about the history of this pattern, I'll tell you more about that. Other names that can be used for this pattern style is medallion or diaper. Yes, you heard right, diaper. Diaper stems from the Greek word, 'dia' which means cross as in diamond or diagonal which refers to the layout style, and the word 'asporos', which means white. This is because a diaper pattern was historically often used in architecture and other decorative arts for adorning a white plain surface. Crossing motifs on a white surface is what a diaper pattern really means. Another word that is used for referring to this type of pattern is lozenge, which is the French word for diamond or rhombic shape. In upcoming lesson, I'm going to talk more about the layout of the Damask patterns. Let's park it here at this point. But important to understand is that a Damask in its original sense, is a specific type of woven fabric where this pattern style is very common and is why the name damask now is used for both the fabric and this classic pattern style. Before we dive into the pattern style itself, let's stay a little bit with the Damask fabrics because as pattern designers, I think it's really useful for us to understand a bit more about the materials and surfaces that we come across in our jobs. The traditional Damask fabrics were of satin or a silk and twill, but could also be made with linen and wool. Modern Damasks can also be made of synthetic fibers like rayon for example. When weaving a Damask fabric, you use two different yarns, generally with the same color to create the pattern. For the warp yarn, you use a glossy fiber like silk or satin that makes up the motif. For the weft yarn, you use a more matt or dull yarn like twill or wool or linen that makes up the background. This way the difference in gloss or sheen of the yarns create the contrast that brings out the motif of the fabric pattern. The motifs of the pattern are being created using the structure of the weave and because of this, a Damask fabric is reversible. The pattern appears on both sides of the fabric, only reversed on the backside where the background is glossy and the motifs are met. Now let's go to the next lesson where I will share about the history behind the pattern. Which is a very exciting story about how this pattern style emerged, evolved, and spread around the world, and came to be the pattern style that we identify with Damask patterns today. It's a story about Chinese emperors, merchant caravans on the Silk Road smuggling monks, crusaders and kidnapping.
4. The History Behind The Pattern Style: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'll share about the history behind the Damask pattern style. The first Damask textiles we know of were produced in China around 300 BC. This weaving technique is ancient. At this time, there were regions in China that were known to specialize in this unique weaving technique that later became known as Damask. These early Damasks were made on hand-looms of the finest silks and had botanical and animal motifs. They could have two contrasting or even multiple colors, so not only monochromatic as we associate Damask with today. They often had metal or gold threads to make them even more beautiful and exclusive. As they were made with these really exclusive and expensive materials such as silk and gold, only the wealthy and noble could afford them, of course. There are records of a Chinese emperor during the fifth century called Wendi of the Sui Dynasty, who owned a Damask court robe. As an exclusive commodity, Damask fabrics became an important trade along the Silk Road from the East to the Mediterranean. As it spread to the European regions, it became really popular and in-demand here as well. Still, it was an expensive luxury product, so only for the rich and the famous, and of course, soon kings and rulers wanted to get their hands on the secret behind producing these coveted silk fabrics. For that, they needed to have the materials, of course, the silk. In the year 551, two monks who had been preaching in India came to China and there they observed how the Chinese raised silk worms and produced silk. They saw a lucrative opportunity here and went back to the Byzantine empire to talk to the ruling emperor called Justinian the Great. Apparently, it was a really great pitch and they were promised a generous reward if they agreed to go back and acquire some silk worms. Since adult silk worms are very fragile and have to be kept in an ideal temperature, they had to get silk worm eggs for the long transportation, but they couldn't just go and buy them some eggs. It was totally forbidden to bring them out of China, so they had to find a secret way to transport them. They placed the eggs inside their hollow bamboo sticks and smuggled them out. The fact that they succeeded and could establish their own silk industry gave the Byzantines monopoly of silk in Europe with silk factories in Konstantinopel, Beirut, Antioch, Tyre, and Thebes. At this time, the specific woven reversible fabric weren't called the Damask yet, but diaspin, which later became diaper as I mentioned before. The fact that it was called diaspin gives us a clue that the patterns had this characteristic diagonal designs at this time. But the knowledge and techniques for weaving these diaspin fabrics was also a very sought-after skill and something of great value in order to be able to produce domestic fabric and not have to rely on import and trade. Especially the Italian cities wanted this and during the Second Crusade that took place between 1147 and 1149, Greek weavers were kidnapped and put to work in workshops in Sicily. How rude is that? Actually some believe that it was the Crusaders that were the first to bring these diaspin fabrics to Europe. But on their way along the trading route of the Silk Road from China and the Far East to Europe, the merchant caravans passed through the city of Damascus, which today is the capital of Syria. During these early centuries and beginning of the Middle Ages, Damascus was a big hub for trading and manufacturing of luxury silk fabrics, including the diaspin fabrics. The fabrics manufactured in Damascus were considered of very high-quality and were known for their unmatched beauty and flawless production. The traders started to refer to any ornamental pattern, silk or certain fabrics as Damasks. This is how we believe the name that we use today for this specific woven reversible fabric was coined, but the word Damask first appears in European records in the mid 14th Century. From those kidnapped weavers in Sicily, the method for weaving Damask spread to Venice, Lucca, and Genoa, and then eventually to France, the Netherlands, and England too. By the 14th century, the weaving technique had evolved from hand looms into using drawlooms instead. Now most Damasks were made in just one color with the motifs woven in a glossy silk and the background in a much duller material. The motifs though were still in the Chinese and Arabic fashion, but during the 15th century, the European weavers started to influence the science, making their own more naturalistic and local versions of the Far Eastern motifs, featuring more local flowers and animals and fruits. During the Renaissance, the patterns became more dense and more elaborate with scroll motifs of countless leaves and feathers and tendrils. This style became very popular. Actually, so popular that it's still in many ways the style that we today associate with a Damask pattern. Up till now, the Damask fabrics had mostly been used for garments, both for the ladies and the gentlemen, but now during the Renaissance in the Baroque and Rococo areas, it became very important to be able to show off in a new manner. The wealthy upper class and the royals wanted to have matching Damask fabrics on everything from curtains and tablecloths, to walls and furniture. You could say it was a Damask trend peak, but as always, after a peak comes a decline, because at the start of the 19th century came another turning point for the Damask fabric and pattern style and its popularity. In 1801, the Jacquard loom was invented. This was an important factor for the budding Industrial Revolution.The Jacquard loom made it possible to produce fabric much faster and to a lesser cost resulting in cheaper products. Damask fabrics could also be afforded by the masses or at least the middle-class. But with this came also lesser quality at typical consequence for mass production, which also led to that Damask fabrics weren't considered as exclusive anymore and the trend ebbed out, just as with the paisley shawls I'm talking about in my other course, the one about paisley patterns. The Jacquard loom also made it easier to create even more complex and detailed and delicate motifs and patterns. This, of course affected the pattern style as well, being able to adapt to the current trends. During this period, the neoclassical and ornamental motifs were very popular. Napoleon really liked Damasks with herbs and eagles and of course and motifs. I mean, why not? The 19th century was the century of the Industrial Revolution affecting our societies in so many ways. Not all good in my opinion, which I share with the members of the Arts and Crafts Movement. They really disliked the industrial mass-produced products. They thought that it took away the important factor of good design and craft and the beauty of authentic materials. They brought back the appreciation for handcrafted goods again, including the Damask fabrics and also its pattern style, but in more of an arts and crafts evolved style. Today, Damask fabrics are still very popular among designers and often used for couture fashion. It can be extremely expensive at the high end, and therefore, still very associated with elegance and luxury. A common contemporary use for Damask fabrics is for tablecloths and napkins. It's also used for drapes and bedding and curtains and upholstery. As for the pattern style, it can be seen on just about anything today, not only on woven fabrics, but also printed fabric and other materials and surfaces from wallpaper to stationary. We can be sure that both the Damask fabric and the pattern style will continue to be a part of our future too. Next, we'll take a closer look at some of the most typical motifs used in the Damask patterns.
5. Typical Damask Motifs: The damask patterns style is very versatile, and it's why it has continued to be such a popular design and eventually became a classic. The motifs and style have in fact been reinvented and interpreted by every artistic era. Style wise, we can divide the damask into two categories, traditional and contemporary. The traditional have the classic motifs with botanicals and flowers, scrolled leaves, feathers, and fruits, and sometimes animals. The contemporary, are more experimental using all kinds of motifs and themes of today. From abstract to metrics, and ink blobs, deer heads, skulls, and motifs for children. In this lesson, we're going to take a closer look at some typical damasks motifs are some traditional the damasks. Lets start with some typical leaves. In renaissance damasks, the leaves were quite chunky and not very elaborate, but with some details of lobes and tendrils. Then, we have something that is a bit more evolved, more elaborate, and they're designed with varied edges and added details. These are also a bit more naturalistic. Then we have another type of leaf, more of a simple pointy shape like some kind of ficus leaf perhaps, and with detailed nerves. Here we have something much more fancy and decorative with frilly edges and decorated nerves. Reminds me a bit of lace and definitely has that renaissance vibe. Speaking of decorated centers and nerves, some leaves have layers of details and even adorned with flowers. What's typical about this is that it enables more motifs using negative spaces. Look at the one to the right, where those bright leaves against the darker background in turn becomes the background for the small dark flowers and leaves inside them. In a couple of the leaves in the damasks in the middle, there are even a second layer of details inside the leaf shapes. These are good examples of how to work with the limitation of only two tones or colors and no contours. Then we have the famous acanthus leaves, of course. Damasks wouldn't be what they are without them. The acanthus leaves can be varied in so many ways with more short leaves or long tendrils and scrolls. If you would like to learn more about the acanthus leaf and the classical motif, that is, it's actually the most depicted plant in art and design through history. You can learn more about its history, different styles, and how to draw it in my course called classic illustration, drawing the acanthus. Here, are some more acanthus examples where the long tendrils are used as framework around the medallions. Observe how they are built up with lobes and nerves to create variation and detail. In these ones, the nerves are only simple in their execution. But in this one, the play and alternation with negative space creates a thicker nerve surrounded by shade. These acanthus nerves, can be used in many different ways to create variation and detail to the damask. Then we have something more simple and plain. Smaller leaves on twigs that are also great ways to add embellishment details and fillers. Let's move on to some typical damask flowers. Most of the damask flowers are actually quite simply designed with a round center and basic petals. Some have a bit more layered and detailed centers. Our variation of these are when they are depicted from the side like this, and with dotted centered against the darker negative space that I guess is to reassemble the pistils. Another version of these simple flowers are the ones often found in the centers of the medallions. They are a stacked on top of each other, creating the impression of many layers of petals. A very typical floral element indeed. Here, I want to show you another kind of flower, something that could be carnations or perhaps cornflowers, or even fissile flowers with spiky petals. Here, we have something that reminds of Indian flowers, as they are in Indian florals or chins patterns with a lotus like centers and layer surrounded with spiky petals. Notice how these petals have darker centers, which in turn have liked small twigs with leaves or other decorations inside them. There are, of course, some more complex and naturalistic flowers like peonies and roses, with layers of petals in different directions and lines to make up the shades closest to the center of the petals. Another very typical damask motif element is fruits. For example, grapes, as you can see in these examples. A true damask classic is pineapples. Well, at least I think it's what these stylized fruits are inspired by. This is the thing, damask motifs are truly simplified and stylized. Here is another type of stylized fruit category, perhaps oranges or pomme-grenades, very typical damask motifs too. The same goes for berries in all kinds of shapes and forms, singles, in pairs, and clusters. Here's a really cute detail I wanted to show you. A little arrangement of apples and a pear. Now, it's time for some royal symbols, damask crowns. Very typical motifs in renaissance and baroque damasks, and quite a fun element to include in a damask, I think. One of my favorite damask motif elements is birds. They just add another level of narrative to the pattern, I think. With birds, it comes alive much more. The birds are of course depicted from the side and not very seldom, they have a turned head looking over their backs. Eagles, but perhaps, especially pheasants and peacocks, are commonly used with their long tail feathers, that becomes decorative elements themselves and frameworks, just like the acanthus tendrils. It's natural that feathers are also commonly used motif elements in damasks. Sometimes feathers can be confused for a lice and vice versa. Then, we have another fun decorative element, mostly used in the neoclassic, the mask patterns. Here we have tassels, and lace, and ribbons, even strings of pearls. The last motif I want to make you aware of is vases and urns, also more common in the 19th century damasks, which were more ornamental and delicate in their style. Now, let's summarize these typical damask motifs. We have leaves in different variations, the early chunky ones, frilly and decorated with layered elements, and the classic of acanthus in a number of executions. Not to forget, the simple feathers. The flowers range from simple ones depicted in a few variations, clustered and from the side, there are carnations, Indian styled flowers and peonies and roses. If you want to immerse into the style a bit more, you can check out my course about creating Indian floral patterns as well. For fruits, we have grapes, pineapples, oranges, pomme-grenades, berries and pears. A fourth very typical motif is birds and also feathers. Then we have crowns, ribbons, and tassels, and vases. By the way, in this section of this course called project and resources, you will find a workbook for this course where I have gathered a bunch of these illustrations for you to keep at hand and get inspired by when you start creating your own damask motifs. Soon, we're going to start practice how to draw some of these motifs. But first, I'll show you some drawing techniques so that we will get this specific damasks style exactly right.
6. Techniques For Drawing Damask Motifs: As mentioned before, traditional damask consists of two contrasting tones or colors. The motifs and the negative space in between or the background, and these negative spaces and the motifs are both equally important in a damask. For creating the characteristic and stylized damask look with the right space in-between the details and the shapes, there are a couple of techniques that can help us accomplish this when drawing the motifs and that's what I will show you in this lesson. First of all, when drawing motifs for a medallion damask, the motifs at the center of the medallions are mirrored and copied to be completed and symmetric, and therefore, we only have to draw half of them. Other motifs surrounding the center of the medallions towards the edges of the motif, needs to be drawn completed and closed figures, and then they are also mirrored and copied to the other side to create the whole medallion motif. We will go through this more in detail in upcoming lesson, but it's important to understand how the motifs and composition work together when we start drawing. But for now, let's focus on how to accomplish that specific effect and look for the motif and the negative spaces. I have a couple of methods that I use for this. I always start by first making a sketch of the motifs and how they fit together with a pencil on paper. Then there are two routes to take. The first one, and this is the one I use most of the times is to fill in the contours of the pencil sketch with some ink pen. Sometimes I ink right on top of the sketch, and other times I use my lightbox and trace the sketch using a new piece of paper. That way I don't have to erase the pencil lines before scanning. After I have my inked illustrations, I scan and vectorize those motifs using Illustrator and the trace tool, then I fill in the spaces inside the contours of the motifs with closed figures using the shape builder tool or the paint bucket tool. Then I reflect the whole thing and fill in the central motifs that are now also closed and then remove the lines. There is more to that step and this I will show you in more detail and in-depth later. For this type of elements where we will only use the shapes inside the contours, we want the edges and the details to be distinct and noticeable. To accomplish that, you can use an ink pen with a larger nib, for example, a brush pen. One of my favorites is this emoji footed brush pen from Zig Kuretake. This one, it comes in five nib sizes and I usually use number three or four I think is. Another favorite is this Sakura brush pen from Pigma. With a broader nib that details and the spaces in-between becomes more distinct. For example, the nerves and the lines inside the flower or the junctions between lobes. If we use a fine liner with a small nib, details like this will be more vague and narrow, which won't come across as nice and visible in the final pattern, and you also want to have the space as distributed quite evenly between the motifs. For smaller details like the small leaves on twigs, you know, the fillers, and also the details inside of other motifs, it's actually better to use a fine liner only or in pen with a small nib. Because with these little elements, we will not use the shapes inside the contours, but merge the contours and the insides. For this, a fine liner will give you that control over the contours compared to the brush pen. Mostly, I use a fine liner for inking all the contours because it gives me more control and sharpness of the edges of the shapes and also I don't want to reduce, oh, my brush pens to fast. What I do though, is to come in with a brush pen only where I need some more thicker lines and that distance between those little elements. Like here in the junction between the lobes and some of these elements that are next to each other so this is just a little efficiency tip there. Some motif elements needs to be drawn an inked separated from the other contours. For example, if we want to have one of those small twigs again with leaves sticking out from the medallion motif we calculated, touched the contours of those other elements because they will be removed later. If we draw these twigs attached to the contours, they will be removed too, so we draw them with a little bit of distance between the twig and the other contours. An alternate way to do this is to just like the other motifs, ink the contours around that twigs shape and use this space created inside. But with these finer and more delicate details, there is a risk that they won't be as distinct and detailed as we want them. That little stem of the twig may have to be a little bit thicker though. The second method I sometimes use is to trace the sketch directly in Illustrator and not do the inking step first. As before, you make a pencil sketch first and then scan or a photograph and bring it into Illustrator or if you use an iPad and Procreate, that will work perfect too. Then you trace the contours with brush tool, just as with the fine liner or brush pen, just make sure you use a good size of the brush, not too broad or too narrow. Then in Illustrator, we use the bucket tool again or the shape builder tool to fill in the shapes inside those lines. What's really important here with both these methods is to really mind the spaces inside the contours. When you trace them one way or another, you have to consider how this space inside will come across once the contours are removed and this is the most important key to creating these damask motifs. Also be really, really thorough when you trace those lines with fine liner or in illustrator and make sure to complete those contours into closed figures, and that way you will avoid a lot of editing and cleaning up later on. But with that said, if you make a mistake or if you change your mind about a line or so, it's so easy to fix that in Illustrator. But it's good to get as much as possible, nice and neat right from the start. Now you're gonna get a row of exercises where you get to practice this. And at the same time, learn how to draw some of those typical damask motifs. This will give you some experience and a menu of motifs to choose between and to develop and draw inspiration from when you start creating your own damask pattern. I'll see for the first exercise how to draw the damask leaves in the next video.
7. Drawing Leaves - Exercise 1: In the following lessons and exercises, you are going to learn how to draw examples of some typical the Damask leaves as parts of the medallion motifs. You will find all the exercises at illustrations in their course workbook and if you want even more examples and exercises, you will find some bonus exercises in there as well. The first drawing exercise is going to be a warm up exercise really because I know you can draw these simple leaf shapes, but this is more about practicing, accomplishing that Damask look and getting the lines and the distances between all the elements, right? So we are going to practice these very simple leafs so I'm going to put these aside. So let's start with making this half circle shaped line and this will represent an imaginary medallion center. So just imagine that we have drawn already some elements for the center of the medallion and now we want to have those leaves sticking out framing the centers. So to get started, I would like to get some directional lines down just to see where I want to place my leaf shapes so that they are evenly distributed and then just do these spiked leaf shapes. Very simple and basic and the further to the top you go, the smaller they can become and then Let's fill him in and I'm using fine liner or this one is pretty thick with live this 0.8. Starting with this one just so I have something to merge from start at the bottom and then you want to have them merged together like a half weight in, start from the middle of each shape. That way we will have this line in between them and then in order to get a very distinct impression and also so that we can see these lines clearly and the final pattern, let's do a thicker one, and then you also have to make sure that the shapes that are created inside look nice and neat. Next, let us do pretty much the same.So we will do this thin line that's representing the medallion center. Now we want to have those three spiked leafs sticking out from this one. We will do our guiding lines and then for this, I like to start by creating the same type of shapes as before, and then I will add some more spikes, four lobes to these ones and then when you have these first shapes down, you can go in and adjust them a little bit and the secret here is to have really deep junctions in between all those extra lobes. All right, let's just ink them and see how they come out, and starting from the bottom, I think that is the easiest to work myself up. There are also very simple actually, but will be very, very decorative once you remove the outlines. So here naturally, we need to also make sure that the lines in between are distinct enough. So I'm adding some with my brush pen and just adjusting the shape a little bit, and the third exercise, let us start saying, and now let us do some rounded shapes and just mold the shapes with some sketchy lines like this until you get them right the way you want them. So as simple as that and now I am going to ink them with my brush pen from the start, and for these ones, you can also do a variation where you won't go all the way down to meet up with this one, and you can even make a little bit of a wider junction in between. So this is going to be really, really pretty I think so. I think you should do that for your exercise, okay. For the last one of these more simple ones, let us do another bent line to our starting point, and then some guiding lines where we want to place the leaves. For this ones we are going to have something that is a bit rounded as well but with a twist. So I will do this first just to get the overall shapes, how big I want them to be but now we are going to do them with three rounded lobes for every leaf. So a little smaller one there on the side. Okay, good.I think that looks pretty nice, and lets ink and now really mind the shapes that are created inside.Perfect, so these are some really basic and simple, smaller leaves that you can use here and there, and especially to frame and to around other elements with. Now, with these ones, you can add some details. So for example, for these simple spiked one, so you can add an inside, simple like that, or perhaps with some extra detailing and then you can create just a simple line like that. Most Damasks don't have very much detail because if they are to be woven, for example, it needs to be easy to transfer them to the weave as we use digital tools, we can do whatever we want. So there are some different details that you can add to your little leaves and for this one, for example. So perhaps it is easier with a fine liner to get all these small shapes and nice and neat and then when we vectorize this and edit in Illustrator, we can fill this in and we can fill this in to create some solid shapes and then when we remove the black outlines, there will be this empty or negative space in between that where are the background will shine through.So that is going to be very nice detail I think and then we can do this one. Either we choose to keep both this one and this one has filled in shapes, or we can make this one also a negative space. So those are some ideas for you. Now you can make them even more elaborate. For example, for this one, you can add details like that. This will also be a negative space in the final motif and to make that little thin line distinct enough or visible enough, we can make it a bit thicker. So those are also some details you can do and let us see what else can we do. For these guys here, it would be nice to have some rounded shape inside. That will also be a negative space where the background will shine through and for this, you can also add extra detailing. As long as it is visible enough, so make sure that you have to use thick make thicker lines. What I am trying to do here, okay, so now it is your turn. If you haven't already went along and started drawing alongside with me, practice doing these really simple four different basic leaves and just to get the line work right and to create the distance between the little elements and also to really get into the focus of what are you going to keep and what is going to be removed for the final motifs. So here I want to show you how these motifs of this exercise turn out after we have vectorized them and removed those outlines. So as you can see, with these thicker contours here, we create some space in between that's going to be much more visible for the overall pattern and here you can see how these different details also turn out and the effects that they create. For example here, those little twigs with leafs and then when you feel ready, jump to the next exercise.
8. Drawing Leaves - Exercise 2: Finally, we have arrived at the acanthus leaves, which is the most typical damask motif element that there is. A lot of the acanthus leaves found in damasks are not very detailed. They are quite simple in their execution, but there are some advanced and really complex and detailed ones too, but I thought that we would start with these a bit more simplified or stylized and modest acanthus leaves, just to ease into this most depicted plant in history. Let's start with this one. Here we have just a simple S-shape where I have attached some lobes like this. This is more or less a tendril and not a leaf, I would say, because this is more useful in a damask for creating that flow and to wrap around the medallion center. Let's start to see if we can draw this one. We can start out with this S-shaped direction for the whole leaf, just something rough like that. Then we're going to have four lobes, I guess. We can do some guiding lines and we'll see where that takes us. Let's start here and just work down towards the bottom. Usually when we draw acanthus leaves, well, the more traditional way to draw them, you start from the bottom. But for this, I think it's just a little bit easier to roughly sketch out these shapes and see how they will fit next to each other. What's important to think about is not to make them too broad. So the lobes can't be too long or stretched too far out to the sides. That's not something that's going to really sit well in a damask. Something like that. They are pretty broad and chunky, these lobes. Then we just fill in these contours. I think I want to do that with my fine liner. There is something under my paper here, a bit of eraser. I made this a wobbly line. I can smoothen that out. I was saying still do a bit of those deep junctions. There we have some basic lobes, no embellishments or details like sub-lobes or prickly edges or anything, just really basic. Then we fill in the center nerves and I'm going to use a broader nib, this brush pen. Make sure that nerve aligns in the center between the lobes, so not too narrow to one side. Then we can broaden it just a little bit, the closer to the bottom we get, just to create some dynamics and variation. Then we just do very careful and small side nerves like this, quite modest. They don't speak too loud, so to speak. They don't stretch too far into the lobes, just like that. A basic acanthus leaf, which is something that you can easily use to emerge out from the center of the medallion, or to use as a frame element around surrounding the medallion. The other basic leaf is this curled one or scrolled, as it's actually called. Here we have the direction of the leaf goes into this bend, a curl, not an S shape. Let's see if we can draw this one as well. Make this curled line. Then we dress it up with some lobes. We can start with the side lobes. The top one on this side stems right straight from the center nerve, so it goes all the way in. It's tight fit here on my paper. Be careful with that on yours so that you have enough space or you can just grab another new piece of paper. I feel that my lobes are coming a little bit too large or too long, and that's not what I want because I want to have this long tendril and not this chunky broad leaf. So I'm going to narrow it down a little bit. Then we do the same on the other side. Just some rough sketching first. You're going to be a bit careful now not to make them too long. Then we have this curl that can feel a little bit tricky, but it's definitely not. We have a little bit on the other side sticking out like this. Let's get this down first. Then we have the tip coming up like that. Then we have this line here, which is a lobe coming out down also. Then we have another one coming down like that. Then we have the tip. You can make it a little bit broader. I need to erase some of these lines, just to make sure that you can see what I'm doing. This one can be a sharp pointy end like this, or it can be a bit more rounded. Then we have a center nerve coming down, something like that. That's the basic rough sketch, which we can now just use and fill in. I'm grabbing my fine liner again, I think that's a good one to start with. If you have taken my acanthus leaf course, how to draw the acanthus leaf, you know that there are so many different ways you can draw this. Here we have the basic main shape of this simplified and stylized acanthus leaf. Let's add some of those center nerves. First, I want to make sure that my lines that are inside the leaf shape are wide enough. So I'm adding some broader lines here with my brush pen. Then the center nerves. I think I want a bit of a detail here. Then this one needs one as well. Watch this one here. It comes down like that. Then the center nerve, or this longer part. My brush pen is running out of ink or actually the nib is getting a little bit fuzzy. Then just a little bit of side nerves, not very long. These two are pretty easy to draw actually. They are not too advanced, so they are really nice exercise to start with. Go ahead and try them out and do a couple of them if you feel that you don't have the hang of them yet. I'm sure that you will after just a couple of tries. Here I want to show you the final and vectorized result of these two leaves that we have just practiced drawing, and let you see how important it is for that negative space in the detailing so that the background will shine through and the details will show enough. If we had really thin lines here, the impression wouldn't be the same at all. So using a thicker nib or just make sure that the details are a bit more chunky and thicker is really important. In the next lesson, you'll get another acanthus exercise. I'll see you there.
9. Drawing Leaves - Exercise 3: For this exercise, we're going to draw a little bit of a more complex and advanced a acanthus leaf. For the acanthus leaf, there are some specific features that needs to be in place in order to get that classic look and feel and to get a complete walk through of these features and the specific anatomy of the acanthus leaf. You can take my other course, drawing the acanthus leaf. There you will get more exercises and different ways to draw the acanthus leaf as well. Just a quick walk-through of what we have here first, observe the directional line is this S-shape. Then we have some side lobes coming out from the sides like this. What's very easy to do when you draw this type of leave is that these side lobes become to extended to long so the whole leaf becomes very broad and wide like that. You want to keep it quite narrow in a damask. You can actually do some other guiding lines where you sketch out the boundaries of how wide it can become. Other characteristics of the acanthus leaf are these eyes and that's those slow spaces that are appearing in the junctions between two lobes. Let's just get started and see what we can accomplish. So I will start with the S-shape directional line. Then I also want to have my boundaries a little bit so that it's going to be a tendril and not too wide or broad I wanted to be long and narrow. So these are just some directions. Then we're going to have the side lobes and we have on the top here, which is this one. So I'm going to actually going to sketch out some boundaries for the low bit self. Then we have one here, another one. Perhaps it fit in just a little one here at the bottom. Then on the other side, something like that. Then we have these extra smaller lobes as well that we can try to squeeze it in there. Let's sketch out the lobes first. I know it's hard to see my sketching lines, but I'm going to try to make them a bit more visible soon. So I have some rough outlines for my lobes here. Now we can just start to outline the contours a bit more thorough. So I'm starting here at the top, creating these spikes here. Then these little eyes. Just step by step, walk your way down the leaf or a tendril. You have to just adjust the lobes as you go. Now I'm just going to go in with the fine liner right away. As I do that, I'll add some more distinct details to the tendril. Now I'm starting at the bottom because it's important that the bottom lobes are in front of the ones that are sticking out behind them. So here, this lobe is behind this one, and this one is behind these ones. Same goes for all of these. So I find it easier to start at the bottom to make sure that these crossings here are done correctly. That's also something that I teach quite thoroughly in the account discourse. So I'm doing some extra detailing. Starting at the bottom again. See how I get these little holes or eyes in place. It's so easy to broaden the leaf or the tendril. So be aware of that. So now it's time for the center nerve. As with this one, I want to have this broader one. So it has to be broad enough, and align it between the lobes and those eyes. Then the nerves for these lobes. I want to keep that modest length to them asked with the other exercise before. So when it comes to the account is constitution, there is this hidden anatomy of how it's drawn. It's, everything flows down towards the center and down to the bottom, where a bit of a modification, of course, when you have this oblong or long tendril because then it's difficult to make this nerve go all the way down to the bottom. But it suggests that everything flows down towards the bottom and the center nerve. So make sure that you have all the lines they're closed. Then we can go in with a brush pen or a thicker nib and make sure that there will be enough distance in places like this to make sure that the background is visible enough. Then also these center nerves needs to be little bit more thick and distinct in order to be visible enough in the final pattern. It's sloppy there. Then also if you want to keep this center nerve like that, you need to make these sidelines a bit wider as well. So that there will be a distance between a solid space in the middle. Here you have the vectorized result filled in result with this acanthus leaf. I also with this wanted to show you the difference it makes when making thicker contours of the details inside of the solid shapes. So for here, we have quite thin lines between these lobes and also surrounding the center nerve. The impression becomes just a little bit weaker, not as strong as with this one where I made those contours, those lines thicker, the visibility of the contours is much better here and you can see the detailing a lot better. Especially then when you mix this type of motif into the whole pattern order or the whole medallion, this version here is going to be so much stronger and come through a lot better than this one with the thinner detailing. So your turn to draw this and practice the acanthus tendril. When you feel ready, jump to the next lesson where we'll practice how to draw a different type of leaf.
10. Drawing Leaves - Exercise 4: The next leaf exercise is this multi-layered leaf. So we have three layers here, where we have this outside or the large leaf shape. Then we have this middle leaf shape inside of that large one. Then we have a little detail of a draft that will be the third layer, so to speak. So the final motif of this will be that this one here will be a filled shape. Then this one is empty space, the negative space, where the background will shine through, and then we have this drop, that is also a solid or a filled shape against this negative space. So in general, that will be like a dark background, light layer, dark inside, and a light detail. Then we have this lobe that has a directed line going through it like that. Then for this one, it blends like this. For this last one, we have a line that goes through the whole leaf, something like that. So this is something to mind when we start drawing our leafs. So I'm going to put this one aside and get a new piece of paper. I'm going to start to sketch out these guiding lines first. So I'll start with that first top one. Started with a bend. Then it can go curve down to here, something like that. Just a slight curve. Then somewhere in the middle, we had this second side leaf coming up, also with a bend. You can see that they are aligning on the top like that. Then we had this bottom side leaf that also bent like this. Then we have this one coming down from over here, starting from the same place as this one, and it goes not so close to the center line actually. Then it goes down, something like this. You can align this one more or less with that as well, just to have some direction. Then we have this last one also starting from the bottom like that and bending like this. This one aligns more or less with this one. It's good to have those guiding proportions when you start. From now, it's the most easy way to do this I think, is to start from the center, just to make sure that everything will fit nicely and evenly distributed. So make sure that the distance is more or less the same, so that this one won't end up close here or something like that. So let's start by drawing this little droplets somewhere over here. This can be adjusted afterwards of course, but now let's have them in place, so that we know how much space this second layer will need to surround them. They are these drops. They are bending too following these guidelines. That's also a reason why we want to have these guiding lines, so that we can see how the drops are to be bent and aligned. Then we do the second layer. I'm starting with the top here. It goes all the way down to here. This one only has two spikes or lobes. Then this one I want to have some more of this spikes or extra of those. It can meet up at the bottom like that. I'm going to turn the paper a bit. Then I can fix them a little bit to make sure that they look proportional. So now it's time for the third layer. For the junctions here, I want them to be rounded like that. Remember to how those tips bent a little bit. Now I'm also going to use the fine liner. Now, we will create the shapes inside of these contours. We can merge the contours and the spaces inside them, but I think the result is much better if we only use this negative space or the space created inside of the contours. Now, I'll take on the second layer. Now I can adjust the contours and the shapes accordingly, so that they will go nicely with the third layer. So now that I have these guiding lines, I can see the final shapes and how they come out. Now let's do the last layer. Then I'll just finish off like that so that I have a closed figure. So this leaf, when you use it in the final pattern, it's going to be attached to a branch or sticking out from some other motif, so this is just a substitute for now. So there you have a little bit more of a complex leaf with multiple layers. Of course, you can vary what type of decorations you want to have inside here. Here you can see the end result for this leaf exercise. How we can create more details by playing around with positive and negative space altering. In the next exercise, we're going to practice drawing another type of edge decoration, and also some more of that insight decoration.
11. Drawing Leaves - Exercise 5: In this exercise, we're going to practice drawing another type of leaf and especially another type of edge that you can bring to your leaf motifs. This frilly or spiky leaf edge is also something that can be really decorative in the Damask pattern. If you want to have a Damask pattern that's more delicate and elaborate and detailed, and also with some details on the inside like this. These ones will be filled out with black or actually left out and become those holes inside. Also, again, here we have a direction of the leaf. It's sort of a bend like that, and from that we have these side leaves coming out, and at the bottom we have a three-part side leaf. It has these three lobes, and the same goes on the other side. Then here we have little bonus leaf or lobe as well. To draw this, let's do that just right next to it. I'm starting out with this center direction. Then I have some side lobes, like that. I have to cramp this together a little bit to make space, but that's fine. We have one coming here that has a little bit more space. Here, I'm just fleshing out these shapes, first. We have these deep junctions, as well. We can mark and then we have this one. Let's see if I can fit this in here and then we can sort of adjust these. Now along these sketching lines, we create these frilly or prickly edges. I'm just going to go ahead and do that all around and then leave the junctions like that. Then when I fill them in, it's better to use a brush pen or a nib with or a pen with a thicker nib right from the start to make sure that these little lines or junctions between each frill or spike is going to be visible enough. For this, I'm just going to use my brush pen again. Also now be careful so that the shape inside, that you create with your outlines, is nice and has good shape or definition so that each of these frills are visible and don't disappear or become too narrow. Try to make them as even as possible. Then when we fill this large shape in, including all these frills and remove the outlines, it's going to be really beautiful and almost look like lace or maybe a fern or something. It's just going to be a very nice and detailed motif. This one's going to be too narrow that I'm going to have to edit them in Illustrator. Luckily, that's not so difficult. Just scoop out some of that contour with the eraser tool and make sure that the lines are closed. Otherwise, you're going to have trouble filling in those shapes later. Okay good, so those are the frilly contours. Next we're going to draw these details inside of the leaf-shape. So let's see, now I need to make sure that everything lines up in the middle of the leaf. So, here is going to be dark line and in the middle of the lobes. This one's going to be a bit more bended. Now I want to see how it turned out. Now we can fill in this center nerve with a thicker brush pen because we want to have these lines a bit more thicker. Or you can use a fine liner and just surround this if you want to. These sketchy lines. I'm going to use my brush pen and just make this center nerve right from the start. Then I can fill it in some more. Making it a bit more thicker, especially down here, and also make sure that where these side nerves come in, that they are smooth and thick enough. They are thicker at the bottom. Something like that. Now we're going add these little mini Leafs or what to call them, to this center nerves. Now let's use the fine liner. If it can fit in two side leaves on each nerve, would be nice, I think, as long as they fit inside of those lobes. These little small leaves are going to be the holes inside of this leaf. Here I think I'm not going to be able to fit in two on each side. Just one. That's going be pretty as well. All right, perfect. Here's a frilly, very much more detailed leaf. Here you can see that result for this exercise and see how those frilly edges comes out really pretty, I think. Also the negative space of the detailing inside of the leaf shape. Next, it's time for our first flower exercise.
12. Drawing Flowers - Exercise 6: Here is your first flower exercise. This is some kind of peony I would say or perhaps something more like a rose. To draw this one, quite easy, you sketch out some guidelines like this circle here for this center. Then you start out with this first petal. Just make some rounded shapes of the edge here. Then you build it up with this petal that comes up from behind this first one and then the next one, something like that. Then you can go ahead and do another one in the front. It's nice to have them sit tightly so that there's in between and just make them fit together. Then perhaps another one over there, then we will just close it with one like that. The only space that's empty is this one and this one will be where the background will be showing through. Then let's add some petals. I really recommend you create these directional lines when you draw petals because then it's so much easier to make them really look like they are bent and now it's nice to try to create some variation as well. A little space in between instead of just having them sit right close to each other. Then we have another one. Something like that and then let's do this one. Here's a pretty lush peony or rose like flower. We can get to make some shading lines, give it some texture. It's time to ink it if you prefer to do that. For the center, I'm just going to use my thick brush right away because I need to have that space or distance between the little motif elements, so I need to have a thicker line. This one you can alter in so many ways by creating different types of petals. Perhaps you want to have them spiky instead of rounded like this. Actually for the exterior petals, I'll use my fine liner not to use up my brush pen too fast. They wear out too fast anyway. Then I'll come in and add some thicker lines where necessary. I'll add thicker lines here and then for these lines as well. There, a simple flower peony or rose. Here is how this damask flower, the peony or perhaps the rose if you want. How this turns out after being vectorized and filled in and the contours removed. Go ahead and try this one out, perhaps practice it a couple of times and then go to the next flower exercise.
13. Drawing Flowers - Exercise 7: That second flower exercise is this one. This is more like an Indian floral-inspired flower and I want you to practice this one because this is such a great way to play with varying or alternating the positive and the negative space in a damask motif element. For this one, when we have vectorized and edited it in Illustrator, the final result is that this one is going to be filled in and actually, we need to have some distance here and these leaves here are going to be filled in and then this one is going to be like a hole where the background is showing through and then we have this positive space here that's going to be filled in and then we have negative space here where the background is showing through and these ones will be positive spaces, which will be filled in as well and then the background will be the negative space also. Here we have some alternating motif elements, where we can create some dynamics and variations in the motif, and the way to draw this is also pretty simple. You start with this little droplet over there, and some leaves to the sides can make them symmetric more or less or you can have them a little bit varied, you decide, and then I like to sketch this one out a little bit like that first and then we frame this one, need to make this one bigger. We frame this one with this rounded fan perhaps and then we will have five petals or something sticking out from this one. Just to distribute them quite evenly on doing that. You can make these ones straight or with a little bend like that and inside of this, we will have another additional detail [ MUSIC ] and then we'll do some nerves as well [ MUSIC ]. Then just fill it in using my 0.8 again [ MUSIC ] and this type of flower can be endlessly varied actually, it's just up to your imagination and if you want to have some more ideas and inspiration for these Indian florals, you can go check out my Indian floral course. For these larger petals, I don't want it to go all the way down here, I'm just going to start it there somewhere. I could of course bring it all the way down, but I would like to keep it like this [ MUSIC ] and then we add in these little guys here and the last step is to see if we need to do some broader lines somewhere and this is the interesting part. It's not going to be necessary for most part because, this area here is going to be black or let's say the negative space not filled in and this is going to be filled in and this one too, between here we need to have some lines. Also, this is going to be filled in and this one, here we need to create that little distance. Also here and then perhaps let's see there and let's do this one as well. We need to do that over here as well and then let's add the nerves. Cool. Here we have an Indian styled damask flower motif, and here is the end result for the vectorized version of this flower exercise and see how the negative and the positive spaces interact and work together and create a backdrop to each other. If you want to practice drawing some more damask flowers, I have added some bonus exercises in the workbook and then go to the next video where we'll start drawing some fruits.
14. Drawing Fruits - Exercise 8: It's time for drawing some fruits. Here's your first damask fruit exercise. A pineapple, or a stylized pineapple. This one is quite simple to draw. Start with creating this drop shape, or you can use whatever rounded shape you want. If you don't want to have it like this narrow top here, you can make it more rounded here as well. But I just wanted to show you this stylized pineapple that I like. When you're pleased with your overall shape, then let's start with these lines here, these diagonal lines that are the secret to this pineapple. You can start at the top where we will have these peel details, and then, create some even lines going down like that. This you might have to just try out and then adjust as you go along. Try to spread them out as even as you can. It's important that in the bottom, actually you can do this guiding center line. I think, that's quite helpful. The important thing is that at the bottom, there is a line meeting up like that. Here I can fit in one more, I think. Just make some so this will be a tighter, smaller grid than this one. Then we do the same thing, reflect the same lines on the other side. Try to create that as symmetrical as possible. You see where this start, then this one should start as well. Then make sure that it crosses here at the center. This one starts somewhere around here, across at the center and just follow along with the other lines like that. Then we have this one. Just make sure that they looks more or less equal on both sides. Then let's add those little side details like these ones, the peels sticking out and just go from the top of this line here, make a little curl. Then we have those leaves on top, just stick them out. Perhaps bend a little bit. You can make this symmetrical or non symmetrical, you decide. Something like that. Now we can start fill this in and I'm going to start with the contours of this pineapple. Have to be closed shapes. That one can be a bit thicker later anyway. Good. Then I'll do these ones. These pineapple leaves, they can also be prickly. If you look at a pineapple you can see that they are quite spiky and prickly. Now it's time to get these lines right as well. For that I'll use my brush pen. I'll start from here, and follow along like that. Then I'll start from here. I'm going to turn it, think it's easier to get nice curve. Now the important thing is to keep track of where you're going. Those guiding lines are serving me well. I'll have to take a look at what happened on the other side here. I can have coming from there. This one goes all the way down to this one. Cool. I think this can work well. Actually I think I can draw this one down to here as well. Just to make it symmetrical. Now for those little details, what you can do crosses like I did for this one, or you can do circles or ovals. Actually, let's do that just for fun. Or you could do just a dot or a diamond inside these diamonds. You can vary these in fun ways too. There. Then just to add some more lines like this one needs to be thicker just to create that distance between elements. Make sure that all the shapes are closed as well. Then we can add some more details if we want to. A damask pineapple. Here is how our pineapple exercise came out after being filled in and the contours removed. I think this can be a really decorative and interesting element to insert in a damask pattern. Next, we're going to practice drawing another type of fruit.
15. Drawing Fruits - Exercise 9: Here is a second typical fruit that we're going to practice how to draw as well, and this I would say is a pomegranate or something, because of this little detail, this top here. This one can also be varied in a lot of ways. Here's just one suggestion, one example that you can practice with, and then you can practice doing your own versions of a pomegranate, or perhaps an orange, or a melon, or some other fruit in this manner. To start this one, I just make this circle, and then I add this little top here. You can make it wider, or smaller. You can also do things sticking out from it if you want to. Then I want to have some leaves, at the bottom like this, and a little stem. Then I want to have this center detail, which I'm going to fill with those pomegranate seeds. A pomegranate is not really round, is it? It's a bit square almost in its shape, so I'm going to mimic that a little bit. Then I'm just going to draw these scales, or that is supposed to resemble those pomegranate seeds. This is in general a very typical detail in a damask pattern. You can use this at the center of a flower, or between leaves, or to build the center of the medallion. Then we want to have some details inside of course, just to create some dynamics, and things that happens. Cool, and then we can add some details on the side here, so these are one example. But you can do anything you want. You can do lines like that. That could be pretty too, I think. Time to fill in, and I'm just starting with my fine liner, to save my brush pen. I really like drawing these pomegranates, they're cool fruits. I want you to have details like these, like they are overlapping each other. When you have made a certain amount of pomegranates, were going to find it's so much fun to vary these in different ways. Now I'm going to directly draw with my brush pen, like here, where I need to have a thicker line, a distinct line. Actually I'm going to need this here at the top as well. I'll just go in and do that right away. Then, I'm just going to come in and do these little guys here. Then I'm going to add a center to all these seeds. I'm thinking that these ones are going to be our negative spaces. Whereas this part will be positive, or filled in, or solid, I want to call it. This is going to be pretty. I need to come in with the brush pen also to add some lines here and there. Then also these lines here. The details, that brings a little texture to the pomegranate peel. Like this. That's it. Here you can see how this pomegranate turned out after I filled in those spaces inside of the contours, and removed the contours. Next one up, we're going to practice how to draw a typical damask bird.
16. Drawing Birds - Exercise 10: Here is your last motif drawing exercise, but don't worry we're going to have some more drawing exercises later. Here is some bird, it could be a dove or a pigeon, or a pheasant or perhaps a peacock, and they are pretty typical motifs in damasks. What's very common with the birds in damask patterns is that they are looking behind their shoulders, which creates a very decorative motif once you reflect them. Let's draw this guy and when I draw birds, I like to start with some guiding circles or ovals like this, just to get the proportions of the body and the head right. Then we have the neck coming up and another circle here, and a neck going down like that. Then we have a beak and we have this, is it called a comb or something? I don't I know that's what it's called in Swedish if I translated literally, and then we have the chest, and I'd like to do this little variation in the chest, it's a bit fat. Then it comes down like this towards the tail, we have the back grounded beautifully and some feathers, the wing coming like this, and let's do a simple wing with this here. Then we have some additional feathers sticking out here. It becomes bigger and bigger on this part. Then we have some tail or feathers and they are swinging this way because this creates a really nice s-shaped to this bird. I can do some feathers sticking out the other way too, and if I have more space on this paper, I will probably do the tails longer, but for this exercise this will do and not to forget the claws and the simplest way is to just let them stick out from outside the belly like this. You can do some legs as well, it's just that this is a bit more easy. I'm messed up this claw and I think I'm going to replace them. I'm going to place them differently. That's better, so three claws. We need to have a little round eye and I've seen that there are typically some details like that, and the pupil we need to [inaudible] there, and this comb here you can develop then you can create as big as you want with some more topping here. Time to ink and I'm starting with the contours I think and now I don't want this comb to be attached to the contour of the body. Let's see what am I doing here now, so this is going to be a different looking bird than this one. I think I missed up a little bit, but I'll do another tail. That's going to be exciting. This is going to be a peacock tail for this one at least. Then for this eye we're probably going to need to use the fine liner completely [inaudible]. For some details, lets do the claws as well, just simple claws like this. You can do more advanced if you want to. Then for this hedge piece here, we don't want this to be connected to the contours because we want them to stay, these are going to be positive solid shapes. I'm just going to do these lines like that, and then I can of course attach these little circles to at least these lines as well but I want to have them separate. Then I need to come in with the brush pen to make some wider lines. This wing here, those lines need some broader lines, and this funny looking tail, which turned out in a different way and I can probably do some variation to this. I can do some details like that. I don't know if that's going to look good but just to show you that you can do different detailing to this. I think I'm going to do this color and some details on this back. I'm doing this one completely different than this template here. I'm really excited to see what type of bird you're going to create, and the different detailing that you are going to do and then what type of a tail feathers you're going to do. Here you have an example of damask bird, and here is our little bird friend and see how I kept these detailing here that I did create with black contours, but I just changed the color to them so that they would be a part of the solid positive spaces here. Then see how the removed black contours are now replaced with the background shining through and still creating the impression of contours. We are moving on and in the next lesson I'm going to talk about the compositions and layouts that you can see in damasks with these reflected motifs.
17. Composition and Layout: We have touched on the composition and layout of a damask pattern before but in this lesson, we're going to dive deeper into this specific characteristic so that you will get a good understanding of how this pattern is composed and put together in different ways. There are two variables to consider in a pattern; composition and layout. In a damask, there are two main layout types. The first category has non-reflected motifs arranged in a straight or half drop repeat. Actually, it's very similar to the Indian floors style of patterns in many ways, only with limited colors. The second layout type has these reflected motifs arranged in a diagonal or diamond layout. In this course, I'm focusing only on this second type with reflected medallion motifs. Within this layout type, we can find three categories. The first one is of a more simple sort with only one medallion motif that's being repeated in a more or less sparse diagonal layout. The second category is more complex, still with only one medallion motif, but with a more dense layout where some of the elements intertwine or overlap to complete each medallion. The third medallion category is the most complex one, still in a diagonal layout, but with double medallion motifs. Now, we're going to take a closer look at these three damask types and break them down in order to understand how they are made. Category one is the most simple damask design, where the original motif is found inside a single triangle and then reflected and repeated into a more or less sparse layout. The sparse layout is the most easy one to create because here you don't have to consider as much how the medallions are bordering to each other as it has plenty of space in between. This space is still important, though, to the overall impression. So, when we draw the motifs, we still need to visualize how the different sides of the medallion will look next to each other, and if you create a more dense layout of this type, this is even more important. The second medallion category is also created inside a triangle and then reflected. But here, the medallions are intertwined where some of the motif elements are borrowed from the neighboring medallions to make up the complete medallion. Like this; where the branch on the bottom edge here also becomes the top of the medallion when it's repeated inside the diagonal grid. So, the medallions are interlaced or intertwined with each other. For the third category, which is the most complex one, we have two or even up to four medallions or motifs varied in two columns. For this one, we have to create half the medallion motifs inside a rhombus and then reflect to both sides to create the complete medallions. They can also be intertwined and borrow elements from each other. When we draw these medallion motifs in these categories, we have to consider how they interact with each other right from the start. We can't just draw them and then hope they will fit together when we arrange them into a repeat or it's not going to come out as great. This is when we have arrived at the point where you'll learn how to draw patterns the way that designers did before computers back in the days. In the coming lessons, I'll show you how to draw damask motif compositions for these three categories. Each lesson is also an exercise for you to practice with and get prepared for creating your own damask pattern later on. We'll start with the easiest one, of course, so let's go to the next lesson where I'll show you how to draw for sparse damask repeat.
18. Drawing For A Sparse Repeat - Exercise 11: [MUSIC] In this exercise, we're going to draw the repeat and medallion for a sparse damask. Remember, damask has a diagonal layout. Inside of that diagonal grid, there are these diamond shapes created, and inside of these diamonds that medallions are placed. For the sparse medallion, there is more or less space in between that medallions. Since we want to have the medallions symmetrical on both sides, we only draw half of it and then reflect it. I usually start out by sketching out a triangular shape, which will be my boundaries, where I will draw my motif. Here, I have this triangular ruler with 90 degrees angle. But the diamond where you draw your medallion doesn't have to be square shape. It can have other proportions too. It can be wider, or it can be more narrow. You decide if you want to have more oblong impression for your layout, or a drawn out wider impression. If I want to have something that's in between, this type of triangle really works fine. Then you can just use this ruler to draw the sides of the triangle. But let's say that I want to have a medallion that's a bit taller, then I have to create my own triangle. Always start with the vertical center line of the diamond, and then also make a careful measure. Let's see, and mark the start, the top here, and then I wanted to be, let us say 26 centimeters tall, and then mark the middle, which is 13 centimeters, and then draw another line to find the center. Now, let's see I wanted to be the taller, so narrower in width. Instead of doing 13 centimeters like this as it is over here, I'll do just 10. I'll mark 10 centimeters, and then draw this diagonal [NOISE] line there. Now, I have half of a diamond, which is not 90 degrees anymore, but it's bit more narrow and taller. Now, I want to stay inside of this triangle, and the closer I draw motif elements to these edges, the less space in between the medallions, there will be. Of course, you can change this once you start building the repeat in illustrator. But I want to show you the principle of drawing the complete repeat design on the paper, and so now it's all up to our imagination. Let's see what I am going to do. I can vase, I guess. Using an A4 or smaller sized paper like this, you have to draw a pretty small motifs. That's why I prefer the larger sized paper. Also now, when you draw those leaves, and stems, and flowers, remember to use directional lines, it's a lot easier to get them right. Now, have some kind of ending. Just something simple like that, I guess. Here I'll have some feathers, just some really simple ones. The smaller scale that you're drawing in, the thinner pens you can actually use as well, so you might not even have to use a brush pen if you're drawing on small paper. Have some adornment on the inside. These are just the rough sketches, and when I go in with my fine line here, I usually correct. Just to make them a bit more even though here I think I'm going to have a [inaudible] coming down, and one perhaps coming up like that. It can be having something in here that's fun [MUSIC] See if you can make a tight fit. Now I need a flower here, I think I'll do my directional lines. I'm getting close to the edge here, which will then be reflected over here. If I have to be careful not to go outside or too close. [MUSIC] Actually, I think I'm going to move this one a bit closer. I think it's coming too close to this edge here, I want to keep that spares, the layout. On to it a bit closer. I think this is a Cosmos flower. I have them in my garden now and they are so pretty. Here, let's see what I could do here, I'm going to do something very stylized, I guess. I need to do [inaudible] a bit more careful. Here, I think they just want to have something really just decorating. I'm going to do a little bit of texture inside of this. Now, I have some space surrounding this here, that's going to be more of a spares layout. I can of course, add some more details if I want to, but let's see where this will take me so far. What we can do now is to check this and see how it will work together. For this, I'm going to set up my Lightbox and grab a second piece of paper. Here I have my Lightbox and my drawing, and I have tried to fill in the lines, a bit more sharp so that you can see, and I really hope you can see this enough now. What I'll do now is to trace this on a second piece of paper, and I don't have to trace everything. I really just have to trace the motif elements that are towards the edges. Because now I just want to check how the edges, or how the shape in general is going to appear next to each other, and have this one as well, I guess. I forgot it's really important now, in order to place this correctly, is to also draw these cross marks where we have our lines, because then we can move this around and align it. Let me show you, perhaps. Now, I'm going to turn this around and place it underneath. Now, it's going to be quite difficult for you to see, I guess let's see me I may have to trace this, and this side as well. Just drop these so I have the outlines. Now, I can meet up with my marks and just see how I feel that this pattern will look right next to each other. Then I can trace this on top of my original, just roughly I just want to get a feel for how they meet each other, then I'll place this one, line them up whether you're marks. This way, I can see how they are bordering to one another. I'm just doing this really rough now. Now, I can take a look at this one, and I can see that there are now some early ways created between the medallions. But like this, I think it looks really good. It looks fine. If they would have been closer, then I could have seen if maybe this one was sticking out here, maybe would have touched another element over there. That's a good way to check your drawing and your medallion, to see how it goes together once you place them in the repeat. This is really how you design pattern repeat manually by drawing by hand. You make this type of grid, where you can copy by tracing the medallions or the repetitive motifs. Then you can see the spaces in between, and how the different elements will interact with each other. For sparse layout like this, it's not very advanced or complex, or very difficult to accomplish a nice flow. But once you create a much more dense pattern, where the medallions are closer to each other, or like we are going to take a look at now, when you create medallion damask with intertwined motif elements, it's a whole other story. Consider this a warm up, now we are going to the advanced stuff, so I'll see you for that in the next lesson.
19. Drawing For An Intertwined Repeat - Exercise 12: For the Intertwined Damask, we also draw our Medallion Motif inside our triangle so this time I'm going to use my triangular ruler and you can draw a triangle using a similar ruler or with an ordinary ruler just like I showed you in the previous exercise. Now we are going to draw, the center of the medallion will be in here of course and then we'll do some surrounding elements that will be the framework of the medallion but will also be the intertwined elements. For example, if I draw a branch or perhaps a leaf coming up like that, this one is also going to be the top, we are going to reflect it and copy it up here so that it will be the exact same motif that's here it's going to be here but reflected. I'm just going to get started and you can follow along and you can draw up your own motifs or if you want to sort of mimic what I do, most fun is of course to create your own and make up your own motifs. I think I'll start with the surrounding elements just because then I know what space I will have to play with inside. I think I'm going to do this a Qantas leaf, like that in an S shape. Then we have the loop coming there and one coming over here and make them quite narrow so that it won't cross into the center of the medallion area too much, otherwise you won't have space for as many elements. Then we have this one, now let it stick out too much because on this side of this line, this part here is going to be inside here. So imagine if you have all this diamond is repeated over here, so what's on this side is going to be on the inside, tuck inside on this medallion. This is the principle that you have to keep in focus when you draw this, but we're going to do a little bit of an adjustment as we go along. This is actually quite a fun technique to use and it's just really satisfying to see the end results later. All right, here I have some really rough outlines for the leaf and I'm going to sketch it out a little bit more in detail before I test it out. So I'm just going to make this little rounded lobes for this one, something like that. Then I have the center nerve has to fit between these lobes and the eyes and then we have some side nerves. That's going to be pretty I think. All right, what I do now is to copy this one, reflect it over here. I'm going to set up my light table again, now I've set it up and turn I'll it on. Just as in the previous exercise, we're now going to grab another piece of paper and place it on top and of course, if you don't have a light table like I do, you can use tracing paper to do the same thing. Then I would suggest that you are using two pieces of tracing paper. First you draw the original like I do on an ordinary piece of paper, I think that's easier if you need to erase a lot and so on. I'm starting by marking my crossing lines like this because then it's going to be easier to align this. I think that's going to be enough, perhaps I'll just use this to do this one too. Now I'll trace my leaves as thorough and exact as I can, okay good. Now we do the same as before, we turn this one around so that we reflect it and now let's align the markings and now trace it on top of here but at the same time if you see that something doesn't really add up the way you would like it, now is the time to adjust it. So this is going to be a little bit of going back and forth and erasing and adjusting and so on. For example, if you can see this here, the little leaf is starting here and that's not really a nice flow I think, I would like the leaf to start a little bit further down so I'm re-sketching those lines and then I trace the lines as they are but since I changed this one here, I need to change that on the original leaf as well, but we'll get to that. Now I have this leaf copied up here and now we have to adjust to this one down here as well. What I'll do is, I'll retrace this one and make this little adjustment at the bottom there and I'll turn it around and perhaps I'll erase these lines here so that I won't be misguided and erase this, align the papers and then I retrace this again and this way, these motifs will align and connect perfectly. Now I can continue with my center motifs and now I have the space available for these center elements and I'm going to take away my light table again so that's going to be easier for you to see what I'm doing. Now it's time for me to set my boundaries a little bit more, I don't want my elements to go further out than this, something like that. Now I'm going to make up some new shapes here and I think I'll just start here in the middle somewhere, all right, now I want some more leaves sticking out here I think, so I'm just making some directional lines first. Now I'm going to trace my sketch here with a fine liner and now I only have to trace this leaf I don't have to trace this one because I want to have just one original leaf that will be copied and placed up here as well so I don't want two different ones, they need to be exact. Another thing that you can mind and really be careful with is that your lines that are along the center line here that they really cross over that's going to be easier for you later when we edit these motifs. My last step before I'm finished with this is to make sure that some of the lines here are visible enough in the overall pattern. That's it, now I have the basic original elements that will be reflected and copied and repeated to create the whole pattern. For the next one, we're going to do another exercise where we step up the complexity, because now we're going to create a double repeat.
20. Drawing For A Double Repeat - Exercise 13: Now we have actually come to our last drawing exercise. We're going to do some more drawing, of course, when we create our own patterns. But this is the last exercise. Now we're going to draw the motifs for double damask repeat. For this, there is no other option really than to use a large piece of paper. Otherwise, the motifs will be too small and tiny and will not come out as nicely for the final pattern. The tricky part here is if you don't have an A3 or equivalent large scanner, you will have to work around this. My suggestion is that you just grab two pieces of paper and place them next to each other. Just make sure that they are lined up all the time. Perhaps, you can put a piece of tape here that's easy to remove, at least here at the edges. Then you can just separate them and scan them separately when it's time to scan. The repeat area for double damask is not a triangle, but two triangles. One like this and one like that. Because we're going to have double medallions and they will be placed in two different columns, so to speak. Here, we have a one medallion and it's going to be reflected this way and then here we have another medallion that's going to be reflected that way. But we still just have to draw half of them. In this case, this means that the repeat area where we will draw our motifs will be inside these two triangles and when we put them together, it becomes another geometric shape, which is a rhombic shape, a rhombus. Let's just draw these two triangles. I'm going to be careful now and make sure that my lines are aligned perfectly. I want to have them aligned along with the edge of the paper. I'm just going to measure and make sure that the distance from the edge will be the same. That's going make it a bit easier later. You can just go ahead and follow along to follow my steps if you want to, as I'm doing them as well, so like that. Now, I have to make sure that I can fit the two triangles nicely. I think if this one ends there. So perhaps I'll move it up a little bit because I want some space for the tops. There we have our rhombic shape and inside this we're going to fit to medallions. Back in the days when the designers perhaps, didn't have the type of tracing paper that we have today, or a light table or light box or a smooth even window. How did they draw this? How did they copy the exact and reflected shapes from down here, for example, up to here? They drew extra guiding lens. Let's do that just to show you how that was done. Instead of, just having these diagonal guiding lines, we can also do a grid with more squares. This requires some more work, but that's how they had to do it before like boxes and tracing paper. So now we have a grid and now it's going to be quite easy for us to see what's inside the squares that are here, and then we can just copy them a lot easier up here. Now it's time to start drawing and making up some new motifs and medallions. For this, you can start either at the center of the medallions or you can start along these diagonal lines, which will be the framework of these medallions as well. Just remember now, you necessarily don't have to reflect and copy what your draw down here doesn't have to be the same as here, but here it will be. You don't have to reflect this one unless you really want to have the exact same framework everywhere. But since we now have two medallions, were going to do a little bit of variation. But the principle is that this is the bottom part of the repeat. What you see here is also going to be repeated here. Then it's reflected to both sides. I'm going to start with the centers of my medallions this time. These one's needs some nice shapes as well and for this, I'm going to use that freely edge. So that's one center of the medallion and now I'll continue with this one, see what I can come up with. Now that I have the medallion center sketched out, I now need to build on this and connect it all with some trailing motifs like this that will frame these centers and also make a really nice flow. For this, I think I'm going to do some a countess thing here. Make lots of variation and see how you can fit in all these little shapes inside these spaces here. Now it's time to copy this part here, up to here and make sure that it will fit nicely and connect, and also see if I need to add some more details or adjust some of them perhaps. If I don't have a light table, I can now use this grid. I have this lobe here of my little a countess starter going on. Now, I need to copy this into this square. Now I can just copy this shape as best as I can into this square, then I have this a countess leaves sticking up. So up here, I don't have to bother that much on this side of the line. I just need to make sure that the motifs on this side of the line will look good here as well. Let's see, I hope you can see the whole thing here. Then we have the tendril coming up like that. Then I have this lobe starting there, and another lobe. Then I have another tendril coming out like that. Let's just say, I want it that way. Then I just copy. How were they all placed inside of these little squares? I think you see my point here, how this is done. With the help of this grid, you can now copy the shapes and lines that are down here, up to here as well without tracing paper or light box. But since I do have a lightbox, I'm definitely going to use that. So for this, I really just need a small piece of paper. I don't have to have this exact same size now because I'm just going to copy these parts up here. Draw these marks here just to make sure that I can place them right later. Now I'm placing it underneath here matching up my corner markings. I was a little bit off, but not that much. This here looks a little bit empty, so now I can sketch out some more details for this part here. Well, something like that. Now that I have sketched this out, I need to copy this onto this one because I just want to have one motif that I scan and vectorize later and I'm going to use the ones on the bottom as my originals. I'm tracing again, just roughly and then I can perfect and adjust these ones at the bottom. Now, I'll just copy this one again, down to here. It's a little bit of back and forth. But I really, like this process. For this, I'm going to grab another piece of paper and trace with my fine liner. This way I don't have to erase all the pencil lines beneath the ink before scanning. Now, I think we have plenty of skills and techniques for getting started with our damask.
21. Planning Your Damask Pattern: When I'm about to start creating a pattern, I usually begin with some planning. By planning, I actually mean some thinking and coming up with ideas for how I want the pattern to be. It also means making some choices for the direction I want the pattern to take. In the workbook that I have created for this course, I've included some planning worksheets to help you plan your pattern using my step-by-step process. If you haven't already, download the workbook now from the projects and resources section, and print the worksheet pages, and let's start with the first step. Do you want to create a traditional or contemporary damask? I'm going to go ahead and make more of a traditional one. What type of product or products do you want to design for? This is almost like creating your own brief. For my pattern, I am thinking it would be for wallpaper. Next step is to brainstorm some ideas for a theme. Having a theme for your damask can be a really fun way to create and also a good way to get started. A theme will also give you some boundaries where you can be creative. Usually, a theme triggers some really cool ideas too. Here are some examples of themes to inspire you: Your garden, using plants that grow where you live, Victorian or Gothic Damask with grotesks and figurines, and ornaments to create an eerie impression, something just very simple, like exotic fruits and plants, a season or holiday like Christmas or Easter or a fall theme perhaps with iconic seasonal plants and animals; Hawaii with palm leaves, Hibiscus flowers, and perhaps the pineapple or another specific country using its national symbols of plants and animals; a Baroque stillife with a vase of lush flowers; or a plate with graves and vine leaves; and why not use famous art as inspiration and theme; using objects of a specific painting perhaps, or you can create a children's damasks using toys as your motifs; or why not a craft sea damask with sewing as our theme including the scissors and needles or measuring tape and fabric patches; or perhaps an artist's studio with paintbrushes, paint tubes, palettes, pens, and pencils. There are so many different themes that I'm sure that you can brainstorm around. With the theme you've decided on in mind, go and gather inspiration and source materials if you need it. For example, browse Pinterest and Google, or go out and snap some pictures, visit a museum, and really take a good look at the subjects that you want to include in your theme. I've already done that part with the list I just gave you. I think I'm going to pick one from that, and I really like that Baroque stillife idea. So that's the one I'm going to go for. The next step is to do an inspiration round and some research and with a theme you've decided on in mind, go and gather inspiration and source materials, browse Pinterest and Google, or go out and snap on pictures, visit a museum and really take a good look at the subjects that you want to include in your theme and then gather them in a folder on your computer. Then write down some ideas for motifs and objects to include in your pattern. [MUSIC]. For the next step, we'll create an inspiration board. It can be just a new Pinterest board or a folder, a physical one or a digital one on your computer. But the best ones are the ones where you can see all of your gathered materials, like in an Illustrator document or print out and stick on a wall or pin board or on a piece of cardboard perhaps. Now, let's make some more decisions. You want to make a simple or a double damask. I instinctively want to create a double a damask. Those are my favorites. The next choice is whether you want to make a sparse or dense layout. I think it's going to lean towards a semi-dense layout. I wanted to have some space in between the medallion centers and some framework surrounding that. Next we can make some rough sketches of the motifs and the pattern layout. [MUSIC] This is just about all the planning we need to do at this point. Now, we're all inspired and prepared and fired up to start creating our motifs, right? For that, let's jump to the next video.
22. Drawing Your Damask Motifs: With the type of damask pattern, you've decided to create a spares, intertwined, or a double. It's time to start drawing your half medallions and the repeat composition using the steps and techniques you've now learned. For a spares damask, you create that triangle where you draw your single medallion. For an intertwined damask, you also create a triangle where you draw your medallions center and then the surrounding and intertwined elements. For a double damask, you draw up a rhombic shape where you draw your two medallions. But I'm not going to leave you hanging to do this all by yourself. I'm going to create a pattern alongside with you. Since I decided to create a double damask, I need to draw this rhombic shape. Time to start sketching out those motifs. I'm done inking and I did some mistake here and there. For example, these ones are attached to the other contours, which is something that I'm going to have to fix when I edit my motifs in Illustrator. That's exactly what it's time for now. Now we going to digitalize and edit our motifs and get them ready for creating a damask pattern.
23. Digitalizing Your Motifs: Welcome back. In this lesson, I'll show you how to scan your motifs. Both if you've decided on scanning your pencil sketches for tracing with a brush tool or the blob brush tool in illustrator, and also scanning the filled in black contours. If you prefer to trace your motifs in illustrator using a brush tool instead of a fine liner first, then you need to scan your pencil sketches. Here I have placed my pencil sketch on the flatbed of my scanner and this has pretty good visibility. I can see the lines clearly, but if you have a sketch with some weaker, thinner lines, you can do some adjustments to make sure that you see everything. Here in the settings and I'm sorry, but my interface from my scanner is in Swedish, but I will translate for you. You can choose black and white because we don't have any colors to scan, and for resolution 300 DPI is fine. Then you can choose which folder you want to scan your sketches to and name it, of course. Then we have some settings that we can do for improving the image if we need to. Click that. This is the standard settings now, and then click "Manual" and these they'ld handles show up. This is brightness and this is contrast. Here we can play around with these handles to see what will make my sketch look better. I can bring down the brightness as much as I can and then bring up the contrast. Then we have to mark our area that we want to scan, make sure that you include all the details you need and then hit scan. For us, fine liner and pen lovers, we just do the same thing. If we need to, we can adjust brightness and contrast as well. This one looks pretty good. I'm just going to go ahead and scan. Then let's create a new document. I like to work with pretty large art boards using an A3 art board, still-life damask. I think those standard settings are just fine. Then go to the folder where you have saved your scans, and just drag them into your Illustrator document. This one I'm going to trace later on. If you want to trace with the brush tool to create the lines for your damask motifs then choose the brush tool that you like. I'll zoom in. I'll use a red color, just as we did with the fine liner, but with a brush tool. I'm using my Wacom tablet right now. This can be a little bit, I don't know, a blunt tool sometimes to trace like this in my opinion. That's why I prefer to do this with pen and ink. You go ahead and trace your sketches if you want to take this route. For this, I'm going to scale it down a little bit. Then I'll get the trace tool and here, black and white is just fine. Then I always check, ignore white, and then click trace. I think this looks good and I'll go ahead and go up to object and quick expand. Now I have my vectorized damask motifs and I can just get rid of this one. For this next step, we're going to take a look at all the lines and everything and the shapes inside and fix any mistakes and perhaps smooth out some of the lines and so on. Now I'll just zoom in and see if we think that everything looks nice. I usually just go in with the eraser tool first and smooth big mistakes out or fix them and see if there is something else I need to fix. Let's see, I think this one here is a little bit narrow. I'll scoop out some of that. I'll use my brush tool to also adjust some of this and also check that all of the lines are closed where you want to later fill in the shapes and I have made some mistakes. For example, this one here, needs to be detached from those other contours. Just going through all this in a first step because there is more editing to do in another step coming. Another thing in the editing process is to smooth out any of these rugged lines. This we can do with the smooth tool and then go over with the smooth tool and get rid of all those extra anchor points. This will smoothen out your lines. I'm going to smooth out my motifs a bit more. In the next lesson, we'll first continue with some more editing and preparation of these motifs. Then we're going to reflect these motifs and create the symmetrical complete medallions.
24. Creating The Reflected Medallion: In the next step, we're going to prepare our motifs a bit further to make them ready to reflect. Here I have a scanned and vectorized that spares medallion that I drew in one of the exercises. Now, we're going to edit this vertical line here where we will reflect this motif to create it into a double-sided and symmetrical medallion. Remember we have that vertical line in our sketches, but there are some excess lines here. Go to the tool panel and select the rectangle tool and choose another color than these black outlines. Just choose red I think and then draw a tall rectangle like this and then go to objects and arrange and send it to the back and now, when we zoom in, we can check this and see that the lines are in place. For example, we want our contours to cross over this vertical line and also for this grid to look really close up to see how this one will align. I'm going to rotate this one just a little bit, just to adjust it. What I need to do, I will select the whole thing and ungroup my medallion. Now I can select only this textured grid, and then I'll select rotate by pressing R on my keyboard and then I'm going to set my central point where I want to rotate it around, adjust it a little bit, good and then everything else is crossing that red border. Now, we're going to trim my black contours. First, I'll select my red rectangle and bring it back to the front again. Then I need to trim this part here, all these little bits that cross over into the red rectangle. But this one is a separate figure so that means that I need to trim these separately, which means I need to have two trimming rectangles. I'll select my red rectangle again and copy it by pressing, command C and then pasting it to the front by pressing command F. Now, I have two rectangles here and I'll select the black contours that are joined together and then I go to the Pathfinder toolbar and select the one that says minus front and now my black contours are trimmed where the red rectangle is meeting up. Next, I want to trim this grid, so I'll select that and then the second red rectangle and do the same thing minus front there. Now, I have trimmed line here that I can now easily reflect to the other side and copy. But before we do that, we're going to make things a little bit easier for us. So one of the steps is to also fill in these shapes. But if we reflect this now, pressing O on my keyboard and set the anchor over there, then reflect it and align it by pressing shift, and then copy it by pressing option. Now I have this symmetrical medallion, but now I have to fill in everything twice so this flower I need to fill in and also this one. But if I wait and reflect it later, and now I can fill in the closed figures here and I only have to do that once. But first, I'm going to edit this one a little bit and also this one down here and I'm going to do that by using the shape builder tool and let's see, I'll choose gray color. Now I'm just going over all of those little shapes and also this one, and actually that one as well and then this one is going to be that color of two. Now I want to fill in all of the closed figures. I'm just going to select the whole thing and I'll select that gray color and now I can fill in those [inaudible] leaves. Don't go over the black contours or it will merge them with the inside and that's all I can do now because I can't fill in these ones, they are not closed and these shapes here, I don't have to fill in because when I remove the black outlines they will leave holes and that's all that I need. So I don't need to merge this or anything. That's just an unnecessary step. Now it's time to reflect this thing and what's left to do now is to fill in the contours that I now have created. I'll just select both sides, select that shape builder tool again and my gray color, and then I will fill in all of the other figures at the center. The next step now is to remove the black contours and this is when the magic happens. First, you can group the whole thing, double-click to get it into isolation mode. Now we're going to select that black outlines so click on the black outlines somewhere in your illustration. Then go to select same and fill color and now everything that's black is selected. You can accomplish this by using the magic wand tool as well that you can find up here, so click that one and then a black outline, and then everything that's black in this group is also selected. Here it is. There's actually one more thing that we can do and that is to merge this grid and I'll select both of them. Then go to my pathfinder and, click unite, this first one here. Here we have our final medallion for that spares damask. I am going to set this aside and use it later when we're going to create the repeat, and here is the medallion motif that I drew for the intertwined damask exercise, remember. We're going to do same thing with this one and at this point, we don't really have to bother about how this one needs to be reflected and copied up here, because that is something that we'll take care of when we start building the complete repeat, everything will add up as you will see. Create another one of those tall rectangles and bring it to the back. I'm going to check this a little bit more up-close just to see if I need to do something. I'll zoom in here and this one is not touching this vertical line, so I need to edit this one a little bit. Now what I can do is to just extend this either by adding some more black with a blob brush tool or I can use my light arrow tool and click on these little anchor points and then I can just pull it a little bit like that and now it's crossing over to that line, and then I'll just scroll down, move down along this line and see how it looks. Here, we have another medallion that we can set for later when we're going to build our repeats. In the next lesson, we'll continue with the double damask medallion.
25. Creating The Reflected Medallion Continued: Last one of our double the mask motif. Here we have two vertical lines that we need to now trim and make ready for reflecting. I'm just going start with one side, the same way as before. Then zoom in and take a look. I need to do something here. In general, it looks okay. There are a few things here and there that I need to edit so I will just go ahead and do that. Now it's time to fill in the closed shapes and also merge the figures that I want to keep, including the outlines. Next step is to start filling in those shapes that I want to have solids. This is as far as I can fill in at this point. Now I need to start reflecting both sides and create closed shapes along these lines here and fill in the rest. Now that everything is ungrouped, I can now divide this one into two different sides so I don't have to reflect all of it, just this part of the medallion. I'll just select all of that, zoom in, select the reflect tool and set my anchor and reflect and copy. Perfect. Now I'm going to try to select all the stuff on this part here. Now, I'm going to reflect to this one as well. Now I can fill in the center shapes as well. But except for these guys here, they are still open here at the bottom. This is something that I can and in order to close them, I need to copy this rose up here, down to here, copy this one down to here and put it as close as I can and zoom in. Let's see. So here I need to move it up perhaps a little bit, and now it closes. Now I need to trim these parts. I'll flag this one and this contour use the shape builder tool again. The same thing over here. This is also a way to trim. Make sure all those black contours that I need are selected. Now I can fill in those branches as well. There was once something where going along with that one, I moved and copied that rose but everything worked out as I wanted it anyway. I'll just remove all this. I don't need anymore. Now I can start filling in these new shapes that I have created with closed contours when I reflected the medallions. I'll select some of it at a time. When you use the shape builder tool like this, it can be pretty sluggish and slow with all of these contours selected. That's why I'm selecting some bits at a time. It can be more effective in this case to use the live paint bucket tool. Let's see what I'm going do with this vase, it's going to be solid. Then with these little squares as a pattern on this vase, I think its going to be more pretty if I just keep the inside of these square. I'm going to merge the controllers. Now, I'll remove these gray areas here. I thought I was going to have them grave before, but good. Now to this one. Here I need to select all of it. Then also I'm missing some parts here, those little dots. I'll take care of that now too. Now I can remove all the black outlines, all the black contours, I will select the whole thing and group it and take it into isolation mode just to make sure that I'm not removing anything else black on my art board. I'm using the magic wand tool to select everything black here. For the better effect, I'll zoom out a bit, and now let's see what happens. Here is the final double the mask medallions. Now, it's time to assemble, I'll buy medallion motifs into these to mask pattern repeats. For that, I'll see you in the next lesson.
26. Creating The Sparse Damask Repeat: Welcome back. It's time to put everything together now into the final pattern repeats, and I'll start with Sparse damask and this is the medallion motif that I created for that one. I'm going to start with scaling this down a little bit and set to the side just for now. There are two ways you can do this. One is by creating the boundary box first and placing your medallions into this one and then creating the repeat, I'm going to show you how. The second one is to place the medallions first into the layout that you want. Just roughly placing them like this so that you can experiment and find the space that you like in between here. But I'm going to show you both ways a bit more in detail in case you haven't encountered one of them before and a little heads up. I'm not going to show you how to use the "Pattern" tool, although if you're a fan of that tool, I think it's going to be a really great tool for creating this pattern style as well. If you are a pattern tool fan, just go ahead and use that one as well. I just like creating patterns the manual way. I'm going to show you my process for that. Let's start with the first way to do this. Select the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle. The reason I'm creating a rectangle here now and not as square, is because when I created this medallion, I drew a triangle that was a little bit more narrow in width remember. This makes a taller medallion compared to the width in proportion. I think I'm just going to drag this out and make this a little bit larger. Now, I want to even out the numbers here. I think actually I'm just going to make this 300 pixels times 360 perhaps that's even and nice, and I'll give it a darker color, as well, and then I can place my medallion on one of the corners. Now, I see I need to bring the medallion to the front. Now, I can move and copy my medallions to all four corners as you do when you create the repeat, and then one to the center. I'm going to go ahead and do that. I click my medallion and then I right-click on my mouse, go to transform and move. Here, I can now enter the pixel numbers that I have for my boundary box, the distance and to the side it was 300, so I'll enter that and down, I don't know if I want to move any pixels at all, because I want to copy it to this part, this corner here, I'll just enter zero and click "Copy". Then I can select both of them, right-click, "Transform", "Move", and now I want to move them down to the bottom corners. To decide I don't want to move them at all, so I'll enter zero and down I want to move that length of the rectangle, that was 360 and I'll "Copy". Now, I want to copy the medallion right into the center. Half the distance to the side and half the distance down. Now, I need to remember my numbers. I'll click it and then go to "Transform" and "Move" again. To the side, a half distance is a 150 pixels this time, and down it's a 180 pixels and click "Copy". This is technically the whole repeat. Now, to create the pattern swatch, I click the rectangle, and then I copy it, press "Command C" and then "Command V", to paste it in behind. Now, this behind box, I'm giving no stroke and no fill. Then select the whole thing and drag it to the "Swatches" panels like this. Now, I'm going to test my pattern and see how it repeats, and if I'm pleased with the distance, the space between the medallions. I'm drawing a larger rectangle like this and fill it with my pattern, so here I can see what it looks like. So I think that this looks pretty good. I could experiments on more to bring the medallions just a little bit closer to each other and decrease the space in between, make it less sparse, more dense. To do that, I would just go back to this one and delete all these medallions again and just increase the size of this medallion just a little bit and then I can go ahead and copy it the same way as before, and then test it out and see how I like that version instead. But now I'm going to show you the second way to create the repeating steps. I'll just erase my boundary box. Now, I'm going to do this all backwards and test out the layout beforehand. I'll just drag my medallion to the right like this and press "Shift" so it aligns perfectly with the first medallion and press "Option" to copy it. Then I'm going to copy these guys down to here. Now, I want to roughly create a tall rectangle again so that it will repeat diagonally then copy it down to here. Then I'll copy one to the middle of this. This creates a nice diagonal layout, as you can see. This looks pretty good I think, and I like the space in between. Now, I need to go in and do this a bit more exact. Select the "Rectangle" tool and now find a point in the medallion where I put my marker and drag the rectangle to bring all four corners to the same exact point in the other four corner medallions. Then I'm going give it a darker color and send it to the back, and I'll delete all of these. Now, I need to even up the numbers as well. Let's see, 314 perhaps, and this one can be 360. I was very close to my other rectangle. Now, I can go in and copy these the exact same way as I did with that first one. Now, I can copy the rectangle and paste it to the back. Give it no stroke and no fill. Select the whole thing and drag it to the swatches panel. Now, I can test this one out as well. Then you can go in and experiment a little bit and just see if you want to create a more dense or even more sparse repeat. Give it a few tries until you find the perfect layout that you like. Next, I'm going to show you how to create the repeat for the Intertwined damask.
27. Creating The Intertwined Damask Repeat: Time for creating the intertwined damask repeat. Here is my medallion that I created for that. This is actually almost the same as creating the repeat for the space damask, but for the intertwined damask, we need to mind how we place the medallions next to each other a little bit more careful, since these elements here are also the top elements for each medallion. Let's just get started and you'll see what I mean here. I'm going to scale this down just a little bit. For the intertwined damask, the best method for creating the repeat and the layout is to use the backwards method. Now, organized roughly place out the damask and now, I want to line up those acanthus leaves the way I want them to connect to each other. Perhaps I'll move it down just a little bit. See how that looks. I think that will be fine. One step to the side. Now, I'll grab this one and copy it to the side and try to eyeball the exact same distance between those two acanthus leaves again, and just one more step to the right. We have a beginning and now, let's take these ones align them by holding Shift and then see if we can find the exact same place with these ones just roughly in a way and press Option to copy them. Then I want to copy this one to the side a couple of times as well, just so that I can get a good overview of how this repeats and to this side. They are not exact repeated now, but at least we can get an overview of how they aligned next to each other. Now, I can play around with this a little bit and see if I can move them and see how they add up to each other in different ways. I can just select these ones and bring them down a bit and see how that works. That creates a little bit more of a space repeat. Perhaps I'll just, and then I'll do the same to the side. Here, it comes a bit more space. But I think I liked the one that was a little bit more dense where the leaves almost touched each other. I'm just going to go back to that one. I think this is how I wanted to end up. Now, I select the rectangle tool again and find a corner, a spot for my corner and then draw it, so that each corner meets the same spot in those four corner medallions. I'll give it a darker background and send it to the back. Now, I'm going to create the exact repeat, just as I did for the space repeat. I'll remove these medallions here and see if I can even out the numbers. Now, I want to keep it as close as the one I have, so 178 will work good and then 168, I think, because it's just a little bit smoother to how even numbers without decimals. Now, our measurements are 278 and 268, so it's almost a square, which adds up because the triangle, the diamond where I drew my original half medallion was more or less a tilted square, remember, so 278 and 268 and I'll write them down here, 278 times 268. I'm writing them down just in case I forget because I have a memory sometimes like a goldfish. Then I might as well just divide these in two, so I have the half distance and 278. That's, let's see, 139 times, let's see, 268 divided by 2 is 134. Now, I have my measures, EC2 access. Now, I'm just going to start moving and copying this. Now, I create the patterns swatch and copy my square and give it no stroke and no fill and select the whole thing and drag it to my sweat swatches panel and it's time to test. Ooh, I like it. Now, this is a wallpaper. Now, I can directly see that I missed something. Here, it's chopped off, which means that I need to copy this one too up here as well, because it's crossing this border here and I didn't notice before. This is also something you need to be careful with. I'll just go ahead and copy that. To move it up instead of down, I'll enter a minus before and then it's 268 and copy. There, now, this should work. I'm just going to remove this swatch and drag it to the lower waste bin there. Now, select the whole thing again because my no stroke and no fill boundary box is still behind there. Then I'll drag it to the swatches panel again. I'll go down to my test rectangle. Let's see. There now its complete. The colors are a little bit dull, I think. Don't you agree? But the colors is something that we're going to work on an upcoming lesson. But first let's create the double damask repeat. For that, I will see you in the next lesson.
28. Creating The Double Damask Repeat: Let's take on the double Damask repeat. Here are my two medallions. I'll start with scaling them down a little bit, and start placing them next to each other. Let me see if I can find a nice distance here between these two. Then grab this one again and pull it down. Press Shift to align it. Then fit in the rose in between these branches here and copy. Now what happens is that here the motifs are interfering with each other. Which means I missed something when I drew and copied my motifs, and I'm actually glad this happened because now I get to show you how to fix mistakes like this. One way is of course, to go back and recreate your medallion and just make sure that everything will add up. But you can also cheat a little bit. I'll give this one a different color just so I can keep track of things, and I'll double-click and take it into isolation mode. Then perhaps I can just remove some of these bits and pieces that are interfering with each other. These guys, I can move down. What happens with this flower here? Can I keep that? Well I could probably just move it down like that and remove this one completely. I don't need that. Then for these leaves here, let's see. I think it's easier to do something about them. I can perhaps just make them smaller. So scale it down a bit, like that, and this one, I'm going to rotate a little bit. Then I'm removing this here. Then I'm going to reflect these two to the other side. Easy-peasy. If this happens to your medallion as well, don't fret. We can fix this. There are some more stuff going on here that we need to edit. But I think I need to do that on the other part of the medallion. I'll go auto isolation mode, zoom out a little bit more. Then I'm going to move these guys down here instead of just bringing it into my art board. Now let's zoom in. Double click again. Now I can move these leaves a little bit. Just give them another place. This one as well, I'll just move that. Then I'll reflect them to this side. So they will be symmetrical on both sides. I'll set my anchor point to somewhere I can see is in the middle, doesn't have to be on the pixel now, and press Shift to place them exactly where I want them. Option to copy. This is just a really easy way to edit the medallion and make it work. Now I have a new original, so I have to delete all this and make this one gray again. Now let's give it another try and see how everything adds up. I'll start by copying it to the right and then I can copy both of them down. So place, that arose in between somewhere. Now I'm going to check out this all a bit closer and see how it looks. I want it to be up a little bit. Let's zoom out and see how this appears. I think this can work despite mistakes and everything. Now it's time to create the patterns swatch the same way as before. I'll have to draw another rectangle and I'll find corners again. Roughly like that. I'll give it a dark background and send it to the back. Let's even up the numbers. This is almost square. Let's see how this look. Yes, it seems to be working with the corners as well. Now let's see what happens when we copy these into the exact position. I'll remove these. The measures are now 316 and 300. But you know what? This time I don't have to calculate half their numbers because this time I'm not going to have to move and copy something into the center. That's already taken care of, let me show you. Now I'm just going to go ahead and copy this like before, and that's it. I think everything looks good. The connections here between the branches and the roses is what I would have to look out for. But I think this is good enough. Perhaps I would like to have a little bit more distance between the branch and the rows. But I'm going to settle with this because now I'm eager to create the patterns swatch. I'll copy this boundary box, paste it behind, hit no stroke, and no fill and drag it to the swatch panel. Now I'll test this one. Let's see if I forgot something this time. At a first glance, it looks good. It's very detailed. If you compare these to the other two repeats, they are, in technical terms, they are half drops because you move each motif half the distance to the side and half the distance below. But for this double Damask, every medallion is repeated in a straight repeat, but the layout is not diagonal layout still. In some ways that double Damask is easier and in other ways it's more difficult or complex to create. Here is my double Damask, despite mistakes and everything, we managed to fix that. In the next lesson, we're going to give our Damask some color.
29. Color And Recolor: Welcome back. It's time to bring some color to our damask patterns. Here, I have lined up all three of my damasks that I have created. Then, I also scaled them so that they will give me a nice overview. I have also, in the swatches panel over here, cleared out all the illustrator standard colors and patterns. Then, I gathered a color group with some colors that I like and that I would like to play around with. So you can do the same. Pick out a handful of colors that you want to try out, just like this. Also, create some rectangles with your damask pattern or patterns, depending on how many you have created so far. Then, let's create two squares or rectangles over here somewhere, in any color. It doesn't matter at this point. For a traditional damask, the colors are monochromatic, which means that you use one of the same color for the pattern, but with a darker tone for the background and a brighter tone for the medallions. So I'm going to start with my spares damask over here. I'll select both these squares and then pick out a color from my color group here that I want to try out. I'll pick this teal one. So now, I have a dark teal for my background. Now, I'm going to create a brighter tone of this teal for the medallions. So go to this color swatch over here and double-click and bring out your color picker. Now, we can pick out a tone that's a little bit brighter than the original teal or your color. Over here, I can see how they matched up and looked next to each other. Then, you can just click around and find a tone that you like, then, click "Okay". Now, select both these tones and your damask pattern swatch. Then, go up to the recolor tool up here. Click that. Now, we can easy exchange these gray tones to our teal or our color tones. So switching this dark teal with the dark gray, and then the bright teal with the bright gray, and click "Okay". So here, I have my first monochromatic recolored damask. Then, I can go and do the same with my other damasks. Let's see, I'll try this dusty blue over there. I'll find a brighter tone. Select all of these and go to the recolor tool, and switch the colors. So that was very sophisticated and quite neutral still. I'll try my double damask as well. I'll go with this green color and find an even brighter tone, and see what happens. Go to the recolor tool and switch those colors. Now, you can also, of course, play around and see how they will look in reverse. Especially for this one, I think would look really nice if I change to the bright and the dark tones, so I'll just switch those. This brings a completely different impression. Now, you don't have to do monochromatic color to your damask. You can create two contrasting colors as well, and that is also really decorative. So I'll pick one color for my background. Let's say, I'll do this one. Then, another color for my medallions. Select one of my patterns, go to the recolor tool, and then switch them around again. So here's a two-colored damask instead. For this middle one, I'll keep the dusty blue for the background. Then, I'll use this cream for the medallion. Now, I just have to switch these brighter tones with each other. That's another look to it. Then, for my double damask, I'll do this burgundy for the background. Then, I'll use the pink for the medallions, and move this so I can see. Then, I switch them around. So this is how you can play around with your damasks tool. It's a really simple and very fun and very addictive process using the recolor tool. I'm going to play around with my colors and damasks a little bit more. I can't wait to see what you create. In the next lesson, I'll talk a little bit more about the class project.
30. Next Step & End Note: Your assignment and class project for this course is to create a Damask pattern of your own using the tips and steps and techniques and process that I have showed you here in this course. The purpose of doing a class project is to get to practice what you have learned throughout the course. Since Skillshare is such a creative community, one of the aspects of uploading a pre-class project is also to give and get feedback to your class mates. It's about inspiring and supporting each other. Here's how to create a class project. In the section called projects and resources, where you'll also find the workbook, there is this create project button, and then you click that. Here you can upload images of your progress and also document your process and you can give it a project title. Don't forget to upload a cover image so that your project will look pretty and exciting and then you hit "Publish". Here in the project description, I have written down a list of suggestions of what you can include in your class project. I'm really excited to see that Damask patterns that you are going to create. We're coming to the end of this course and I really hope that you feel equipped to create your own Damask patterns now. If you enjoyed this course, please give me a thumbs up or even better, write me a comment in the review area. I read them all. Sometimes, I even feature them in my Instagram stories. If you would like to connect with me outside of Skillshare as well, Instagram is one of my favorite places to hang out, and you'll find me at Bear Bell Productions. You can also check out my website at bearbellproductions dot se. If you click here in the menu for creatives, I have created something I call the creative section and it's a place where I gather some resources that I want to share with my fellow designers, creatives. Here you can find articles and tutorials and downloads that you might have some use for. I also have a newsletter that you can subscribe to and you just click on this one over here and enter your name and email and sign up. That's it for this time and I'll see you in the next course.
Bärbel Dressler, Pattern designer & history nerd
