Classic Pattern Styles - Learn To Design Indian Floral Patterns

1. Intro: Indian Florals have been a reoccurring element within fashion and interior design from ancient to modern times. Today they are seen everywhere as popular as ever on clothing, wallpaper, furniture, and all kinds of home textiles. But this is nothing compared to the frenzy they created when introduced to Europe in the 15th century, when people went crazy over these beautiful and colorful printed and painted fabrics that actually revolutionized and in some way, democratized fashion and changed the way people both rich and poor would cloth themselves and decorate their homes. It's an interesting piece of pattern history and a story about one of the most beloved classic pattern designs. Hi, I'm Barbel and I'm a pattern designer and illustrator artist. In a series of courses about classic pattern designs, I'll share with you what I've learned about these famous and popular patterns, how they're composed and what characterizes them, and the history behind the pattern. In every course, I'll show you how to make these patterns yourselves. Each course will also include some fun exercises where you learn how to draw and create the style of the patterns. With this course the turn has come to the Indian floral pattern design, we will study the different styles of this pattern category and practice drawing motifs in the style. I'll show you my process on how to plan and assign an Indian floral pattern, how to create the motifs, a couple of different techniques to color them, and then how to assemble them into a repeat pattern in Adobe Illustrator. At the end of this course, you will have the knowledge and all the skills you need to create an Indian floral pattern of your own. Whether you're a beginner or on your way to pursue a dream to become a pattern designer or already practicing, I invite you to join me in class and add another piece to your pattern design education. 2. Welcome & class overview: Hi and welcome to class. I'm Belbel and I'm a pattern designer and illustration artists from Stockholm in Sweden. When it comes to pattern design, I'm self-taught. Besides learning the techniques on how to create patterns, I also wanted to get some more knowledge on the principles and world of pattern design. As a part of my personal patterns design education, I started to study classic pattern designs to see what I can learn from them. I discovered that this was a great way to develop my own design skills. Now I want to share what I have learned with others that want to learn more about pattern design too. That's why I started creating this series of skill share courses that I call Classic Pattern Designs. This course is the second in the series. If you haven't checked out my other courses, you can do that in my profile. In this course about Indian floral patterns, we will go through a few steps in order to get to know this pattern design and its different styles. Eventually start making our own patterns, which of course is also your class project. I have divided this course into four sections, and here is a brief overview of what you'll learn in each section. In the first section will have a theory lesson about the history behind the Indian floral where it came from and how it was introduced to Europe, and became the roar of the West parts of the world. You will also learn about the influences and circumstances that shape this pattern style. The second section is a study of the pattern itself, where we'll take a closer look at some different styles within this pattern category and what characterizes them. The typical motifs used with some examples, the composition, how the patterns are typically arranged and layed out, the colors and how they are used. The third section is about preparing to create our own Indian floral patterns with lessons on how to create authentic looking motifs with help of drawing exercises. How to plan your pattern, how to create an inspiration board and color palette. I will also show you some alternative ways to color your motifs. In the fourth section will start making our own patterns, first by making a rough draft of the repeat layout, including a really cool trick that I will show you. Then we'll do some drawing and creating our pattern elements and motifs, vectorizing by scanning and using the Live Trace tool in Adobe Illustrator, coloring the motifs using three different techniques and tools. The live Bucket Tool and the Brush Tools in Illustrator and will also give watercolor and wash and dry. Finally, will assemble the motifs into a repeat pattern using Adobe Illustrator and create the patterns watch. For a completed class project, You'll upload images and a brief description of you and your process, and the final repeat pattern in the project section of this class. To create your own Indian floral pattern, you will need some tools and materials. For inspiration you can use any image resource available to you, for example books ornflowers and trees and plants and ornaments is a good tip, or you can use your own images, or you can of course use digital sources like Google and Pinterest as references. When we start creating the motifs then you'll need sketching paper, pencils and fineliner or brush pen. If you don't want to color your motifs digitally, you will need watercolor paper, watercolor or gouache and brushes of course. To digitize our drawings we need a scanner or smartphone, or if you're working with an iPad Pro that's definitely a good tool too. Finally, you will need a computer. For the method I am teaching in this course, you will need Adobe Illustrator. You can definitely make a floral pattern repeat in photoshop as well. But that's not something I will touch on in this course. Now it's time for our history lesson. So join me for that in the next segment. 3. The History behind the pattern - Part 1: So let's begin with defining this specific pattern design and the different terms that are used when we speak about this category of patterns. By Indian floral, I'm referring to the floral or botanical patterns with these detailed, stylized, decorated and sometimes imaginary flowers and leaves. One term that is sometimes used in contexts of the Indian floral patterns is Indienne, which is French and means that what comes from India. Originally, it refers to a fabric with a printed and painted floral pattern that was produced in India and exported to France between the 17th and 18th centuries. Later on, Indienne became the term for any floral pattern either produced in India or in Europe. Indian fabric was mostly cotton, but could also be linen and even silk. Although cotton was the main material used and sought after in Europe during this time. Another name that were used for this type of pattern fabric was Toile peinte, which means painted cloth because the pattern was painted by hand right on top of the fabric, which could be cotton linen or a silk as well. Another name for an Indian floral textile is Chintz, and it's probably the most commonly used and known count for this type of pattern fabric. But, chintz is specifically a cup of fabric with a polished or glazed surface. So since Indienne, Toile Peinte, and Chintzs are names for different types of fabrics and textiles and not the pattern design itself. To avoid enemies conceptions, we use the term engine floral in this course when we refer to this pattern design style. But the story of the Indian floral patterns is tightly connected to these materials, to the printed cotton, which is the foundation for the spreading of this pattern style as well. So before we take a look at the pattern design itself, we have to know a bit more about these materials, and that's what will take a closer look at now. 4. The History behind the pattern - Part 2: - India has always been one of the largest producers of fabric in the world and especially of cotton, with traditions going back thousands of years, you can find references to spinning fibers into threads and weaving, already in the Vedic literature, a part of the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. And there was textile trading with cultures outside of Indian water's already in the early centuries and Middle Ages. For example, dyed Indian cotton textiles have been found in ancient Greece and Rome, and also in Medieval Tombs in Egypt. The first traces of woven cotton was found in the Indus Valley, dated to around 2500 to 2000 BC. It was dyed red, which shows that they had already knowledge of dying techniques using mordants, which are substances and chemicals that are used to fix the dye to the fibers of the fabric. Also, the growing of cottons and processing it into fabric evolved in different regions of ancient India, with hundreds of towns and villages, each gaining reputation for their own individual types of cotton breeds and fabrics that they produced with it. For example, cotton from the Eastern Bengal could be spun into this thinnest threads and made into the famous Dhaka Muslims the Deccan Plateau with its volcanic soil produced a very high quality cotton called regur. And all these different species of cotton grown in different regions would give a variety of colors of cotton too not just white but off white and yellowish, and pink and brownish. All Indian cotton was spun by hand using a drop spindle. And the spinning wheel was probably introduced to India first from Iran by the 13th century. And a little fun fact about Indian's born cotton, is that no matter where in India or when during history the cotton was produced, almost every hand spun thread was twisted in the same direction, which was anti-clockwise in a so-called Z-direction in opposition to clockwise twist, which is called the S-direction. And this, the direction of a spun thread, is the first thing you look at to identify the origins and provenance of a historic Indian cotton textile. So India and its different regions were known for their high quality cottons early on. Another skill that the Indian cotton fabric manufacturers were famous for was the dying processes and techniques that created these brightly, permanently color textiles that wouldn't fade when exposed to light or washed. 5. The History behind the pattern - Part 3: India has always been considered the masters of textiles guys. Even the word indigo derives from the name India. Before the invention of synthetic dyes, all colored cottons or other fabrics were dyes with natural dyes made from different sources of plants and insects and minerals. What's so amazing is how did the first Indian dyers discover how to transform these natural sources into dies that would permanently color fabrics. In general, natural dice are really difficult to make to last they easily fade. How they acquire this knowledge is really an enigma because it's not a simple process. For example, making the blue die of indigo leaves is quite a complicated process involving adding all things like lime wood ash, sugar, carbonate of soda, and carefully monitoring that temperature and levels of different chemical substances during the process, other dyes required fixing agents too called a Mordants to make the dye color fast. Mordants are metallic salts or acids of aluminum and iron for example. These are the materials that were used for the natural dyes. Blue dye was made out of a diverse range of plants. Among them the indigo plant, also different regions of India were famous for their specific blue colors. For example, fabrics from Pondicherry in South India was known and admired for their specifically vibrant blue colors. The European pigs style merchants and manufacturers couldn't understand how they made them look this way. They thought it was the water and the specific regions that was the secret behind it. Red dyes were made by three different plant groups, Indian madder, Indian mulberry, and chai. Then we have yellow dyes. Indian yellow dyes could be made of all kinds of plants, for example, pomegranates. The most popular and used plant was that turmeric. But yellow is a very troublesome color when it comes to natural dye. Although it can be found in thousands of plants all around the world, no natural permanent light, fast washable yellow dye has ever been discovered. Even if it's used with fixing processes and substances like mordants, it will eventually fade. Yellow dye was used though, but not as much as the more permanent colors like blue, red, brown, and black. To produce black or brown die, they use plants with a lot of tannin as Myrobalan, Pomegranate rind, Tamarisk berries, goals, and Acacia bark. To fix these dyes, use iron based Mordants, but there is a downside to this process because of the high levels of tannin in the dye, it gradually destroys the fabrics in the area where the black or brown dye has been applied. A trick that sometimes was used to work around this problem was to repeatedly dye the area with indigo instead, which made it appear black. With all these four colors, they were then able to combine them into other colors like greens and purples. Now a bit about the dying techniques. There is a wide range of techniques of dying depending on the deep core or patterns you want to accomplish. One technique is called Resist dying, which means that you shield the area of yarn or cloth that you don't want to dye by applying wax or gum to it or even tying the thread, dying it and then using it to weave the textiles. One of the most famous resist dying techniques using this thread tying technique is called Icat, Which creates that characteristic blurry pattern, also called Icat. Another common and old technique for transferring color and patterns to the cloth is by block printing. Luck printing involves a block of wood in which the pattern, or actually different parts of details of the pattern is carved in relief and then either applied directly on the block, repeatedly pressing into the cloth using directional marks and hitting it with a mallet to transform the die to the cloth and in that way, creating the seamless pattern. Or it's done by applying a mardent to the block and pressing that into the cloth first, then dipping the fabric into a dye bath and after rinsing and washing it, only the dye stays on the surface where the mardent was pressed onto the clock. Then this was repeated for each color and level of that pattern details in the more complex patterns. Then we have something called Kalamkari, which is a combination of block printing and resist dying to create really detailed and sophisticated pattern designs. When producing chins or the Indian floral patterns we're focusing on in this course, the colors were mostly apply to the cotton entirely by hand, by painting on it. Sometimes the outlines of the patterns could be done with block printing, but then only with the fugitive colorants, and that could be washed off. Then the colors were painted onto the fabric. Sometimes it was done as a combination of block printing and painting. Sometimes the outlines of the patterns could be done with block printing, but only with the fugitive colorants that could be washed off. Then the colors were painted onto the fabric using that block printed outlines as a guidance. There was even a profession for a painting fabric in the French fabric manufactures. These workers were mainly women and they apply the color to a block printed fabric with a brush. Actually, the famous French manufacturer Dharma, just outside of Paris. He had 570 of these women fabric painters employed in 1805. 6. The History behind the pattern - Part 4: These floral printed and painted comes from India. Were first introduced to France in the 16th century and became immensely popular among all levels of society. Just imagine how it was before. As a middle class woman, you would probably own just one or perhaps two dresses in black, or maybe brown. That's what you and your family could afford. You didn't want to wash it, ever, afraid of the color fading. Then imagine when the printed cottons became available. White, soft and light cloth, with vivid colors of red and blue, all filled with beautiful flowers, and you could afford it too, perhaps even a new dress once a year. It wasn't just beautiful and comfortable to wear, it could be washed without fading those beautiful colors. In fact, they got even more beautiful and softer the more you washed it. No wonder it became so popular and in demand. These Indian fabrics were imported by the French East India Company through Marce, and then made into dresses, robes, jackets, undergarments, upholstery, cushions, bedding and bed curtains. The company understood very soon the value of this new market and wanted to bring production to France with the advantage of skipping shipment and middle hands. Even the French manufacturers tried to ride the printed cotton away at and imitate these chances and Indian fabrics. The French East India Company send people to India to try to learn their dying techniques and there are a lot of documenting of the Indian processes of painting and dying and block printing during this time, but no one could figure out the secrets of creating those color fast textiles. Not even the best European chemists could produce these color fast dyes. It wasn't until the early 1800s that a scientific explanation to these Indian vivid and dye-fast colors was given. But, there was also a downside to this fabric revolution because the French manufacturers of wool and silk started to suffer because of the import of Indian cottons and the French production of imitations. It got so bad that they started complaining to the French government to stop the inflow of the Indian cottons. The same happened in other European countries. Soon, a series of legal acts came to first limit, and then totally ban the trade and consumption of Indian cotton cloth in an attempt to protect the domestic manufacturers. So imagine being a woman during this time, getting a taste for these fabulous fabrics that must have been a life changer for many, and once you have been given the chance to own and wear something like that, who would want to give it up? Well, people didn't. Despite the threats of being imprisoned, sent to the galleys, or even executed, they found other ways to make or smuggle these fabrics to satisfy the underground market. In France, the ban was finally lifted in 1759 impossible to reinforce. About the same time, a manuscript was published revealing the Indian secrets on how to create dye-fast colored fabrics. Now, the manufacturers jumped to the opportunity and the production of printed and painted cottons in Europe was ramped up being legal and all. Like always, they added their own ingenuity and knowledge to the processes and started to develop new, more effective and faster ways to produce the fabrics. The inventions and usage of new machinery like plate printing and roller printing resulted in new popular designs like the Bucolic romantic design we today refer to as Toile de Jouy. But the majority of printed cottons produced in European manufacturers in the 18th and 19th century was still floral patterns, block printed, painted, and resist-dyed. The popular Indian floral pattern designs with trailing branches, with exotic flowers, leaves, and fantastical creatures were also continuously used by the European manufacturers and created by their designers. These floral designs were very versatile to work with and easy to alter and vary in endless ways. The designers just have to change a few details here and there, rearrange some of the motifs and alter the color palette, and they had an entirely new design. It was quick, effective, and possible to produce in large quantities. This was the beginning of the industrial era. In the next segment, we're going to take a few steps back in history again and look at what influenced the Indian floral designs. 7. The History behind the pattern - Part 5: I've been really curious about the origins of the Indian floral design style. Where and when did this particular style emerge? It's not easy to find exact information or research about how this specific patterns, styles of the Indian florals evolved. But there are some indications that we can rely on. Well, first of all, motifs from nature like plants and flowers and animals are universal. It's something that mankind has depicted and used as declarations since the dawn of time. Of course, the Indian style has developed in their pool of different cultures and arts and religions over centuries, even millennias. The fact that there are estimated to be over 16,000 species of flowering plants in India, which constitute about six to seven percent of the total plant species in the world, you can understand why this has been a particularly important source for motifs in their arts and crafts. Also, when you look at some of the flowers growing in India, it's easy to understand how it went from naturalistic depictions to imaginary creations. Plants and animals are often a symbol for something; values, virtues, phases of life, and mythological aspects. So using a specific flower or plant in a piece of art had often more meaning and depth than just being a decoration. That piece of art conveyed a message too, telling a story. When we look at preserved antiqued Indian textiles that you can see at different museums and collections around the world, like this one from the Victorian Albert Museum in London, or this one from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or this one from the Karen Thacker collection, we can identify a couple of specific traits in the motifs that will give us a hint of one of the most important influences. For instance, all these patterns have trailing branches. It can be anything from chunky tree trunks to more delicate twigs and stems. Another typical trait is the variation of flowers. A real tree or a plant doesn't have five or six different species of flowers springing from their branches. It's a bit more organized and consistent than that. Besides leaves, the only variation in real plants that can be depicted is the different stages of budding, blossoming, bearing fruit, and perhaps also seed pods. But in the typical Indian floral, there can be a range of different flowers growing on the same branch and also depict all of these different phases at the same time. So it's imaginary and stylized in a very specific way. The reason is, of course, partly a decorative and artistic one, but there is also one thing that seemed to be a strong influence. Because there is a common motif that you often find in antique Indian textiles called palampores. A palampore is a bed cover or bed hanging that was an Indian product that initially was produced and exported to the Indonesian market, and then also found its way into the European parlors. For this type of product, a very popular motif was the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is a widespread, well-known theme and myth in most religions and philosophies around the world. From ancient cultures to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, but also in cultures on other continents like the Maya in South America. There are different theories of where the Tree of Life concept came from, but for example, Stephen Oppenheimer suggests that there was a tree worshiping culture in Indonesia around 8000 BC, which then spread to China, India, and the Middle East. The Tree of Life was a very commonly depicted motif in the arts from these societies. It was filled with symbolism for the different stages of life and the world we live in. For a palampores, the full motif of the Tree of Life would work well with a rocky ground and a complete tree crown. But for other products like upholstery, dresses, scarves, robes, and other textiles, the designs needed to be adapted to make sense and worked for the specific usage of the fabric. So the mountain tree trunk was skipped in some designs and only the trailing branches, flowers and leaves remained as decorations. The source of the Indian produce textiles and motifs were of course, the Indian flora, and it continued to be so for the European manufactured textiles too. But after a while when the taste for the Indian style declined, the designers started to produce patterns that were more Western in style, depicting flowers and plants from the European countrysides instead like roses, acorns, pansies, carnations and holly for example, but still somewhat with influences from the Indian style in the way they were drawn. But now it had evolved into its own style, much more romantic and rococo influenced. Let's take a closer look at the different styles we can find among these patterns. 8. Styles & Characteristics: Like I've mentioned before, these Indian printed and painted cottons were produced on mass. Even if a lot of the textiles haven't survived today, there are a lot of preserved examples to study in the collections of museums like the Victoria and Albert, for example. Besides preserved textiles environments, you can also find quite a lot of sketches and designs on paper by 18th century designers. This is a wonderful source for us pattern designers to learn from. In the about section of this class, I have some links to sites and museums and their archives where you can browse around to continue your own research and look at some amazing textiles and garments and design sketches. Not to make things too complex, I have divided the Indian floral patterns into two main categories. The first one, I call the Indian robust style. It's characterized by a thicker main tree branch with a structure of some kind. From this thinner and more delicate twigs and branches spring out. The flowers and leaves come in many variations, both large and small. They can vary in detail and complexity in the way they are drawn. Some being extremely detailed and some more simplified. Patterns within this style are quite dense in their layout and has more of a direction to it. The flowers are more of a stylized and imaginary nature and inspired by the Indian flora. The second style, I call the European delicate style. It's typical traits are thin, much more delicate branches, more like stems. Their layout is seemingly more tasks, so you can use it in any direction. The flowers are more conform, smaller in size, more realistic, yet combining different varieties and they're mainly inspired by a Western flora. The patterns are also more loose, not as tightly arranged, and gives more of an airy feel compared to the Indian robust style. Of course, there is a range of combination of these two styles, but at least it's an attempt to define some of the occurring characteristics. The fun thing about this and what also the 18th, 19th century designers experienced, is the diversity and versatility in this type of floral patterns and endless ways you can create these patterns. You can create a robust pattern, but loosely arranged. Or you can create a delicate pattern with imagined flowers. But the two styles I recognize here, can be a useful guide when you first start making your own Indian floral patterns. After you get the hang of it, you can use these characteristics in your own way and combinations. Speaking of characteristics, we're going to take a closer look at the most commonly used elements and motifs in the Indian floral patterns. 9. Motif elements: In the previous section, we already identified some of the typical elements or components in the Indian Floral Pattern designs. Let's call them motif categories. There were branches, flowers, leaves, berries and fruits, and in some designs, animals and insects were also included. Let's take a closer look at the different and commonly occurring versions within each motif category. Let's start with the branches because they are the backbone of the design where the other components are attached, especially for the Robust Indian style. There are strong and thick branches like this one from the Victoria and Albert Museum Collections and almost trunk like branch with rough bark. Perhaps, an Indian banyan tree, which is a type of fig tree that was quite popular motif and today is also the national tree of India. Other patterns have branches somewhere in between in size like this one with similarities to Bamboo from the Manchester City Galleries Collections. Here's another one from the V&A, filled with winding, even sized stems. Here we see examples of thin yet colored branches combined with stem-like twigs drawn with just a black line. The focal points of the patterns were of course the flowers, and they varied also in dimension and complexity and they were depicted in all stages of their life-cycle, from buds to fruits and seeds. The most simple ones serving as fillers and compliments, just as the small leaves could look like this. A stylized small, basal-like flower, either depicted from the side or above with pointy or rounded petals. A more elaborated version of that one, and also a very commonly used assigned is a star-shaped flower, either with straight or wadi pointed petals, just clean design or with details of shading and highlights. Here are some examples of larger flowers, also very commonly used shapes. In the Indian robust styled patterns the larger flowers where complex in their designs, built with layers of petals and varying shapes and colors, and with stylized sepals, nerves and statements. Some typically western flowers were roses, passes, tulips, and carnations for example. Let's take a look at some examples of leaves. There is a wide range of leaves in different dimensions, complexity and detail. Everything from this simple one to this imaginative and Sanchez design and here are some reoccurring shapes. Basic, simple shapes with one or two leaves on a little twig or a few gathered on a stem. Oblong and narrow and a wavy with an even edge and a version of that same one with the prickly edge. Here's a wider one without blind nerves and of course this one very typical. The prickly edges and with the center of one or two inner leaves. This one could be varied to include just one point or three points. Then we have an elaboration of that one with a more complex design including several inner leaves, building a cluster. Some more exotic leaf shapes is resembled pointy, almost poetry looking leaves like this, which in combination with these small firms shaped leaves, gives a very distinct and decorative impression. The small leaves were perfect and very useful elements to fill the pattern and create an even and harmonic impression. Commonly depicted fruits were grapes, pomegranates, and small berries. To top it all off, I'm going to show you a couple of examples of animals and insects too. One last element I'd like to mention is the background filler. Most of the Indians have a white or off-white background. Some examples of colored backgrounds exists as well, but in some of the most interesting patterns, the spaces between the branches and florals have been filled with non-figurative lines and dots and other shapes. In the next segment, we'll talk more about the colors. 10. Color: Welcome back. We have already touched upon the dyes and dyeing techniques used for the Indian florals and how these natural substances and moderns from the colors of these fabrics. There was indigo blue of different tones with repeated dying. We have red that could be varied by repeated dying and depending on what mortars were used. Then we had yellow, which was quite a fugitive dye. Finally, we have black and brown dyes. To create green colorings they would apply yellow on top of blue. Another color we can notice is purple, which might have been a mix of indigo and red dye. There you have the typical Indian floral color pallet and it's quite extensive. They could make all tones and shades of blue, red, yellow, black, brown, green and purple and orange. Even though the color is accomplished with natural dyes can be strong and vivid. If you want to create an authentic looking Indian floral, you should consider to use a more subdued and washed-out color palette. Most Indian florals have a white or rather off-white background, which of course comes from the cotton fabric which it was printed on. But some fabrics were dyed to have a blue, or green, or red, or yellow background. The outlines of the motifs were mostly made with black or brown color or even dark red. That was a bit about the used color palette for the Indian floral patterns. In the next segment, the turn has come to analyze how the patterns were constructed and arranged. I'll see you there. 11. Composition: When it comes to Indian floral patterns, the variations are endless. But let's define and conceptualize this with some Layout examples and let's start off with a sparse layout with this one and this is a great example of an Indian floral pattern of the European delicate style. The motifs are placed quite far apart. There is a lot of space in between them and this gives it a very light and airy impression and this was perfect for dress fabric and other garments. Then we have the opposite to this and that's of course, a dense layout and here is a great example of a dense layout. This is where the motifs are packed much closely together. There is much less space in between the different motifs. Next is some different repeat versions I would like to share with you and if you are acquainted and know a bit about the pattern design already, this is something that you already have, I guess, but let's look at them from an Indian floral point of view. My own repeat, I mean, how the motifs are placed and arranged to create the pattern box that can then be infinitely repeated. Here is an example of a simple, or actually it's called a straight repeat. For this one, the motifs are arranged in a box, which then is repeated straight, horizontally and vertically. Another repeat version is the half drop, where the pattern box is repeated straight vertically, but horizontally it's been offset by 1.5 of the distance of the repeat box. A version of the half drop is a bricked Layout. It's the same principle as a half dropped, but on the other direction, like this one, where the repeat is not offset horizontally, but half the distance vertically instead. Then we have directional design or non-directional. A directional design is where the motif is to be viewed from a specific direction. It can't be turned from different sides and then there is the tossed design, which is where the motifs are arranged so that they're rotated in many directions and therefore they can be viewed from any direction. Then we come to another variable, which is complexity of the design. Because a repeat can be simple, like this one, which means that there are not many different motifs that varies within the repeat. Or it can be complex, like this one with many different motifs. But when it comes to Indian floral designs, it's fair to say that they are all complex to some extent and a simple repeat is often small in scale, while a complex one can be of a larger scale. There are some design sketches to be found in collections and museums where you can see how the artist has constructed the repeat to create a design with exquisite harmony and flow, depending on the complexity and variation. The winding branches for mostly outlined in black or brown and depending on the style and thickness painted with one or several colors. The branches were often made in similar fashion, one stem splitting into two branches, which in turn then are divided into several and smaller twigs and stems to where the flowers and leaves are attached. This so-called tree crown design also makes for an even and harmonic layout that will work for the repeat, either a straight or a half drop or tile layout. From the branches, the range of flowers, bugs and leaves for printed or painted or both and an evenly spread layout, filling the areas in between the branches. For a sparse layout, the flowers and leaves would be more gathered and even clustered closer to the branches and with a dense layout, they were spread out, reaching further outside of the original branches to create an even pattern. The flowers are varied with big and smaller scales, simpler and more complex designs and also notice how the designers use different shapes to create a specific impression of the patterns, like sharp pointy shapes in the leaves and pedals or rounded lobate pedals and leaves. The motifs are typically not overlapping each other very much, especially not the flowers, thinner twigs and branches can cross over each other once in a while and a leaf can be tucked away behind a stem or branch. But the overall impression has to be even and somewhat airy, varied, yet sorted in a opposition too messy and chaotic. Here's a summary of these variables. An Indian floral pattern can have a sparse or dense layout. It can be straight, repeated or in a half drop or in a brick repeat. It can be directional or tossed with when it comes to how the motifs are arranged and it can be as Simple arrangement, which is very common for smaller repeats. Or it can have more of a complex arrangement, which is common for a large repeat. Now we know a bit more about the motifs and composition, so now it's time to start preparing to create our own Indian floral patterns. 12. Indian floral drawing techniques: Before we start with the actual exercises of drawing flowers and leaves, I would like to start off with some techniques that I have found are very helpful for creating as authentic looking motifs as possible. You can draw them motifs in your own style, of course, but this is a great way to expand on your drawing style too. The Indian floral patterns are all drawn by hand, with a pen or a brush on cloth. These circumstances must have affected the way that the lines are made. The surface of the cloth is very specific to draw or paint on. There is a different friction and resistance to consider than drawing on a paper. You would probably have to draw or paint just a little bit at a time and with a lot of control very carefully. First, they made some guiding outlines. That was to be washed away afterwards. They made that with either some kind of pen or by block printing. Then they painted on top of these with a brush or a kalam, that specific pen made of bamboo. We will apply the same principle. First, we'll sketch the outlines with a pencil, and then we'll fill in the contours with a fine liner of some kind or a brush pen. Or you can use a pen that you dip in ink too if you want to be really hardcore authentic. What we want to do is to create an a similar impression of the lines and brushstrokes as the Indian or European 18th century designers made theirs. To do that, we can draw our motifs in a specific way. First, when I make the lines and contours, I do it in different steps instead of just one stroke. I divide my lines into several lines, lifting the pencil after every stretch, or at least stopping to take new aim. It's also easier to get a better control of your line by turning the paper when necessary. Sometimes it's difficult to get that exact line with a certain angle of your wrist, especially when you make a bit longer lines and strokes. If I want to draw a petal, for example, I divide the outlines into two strokes. I also found that it often creates a better stroke if I make them from the same direction, like this. Because if you make the whole outline of the petal or whatever the motif is in one single stroke, you won't get that delicate and artistic look to it with that little extra flare, if you know what I mean. Instead, you'll get a quiet even and harsh contour. For this you want that visible trace of a hand made line. That effect will diminish a little bit when we trace it later in Illustrator, but it will still look more hand drawn this way. Also observe with the Indian floral motifs that the lines are almost never straight or symmetrical. They always have that little extra embellishment in the end. Practice this a few times. See how many different lines of embellishment and squiggles you can make and do a number of petals or leaves to get the hang of it. Secondly, when it comes to sketching the motifs, I use a principle that we can call taking a bearing or setting a direction is perhaps a better description. Let me show you what I mean by not taking my bearing first. If I want to make a flower, for example, I can draw it something like this. It can be as good as it is, quite simple and it's execution and composition. I would call it a pretty straightforward looking flower. But if I want to give it a bit more of a sophisticated and embellished look. I want the petals to be more irregular and perhaps make it from a specific angle instead. To do that, a trick is to set a direction first. I'll do that by making some really loose lines that will guide me to how I want the angles and curves of the petals. I'll start with the small inner petals first and just make some guiding lines like this to mark where I want the petals to start and end, and how big they will be. Then use those guiding lines to shape the petals. Because then I can concentrate on creating those swift, artistic, beautiful lines instead of bothering about how and where to place them. Then I want bigger, longer outer petals emerging from this little center down below. Now, I know where I want them and the direction of them. Now I can start making those beautiful outlines. That guiding directional lines are helping me to shape and place the petals easier. Also remember that engine floral patterns can tap enough of embellishments and flourish. Whenever you make a petal or a leaf or a stem or something, always make that extra little curve or bent ending and that will help you getting that sophisticated look. 13. Exercise 1 - Leaves: Welcome to the first real exercise, in the previous lesson, we practice the technique by drawing some simple leaves, which is a good start as a warm up, and as we go through the different exercises and motif categories or ramp up the complexity. But we'll start out with these simple leaves again, if you didn't do them before. Here's a very straightforward one, almost symmetrical, then we'll have another one. Start with that simple curve like this, and then on the other side, make the stroke like an S-shape, and now we're just molding the shapes so you can sketch a way with a few lines to find that shape that you like, because it's really when we come in with ink that we'll want to use those confident and sophisticated strokes that we have practiced before. These pencil lines are only to guide us then. But I like to use this technique when sketching too, because it also affects the shape I think. Here's another one. Start with the same simple curve, and on the other side you do a wave-like stroke to create a new type of shape, and then we can make a double or even triple leaf if we want to. Next, let's make a slightly more complex one. This is going to be a more oblong leaf. Start with a directional line, taking your bearing by drawing this wavelike line, which will guide us when we continue with this shape of the leaf and its edges, and another one with even more waves. Now, let's make an even more complex one, an oblong but bent leaf. First make a directional line to capture the curve, and then another directional line to guide the shape of the leaf, because I want to have that wavy shape again, and then you can easily follow these lines to create the shape. Here are a couple of other bent leaves, a bit more simple but so decorative, and add that extra little embellishment and flair to it. Here's another type of leaf. Very simple, but decorative with several nerves going this way, and this is a good start for the next step, because another very sophisticated detail is a twisted leaf where you'll get a glimpse of the underside to. Then you will start off with a curved S-shaped directional line, and this will also be the center or nerve of the leaf. Then you start at the end on one side of the line, and in the middle somewhere you cross it and continue on the other side to the other end. Then you do the same thing on the opposite, so they will meet or cross each other in the middle. Then you can do the same thing but even more complex by crossing the middle line two or even three times, creating the effect of a twisted and frilly leaf. Next is how to make a perfect prickly leaf, and start by sketching a simple leaf shape, and then with one stroke at a time, lifting the pencil in between each stoke, make the prickles following the guiding shape. Try to make one with a bit more wavy prickles where you make every stroke more in an S-shape, and a great tip is to start with a little top of each prickle so you know where it's going to start and end, and then go in with a side stroke. That way you'll get more control of how to distribute strokes and prickles, and then you can choose to either leave them like this, or if you want to embellish them even more with an inner leaf to. Now move on to another leaf type, a more of a fern shaped leaf or a stem with several leaves, and start with a directional line that's a bit curved like this, and this will also be the stem. Then from that, you draw smaller directional S-shaped lines to guide where the little leaves will be attached to the stem, and also the direction of the shape of the leaves. In this specific style, these lines will also be one side of each leaf, the backbone of the leaf, and then you draw the other side of each leaf using the same S-shaped to create a decorative look to them. A version of that one is with a different shape of the leaves, and here with just a simple C-shaped curve to one side of each leaf, and then either do the same for the other side, or combined with an S-shape for variation. Here is another example how you can make a multiple leaf with more embellishments and details. First, make leaves that's a bit thicker and larger on a stem like that, and then add inner leaves and prickly edges. Now you can start elaborating this type of leaves endlessly and make more and more complex styles, and here's one example. Start with a directional middle line, and then draw small leaf shapes climbing that guideline in a row with one sticking out from the other end so on. Then from that you add larger leaves on the sides. Here's another example of variation of that one, where you attach an upside down drop shape on the line, and then from those you draw leaves on both sides. This illustrates the principle of creating complex motifs in the Indians floral style, because you always start with a small shape, and then you build on that in levels going outwards and also adding more details inside those shapes. The only trouble here is actually to know when to stop because that's quite difficult once you get started. Then when you have your sketches ready, it's time to outline and fill them in with ink. For this, you can use a fine liner or like this one, a favorite of mine, a brush pen, because this will mimic the brush strokes that you can find on the Indian floral patterns. It's possible to vary the thickness of the strokes in the beginning and the end of each stroke, but use a thin brush pen, that's a tip. Now it's time to really use that swift and one stroke at a time technique that I showed you in the previous section, and lifting the pen in between to get that brushstroke style to the lines and get that control on each stroke. Now go ahead and practice filling in those sketches and see if you can also vary the strokes by changing directions, turn the paper, and use different pressure of the pen. Also I want to challenge you, because now you can experiment with the guiding lines that you have made by developing those lines and edges of the leaf shapes. Use the pencil sketching lines as guides, and vary the look and texture of the leaf edges, making them prickly and wavy with frills, to make them come to life even more adding extra embellishment and flourish, and the only limitation here is your imagination. Just go nuts and see what you can create. Now that you're down with leaves, let's move onto the next exercise and motif category, which is the flowers. 14. Exercise 2 - Simple flowers: The first flowers I want you to practice doing is, of course, the most simple ones and then we'll build from that. The first one is almost like a leaf, very simple. You can do this with or without directional lines, but I don't think you need it for this particular one, so just go freehand. This one has three petals and a little stem. It's a flower that is viewed from the side, perhaps a little stylized daisy. You can make this as a bad too with only one little shape and stem, very simple. But useful as a filler or to build on another note if later on. Then we'll make that same type, but the full flower like viewed from above. So go ahead and make a few of these, if you can vary them in different ways with more petals, thinner or thicker, longer or shorter. A version of this one is to use the S-shaped stroke for one side of the petals like this. Here's another one where you start with a little center, a circle, and then attach the three petals to that. Again, here's that principle of starting out with a small shape that's within build on. Make a few of these and then we'll fill them in with ink. You can use a fine liner. I recommend to use small nibs in that case, a 0.2 or 0.5 is what I often use. But I want to mimic the brushes or ink pens used for the Indian floral, so I'll go with my brush pen, also with a quite small nib. When you start, go really carefully from one end to the other in one swift stroke, where you put a bit more pressure in the beginning and then release it in the end. When you inked the contours, you can add some details or stylized shading to give them more depth and character. This is a typical way to do that in the 18th century style. Be very swift, making these light handed and thin, release at the end to make them thinner and like a brushstroke. Now we're going to step it up a bit and do a slightly more complex flower. Start with a little center, a circle, and then make five S-shaped directional lines and a star shape like this. See if you can distribute them fairly even. If you feel that it's difficult to get the S lines like this, then turn to page for every line and it will be a bit easier. Then you complete every petal by drawing from the tip of every particle in a C-shaped line towards the center, but not all the way into the center. Stop and meet up with the next S line. Make a few of these, experiment with the thickness and length of the petals, the curves, and the shapes, then fill them in. Now, I'll use that fine liner just to show you the different effects these pens will give you. When you have the contours, you can add some shading and texture on these ones too. Add some details if you feel like it. The next flower we'll make is also a very simple but frequently used flower in the Indian floral patterns. It's used as a filler or to embellish other motive arrangements. This is, again, not like flowers shaped, with a little circle center and then petals drawn a bit away from that like this. Because then we add some details in the middle surrounding this circle, like this. One version of this one is just this stereotype flower with center and petals, but add some shading lines. Here's another one. Start with the circle and then make almost heart-shaped petals. You can vary these ones by making the petals with more curves, wider, and with more petals and then go fill them in. They might seem way too simple at this point. But when we color them, we can add even more details and shade, but then we don't necessarily want to have contour surrounding those details. Now to another flower type, also a bit stereotype and classic, but so decorated and I think it could be a very stylized carnation or similar. I'm making this free hand, but a tip is to make those directional lines first by drawing the sides of the petals and then add the prickly edge on top and then go fill them in and finish it off with some shading lines at the center. Now let's continue with a stylized carnation-like flower, but now viewed from the side. As always, draw something to start with to build on. I'll make this little bell or crown shape that the petals will emerge from and then you make the same type of petals as before with straight sides and prickly endings. Also use directional lines if you need to find the right bend or curve on each petal. Then build another layer of petals sticking out from behind and you can also make ones with even more layers to if you want to. Also, add a bit of stem so that you have something to attach this flower to when you want to build your pattern and stick it to a thicker branch later on perhaps and then fill it in and finish with shading lines on every petal. For a final touch, you can give it some extra detail and texture like this. Now we have practiced to make some smaller and simpler flowers to warm us up because in the next exercise, we're going to make some bigger and more complex ones. So I'll see you there. 15. Exercise 3 - Complex flowers: Welcome to exercise three, where we'll be making some bigger and more complex Indian floral flowers, and this is my absolute favorite motif category. It's almost like doodling. Because the principle of starting out with a small shape to build on, is going to be stretched to its limit here. Well, actually, the limit is our imagination. I'm going to show you some examples of different types of bigger and more complex flowers that are quite typical and frequently occurring in the Indian floral, but there are so many different types of flowers and a combinations of these. You should consider these exercises as a starting point and then go ahead and create flowers from your imagination, and flowers that you like and inspire you. Let's get started with making an imaginary tulip. This time, I'm starting with a bigger shape or a line that I will build on. This is the shape of the bell of the tulip with some flourish on the sides, and then I'll make some directional lines for the shape of one of the main petals like this, and on the other side. Now, I'm going to start building on this, adding some shapes inside and some details. I want even more details. I'll make this outline here with some frills. Another principle is to work with layers. Layers and layers of petals and details. Now I need something in the middle. Something sticking out in between the petals, and I'll make some seed pod looking shapes and some statements. As you can see, this isn't really a tulip but perhaps a tulip shaped inspired flower. Here's another tulip inspired flower. I'll start with a basic shape and then build on that. Making strange and stylized petals I think. They're bulgy a little bit and frilly. First, I'm working with directional lines and shapes that I then use to go in and make more details, and this is a great way to work, at least for me, those larger, rough shapes and lines will trigger ideas and ways to embellish them when you have them down on the paper, instead of making the details right away, and this is how I often work when creating motifs and illustrations. I take the bearing first, and then focus more on the smaller steps as I go. Another tip for petals, make them irregular and overlapping once in a while. Like here, I'm creating little holes and gaps in between, and this makes them more organic and real looking even though they are far from real. I'm adding some frills here to the edges, and some shading lines to create texture and depth. Now, I'll build on this as a starting point with more petals, making it really rush and full. Here are a couple of tulip shaped imaginary flowers, a bit more complex, but really easy to make when you divide the sketching into steps like this, and when you are pleased with your sketch, go ahead and fill in those lines with ink, and with the pen, you can now refine and alter their contours if you come up with new ideas or improvements as you go, and also see if you can vary the look of the lines and contours. For example, you can, instead of a solid line, make little dots or fringes like little lashes or hairs, and when you create your outlines, imagine that you are drawing or painting on cloth, with a pen or a brush that you have to dip in ink once in a while. Your strokes can't be very long or it will run out of ink. You have to divide your strokes into shorter ones, and this, should also feature the look of your motif. Here's another tulip a bit more realistic in its execution and not as imaginary, yet still detailed and something that could be useful in a more European delicate styled floral, for example. Start with one petal, and then just build more on that. Then go in and elaborate on those edges and contours. I'm making mine prickly, but it could also be with fringes or rounded frills, and here is the inked result with some textural and shading lines as well. These flowers were a bit European, delicate, influenced in their style. But now I'd like to show you some flowers with more influence from the Indian flora. First, I want to show you some great starting points for these Indian styled flowers. You know, those little shapes to start out with when you build your flower. You can begin with something as simple as a little circle or an ellipse, and then you attach some petals or another shape like this, and then you continue to build on them. Another starting point is an upside down drop shape, and then add a couple of more on each side and then add some petals in another shape, and yes, that's also a nice trick. You start out with one shape, and then make the next one and another shape so that you create a variation, and also vary small with bigger, straight with curves, sharp with rounded. Here's a pointed leaf like starting point as a little lotus perhaps, and this is a very commonly used floral shape. A bit more complex starting point is this one, like a multi-rounded petal, and then you stick a couple of more behind that one, and then you have something like a budding flower. Or, you can add longer bent petals for another shape. Or, this one that we did for the carnations before, remember? Here's a drop with another one inside it. What you can do now is to experiment with some small starting points, and it's actually great to have a little menu of these ones when you start making your flowers. You have something to pick and choose from, and now I'll show you a flower that can be altered in many different ways. It starts with a little bowl-like center. Make a wide u like this, and then add some irregular petal on top of it. Then complete it with a couple of petals sticking out behind it and there is your bowl. From this one, I can attach different types of petals a bit apart like this, or tider and wider like a rose, like this one, or you can make a mix of these ones with many layers and varying shapes. 16. Exercise 3 - Complex flowers - continued: Now let's make an Indian flower with more layers and components and shapes built on each other. Start off with a wide U-shape like this, and some rounded frills to make a stylized starting peddle. Then two more similarly shaped pedals sticking out from behind it and you can add some more details to this budding center. Like these are rounded beads shapes., and I'm adding two more larger pedals behind it. Then some more on the sides and the front to create the impression of blossoming petals, and I'm building on the first pedals on adding more as I feel like it. Now create a bit of variation by making to bent petals like this and in between them add some more of those small rounded beads. Then finish it with a couple of stamens. Now, I have filled in all the lines I wanted and made some shading lines as well. Here's another flower to practice with. Make a larger pedal shape, which is actually a few petals together that are connected as one, and this will be our starting point. Then add some rounded bulges on top of it, like inside it, and sketch a couple of lotus shaped petals on the sides, and then two more on top of them, leaving a gap in between. There you add some more of those bulges like a cluster of berries or grapes, then you can add some more smaller petals here and there, or perhaps even surrounding the whole flower, and you can do several layers of these two. Then go ahead and fill it in and I will keep this one simple too, and save the fun and embellishing details to what I'm going to add the color. Here's another flowers starting with a little gathering of pedals as starting point, and then adding some Oblong petals or leaves in varying shapes on top of it. Then add some more details and shapes here and there to make it more interesting and not so symmetric, and when I have filled in the contours, I'm adding some new details like these nerves and observe that I'm making sure that they are not attached to the flower contours. Because when we vectorize these sketches later and edit them in Illustrator, I want to be able to color them or recolor them in another color than the outlines and to do that, it's better to have them separated. Now let's make a bit more advanced flower. This one is going to have a tilt and also a stylized stamen. Make a few petals to start with. Then we make this trunk like stamen emerging from this, and in the end, some pistols or something in different shapes, you can vary them some. After that adds some more petals that will surround this stamen, creating a bit of depth to the flower and really bringing out that tilting angle. Now we're going to add some larger petals from the center. It's going to be like an Lilies or Lily like flower. Just make some sketching, guiding lines for these large pedals and make them all the way around and vary the shape of the pedals a bit too. Now go into each pedal to give the edges some more character and it can be prickles or frills or fringes even, and also in some places, make an additional line inside the first contour as if the edge is bent and showing the underside of the pedal and see if you can make the edges of the petals as irregular as possible, and because in the end, this will give it a very sophisticated and detailed look. On this pedal I'm going to give it a flat tip. I'm making another bent edge here and there where you can see the underside of the pedal peeking through. Then I'll give it a bit of a frilly edge as well. Then you can give it some texture by adding nerves, for example. When you fill it in, you can add even more embellishment to the strokes and to the surface, so more lines inside of it that could be shading or a texture. Now let's make another style of a flower and for this one, we're not going to make it as viewed from an angle or tilted like the one before. It will be more of a flower viewed from the front, and also we're going to practice that principle of variation to vary both shapes and size pointing and rounded, small and large. I started with making these three upside down drop shaped pedals or sepals. Then I add a larger fan-shaped behind that. First, with just some guiding lines and then I add some detail to the contours. Make a pretty thick stem. It's robust flower. Then some sepals. Then add some smaller shaped pointy petals and another line or layer. Then it's time for larger shapes again. I'm starting with some guiding lines for the right direction, and this flower is also quite symmetrical compared to the one before. Then I complete the guiding lines and the large petals. Then I make some more details with some shapes inside these large petals. As you can see, I left this gap in between the middle on purpose because here I'll make some of those very looking details again. Then on top of those, some more petals or something. Then you can elaborate on this as much as you want, making it more and more detailed and bigger and bigger. Then go ahead and fill it in and add some more texture and details if you want to. I'm going to give you one last flower to practice with and it's a real classic Indian flora one, which could be a very stylized dalia or something similar. Start out with an upside down drop again, add one more on each side, and you can add a couple of sepals too then add some more on top of these drops to elaborate our starting point. Then on top of this sketch layer after layer of rounded petals until you have a ball of petals like this, and finish off with a fixed step. Then go ahead and ink it. You can add some details and embellishments too if you feel like it or just save it for the coloring face. This was a whole bunch of flower exercises and I hope you had fun with them. 17. Exercise 4 - Branches: In this lesson, we're going to practice drawing some different types of branches, and the branches of an Indian floral pattern is probably one of the most important components. It's the backbone of the pattern. It's the carrier of all the other motifs and in that sense, I think it's also one of the most difficult parts of this pattern style. Because it's how well we distribute the branches that will make the overall impression harmonic or not. Indian florals often make pretty large repeats too. The long and winding branches that sometimes cross over each other and this demands some layout planning to get it right. I have found that it's a bit easier to create some parts of the branches in smaller bits. Let's call it branch modules, because that allows us later to use them as building blocks when we build the pattern in the computer. I will show you a nice trick for planning the branches and the overall layout in the coming lesson. But now, let's get to the drawing exercises first. We've already touched on the different types of branches. Larger or thicker ones, medium, and smaller or thinner. You use these separately or in combination depending on your design. Let's start and take a look at how to make bigger branches first. The first step is to make some directional lines for how the branch will spread out. Start with a main branch and make some bends. A good rule is to start with a split branch, then add at least a couple of side branches. When you are pleased with the layout of the branch, start drawing the contours, and now you can make it smooth and clean, or you can make it a bit junkie and uneven. Now that we have our contours, we can either just keep it this way and later give it some color with the contours or just solid. Or we can add some texture and character to it. Here are some examples of that that you can practice drawing too. One of the most simple textures is to make these parallel hatching lines to one side of the branch, and this will give it an impression of shade and roundness. Another is to give it a rougher surface, like some bark with lines going along the length of the branch. Or you can use other varying lines and cover it with frills and curves like this branch in this pattern. Now, if you'd like to, go ahead and practice drawing these three types of big branches. The first one would be parallel hatching lines to create the impression of shade and roundness and the second one has lines following the length of the branch instead, to create the impression of some bark, and the third one, where you will draw some more varied and squiggly lines and frills. Another way to give the branch some character is to mimic a specific type of tree. Here is an example that is supposed to be bamboo looking branch. First make the directional lines and some rough outlines. Bamboo has a quite characteristic look to it. It's divided into sections and you can create this impression in different ways. One is to make these simple sections and then you can add some texture. Another way to draw the sections could be like this, and a third way to create the impression of bamboo is to make these little spiky shapes evenly spread out on the branches and then we will have the bamboo sections in between. You can absolutely shading lines. If you want to try drawing some bamboo branches too, you can try these three. This first one with some simple sections with a slightly rounded middle and narrowing ends, and this second one with a more triangular shape to it, and here I added some embellishment in the middle of section, and the third one with a spiky details dividing the branch into its bamboo like sections. The medium-sized branches you draw it with this same principle, really. Just make them a bit more narrow and slender. The medium-size branches are often just outline and with a fill color. But there are some fun examples of how to give it some extra texture and character too. One Is really simple, and that is to make the outline to one side of the branch a bit thicker than the other one and this will create a stylized impression of shade. Then you can of course, use the same way as we did for the big branch with hatching lines like this. Another way to give the branches a decorative touch is by making squiggly lines or other figures along the branches. Or you can add dots and circles like this. Also remember that you can add texture and details in the coloring face too. You don't have to draw them or ink them because you might not want to have the outlines in your details. You just create them with different colors. Now, you try. Make some winding, medium-sized branches. First, use the directional lines and then add contours. Then for the first branch, when you fill it in with ink, give it a thicker contour on one side. For the second one, you'll give a bit of a shade with some neat and even parallel lines and you can also make them a bit more sophisticated by making every second line a bit shorter. With the third branch, add some fun and imaginative texture. Try some different ones and see what you can come up with. Small-sized branches are really just a line, a thin line, or a bit thicker. Or you can combine them or vary them. Here are some examples that you can practice drawing, make some simple but winding branches, splitting in two or three separate branches. Or you can make it a bit more complex and detailed. You can even create the foundation for a cluster of motif to be used in the pattern like I did for this pattern. For this particular one, I actually created the thin branches in modules, arranging them when building the pattern. But you could definitely make this arrangement from the start in your initial sketch. Then you can create some small branches that could be used as fillers or parts of the modules. This was the last exercise and now we're going to go to the next step, a very important and crucial one from making an Indian floral pattern, which is planning your pattern. I'll see you in the next lesson. 18. Planning your pattern: When you create an Indian floral styled pattern, you can, of course, SketchUp the motifs and the pattern from the top of your mind as you go. But I have discovered that it becomes a lot easier if you do a little planning first. Start out with giving some thought to what kind of style you want for your pattern. Now you can use those two categories that I defined earlier to guide you through the specific variables to consider. Do you want a version of the Indian robust style, which is more directional and with thicker main branches, and exotic Indian and more complex focal florals. Or do you want something more towards the European delicate style, with an hairy and spherical feeling to it, and with thinner and more evenly spread branches. After looking at some of the patterns I've shown you, or other Indian florals you've come across. What are the elements that caught your eye? The next decision to make is to define what type of flora you want to incorporate. Do you want a traditional Indian or European? Or do you perhaps want to do an adaptation with your own version like the Hawaiian flora, Australian or a Nordic flora, perhaps used the flora where you live. It's time to gather inspiration and source materials. Find some images of old patterns, or plans or get some real plans to inspire you and draw from. When you have collected a bunch of inspirational images or perhaps flowers, collect your source material into a folder on your computer. The next step in the planning process is to create an inspiration board. I always use Illustrator when I create my inspiration, or a mood boards because I just find it easy to work with. Open a new document, as you can see my interfaces in Swedish, but I'll try to translate this for you when necessary. I usually go with an A3 or something. Now, I'll go back to my folder where I saved all my inspiration images, and just select them and pull them into the Illustrator document. Here I have arranged all my images into the art board and all these decisions that you've made so far, can also reflect the color palette you want to use. If you're looking for a traditional 18th century style pattern, you should use the traditional Indian style colors we talked about in the previous lessons. Those washed out fading colors. Or if you want to make something more contemporary, you can experiment with colors and more, and find them from other directions. It can be just colors that you like, your favorite colors or colors you've been working with for a collection. Where you want to perhaps include this pattern. Or just pull colors from a photograph that you like. Now there is something that we have to consider when we create our color palette, because we want to mimic this painted look that you get in an Indian floral. What we're going to need is to have three different tones of each color that we want to include. First of all, let's create some empty squares that we then, we'll fill with our colors. We are going to have a mid tone, a darker tone, and a brighter tone, a lighter tone. We can also duplicate it once more if we want to have two lighter shades. Now we have this, let's say I want to have a red and a green and a blue color in my pattern. Then I need one of these rows for each color. Then I want to duplicate this row a couple of times more, for as many colors as I am going to need. Make a few rows like this, and now we're going to pull in some colors into these squares. One good thing is to start with the mid tone first, so I will select this one. This is the row for mid tones, let's say. Now I can use a photograph, for example, to pick a color, or I can use a color panel, and then I can just click around and find something that I like. Or as I said, I could go in and pick a color from any photograph. I select the rectangle where I want to place my color, and go to the eyedropper tool or we press "I " on your keyboard. Now I can go in, in a photograph and see if I can find a color that I like. What I can do is to color all of my colors the same way for this row. Now I want to find a darker tone within the same color range as this mid tone. Here I want to have my dark colors in this row. I select this one, then go to the Fill Color and double-click. Here I can find a darker version of this one and just see if you can find something that will work. I'll just have this one, and then I can do the same thing to find lighter tones. I think that's going to be pretty nice, maybe a little bit darker, so that when I make my shades and fadings later when I color, I can do it in different steps, so this one, actually I think is going to be a bit brighter like that. Then I want to select this one, and this one is going to be really, really bright, almost white, something like that. Now I have a range of colors. Then when I go in and color my flowers, I can use the mid tone for the strongest color. Then where I want highlights, I can use the lighter ones, and where I want shades or contours, I can use the darker tone. I actually have two mid tones, one light and one darker. Here I have picked a few colors for my color palette. Range of red tones, some blue tones, some green tones, and dark earth color, and also two off whites. To get them into my swatches panel, I want to first remove some of these standard colors that I'm not going to use. Now I can create my unique colors swatch group. Select all of the colors that I have picked out. Click on the little folder icon, which is to create a new color group. Then I can name it Skillshare test, and click, "Okay." Then it will appear in my swatches panel. Another way to find colors for your pattern is to use a Pantone color book, which is what I'm going to do for my pattern. I have purchased this Pantone color book called color bridge on coated, which shows every Pantone color in the equivalence of both RGB MC and white k. Now I can consult these swatches to find the colors that I want for my pattern. I've decided to use a limited color palette with only reds and blues and the off-white of course. I found these red use that I like quite warm. Then I pick this blue color range that I think will go nicely together. Then I can use the Pantone codes to find the exact colors in Illustrator. Because if you have purchased a Pantone book, you can also access the Pantone color library directly in Illustrator. To find your Pantone colors, go to your working document or your inspiration board. Then go to swatches over here and click on the little menu icon. You'll get this pulldown menu. Go down and find the option "Open Swatch Library". There find the option called Color books. There you'll find the Pantone color of books. But as I said before, they will only be available to you if you have purchased one. My color book was called color bridge uncoated, so I'll pick this one. Now I can enter their Pantone code for the colors that I liked, and light one. Then I will just go ahead and do that for all the colors that I want. Here I have my color palette, and I chose to have five reds and four blue, and one off white. This is to start with at least then we'll see what happens when I start coloring in my motifs, and see if I'm miss some colors that I want to add later on. The last step is to make a rough plan for how you want to lay out your pattern. This will really help you find an overall flow that will work. When you have a notion of this, it's going to be much easier when we start drawing our motifs. Because we will know what kind of motifs we need. To plan a layout, I have a really cool trick, which I will show you in the next lesson. 19. Layout plan: Before we start drawing the flowers, and leaves, and branches, it's good to have an initial plan for the layout of the pattern 2, and what type of elements you need, and also roughly how they should look and how many variations you need of each motif. Planning the layout and components first will also make it much easier once we start building our patterns to create a harmonic flowing and integrated repeat that doesn't have holes or too many similar elements clustered together in one place, creating strange and uneven impressions. For this, I will show you a really fun trick, perfect to use for this type of rather complex botanical patterns with a lot of variety in a straight half drop or tiled layout. I've learned this technique from a Swedish designer called [inaudible] , who's been head designer for a couple of the largest wallpaper companies here in Sweden. All you need is a block of square postets, a pencil, and an eraser is good to have a hand to. First I'm going to show you how to do this with a straight repeat, which means that the pattern will be repeated straight to the side and straight vertically too. Now pull off four postets and place them next to each other like this. Now we're going to sketch the first elements. We'll start with the stems or the main branches. Something like that. Really simple. I will do some main flowers. I want a flower here. Just making something really rough here, just to have a something. Here I'll have a star-shaped flower, maybe. Here, I'm going to another big flower. It's fine if they go across the borders. This is the first elements, and they may need something here too. Now, I want to repeat what I have drawn onto the other ones as well. Luckily, the postets are pretty transparent. You can see through them a little bit. Now, I'm going to copy everything on the first postet exactly on this second one. Now I'll do the same in the other ones. There. Now I have everything. What I don't have is that little flower, so I'll do that too. Here I have the first draft of the pattern. Now I can see that I have big hole here. Here is where I can start adding things now. I could go down with this one or I can just make it a bit more sophisticated and continue with this branch over here, which will make it a little bit more complex. I'll just make a different flower over there perhaps. Now I have to repeat that on all the others too. Then I have to repeat this one, this one, and that whole thing over there. I'll start with repeating the flower on all of them. Here I have the full repeat where everything is repeated in all the four squares. Now I can get a better overview of the pattern layout, and I can add the leaves here and there, and then I just have to repeat it in all four postet squares so I can see where it clusters together perhaps. Here is straight repeat. Now we're going to take a look at how to do the same thing for a half drop repeat. Take your pack of postets again. This time, you'll fold every postet in half so that you can find the middle. Now you do the same thing as with a straight repeat. You draw some elements, something like that, and then I repeat it on all four. There. Now I check my pattern to see what works and what doesn't. Here it was a strange transition. This is where I can go in and perhaps make this line a bit more natural. Then I can see that I can connect these ones perhaps. Let's see what else. I can connect these ones maybe and just see what I can find. Then I can add leaves and other objects that I think will improve the pattern. That was the half drop. Then there is this third layout principle that you can apply as well, which is the tiled layout, and then you would just place the postets with the drop horizontally instead. I'll just use these ones to show you what I mean. You would have to fold it this way instead, but now I'll just eyeball it roughly to see where they should meet up. Now this pattern doesn't work well, but you place your postets like this instead, and then draw your motif. Now you can use these notes, these layout sketches, as a reference when you start planning what elements and motifs like flowers or leaves that you want for your pattern. It also gives you a plan for how to draw your branches, whether you want to make them as modules or more or less complete from the start on your sketching paper. You can also scan and upscale these sketches to larger proportions, and then print it and use as a foundation for your motif sketches and final drawings, because with this technique, it's easier to see what will happen with the pattern and to decide what type of layout and motifs you want to use. Here is my postet layout plan for my pattern. As you can see, it's quite detailed already. Now it's time to start drawing our motifs, so I'll see you in the next segment. 20. Drawing the motifs 1 - The branches: I'm going to start with the branches, and as you can see on my post-it sketch, my branches are seamless. They are integrated with each other. When I scale this up and I would draw this one in one piece, it would be a very big drawing. What I want to do now is divide all these branches into so-called modules that will be much easier for me to handle and give me some flexibility when I start to assemble the pattern. But this post-it sketch will be the blueprint for my pattern that I can refer to later on. I filled in the branches a bit so that they are more clear and visible and also because I am going to scan my post-it sketch and then print a scaled-up version of this one, and this will be a template for me when I start drawing my branches modules. For my branches, I can now see where I can divide this. I think that this one here could probably be one module. I will disconnect it over here, and then I have another one, that will be this one. Perhaps a little bit too long and perhaps, I'll just divide it into this one and then this one, and then the last one could be a module like this. Actually, I do have another one over here that I need. But as you can see, I have some flowers over here and here that will be connecting elements where I can connect my branches later on. Now, I'll just hit the scan. Here is my post-it sketch. All I really need is this section here of the sketch, and it can be in black and white, doesn't even have to be color because this is just to have the sketches as a reference or a template, and I don't even think you need to have as high resolution as 300. But I'll just keep that and then I'll just name it, and it's gone. I have created a new document with a big art board. This is an A3 size because I think I will scale up my post-it sketch to A3 size. I'll get my scan. Just pull it into Illustrator, and now I will just scale it up. I have scaled up my post-it sketch and placed it in the art board so that I can make a printout of it, and now I'll just go ahead and hit ''Print'', and here I have a printout of my post-it sketch, scaled up a bit. Here I have an A3 size paper, and what I'm going to do now is to transfer my branches on to a new piece of sketching paper. I'm going to now draw the different modules onto this paper where I can make a lot more details now when I have scaled it up. I'll just put it over here, and I know the disability is not perfect. If you have a light box, that will be helpful or if you hold it up to a window, you can even use a tracing paper. But, I'm just going to rough and you can always just lift your paper and see where you are going. I'm going to start with this module over here. I don't need this one because this one is a part of the other watering down here. I'll get started. Here I have some rough lines for my different branches modules, and now I can start drawing the outlines. I will also make some extra branches, smaller branches that you can add here and there where necessary. I choose to have medium-sized main branches. I will have contours or outlines, but not many details or textures or a shade to my branches. Then you can also take a look at your rough sketch to see if there would be a place where you would want to add some smaller, like twigs or places where you can attach little details like leaves or small flowers later on. This is something we can have use for perhaps. Here are my branch modules with contours. When I was working on this, I had some idea that maybe I could have some frills added, that I can stick here and there to embellish the branches, and I'm going to use tracing paper since I don't have a light-box and just start tracing my branch modules and fit them into this A4 size paper. I'll just continue doing this for all my branches. Here are my completed tracings. I made this one with more smooth outlines, and I managed to fit all my modules onto this paper. Isn't that very effective of me? Then I made another version with the branches made a little bit rougher with uneven edges sort of, and now it's time to start drawing some flowers I think. 21. Drawing the motifs 2 - The flowers: It's time for the best part of this process, which is to draw the flowers where you get to be the most creative in the whole process. I begin with referring with my posted sketch, and just to see what type of flowers I had in mind when I started sketching this. I have some kind of lotus thing here, and here perhaps, and then there's this other version over there. I have a few round shaped flowers, this one, and this one here, and there's something else going on, this one. With every type of flower that you make, one tip is to make like three or four versions of the same type of flower, so you can alter them and pick the best one when you start to assemble your pattern. So just start sketching away, refer to your posted sketch once in a while, and then you can also take a look at the exercises that you made earlier, and see what you come up with. Another great tip for you is when it comes to size of your motifs, try to keep the size of your drawing approximately the size of your hand or your palm, because that will be a great size for including enough details, but not too many. Here I have some sketches of flowers, and I made a whole bunch of them. Some of them are just really rough sketches because I worked on them in more detail and more authority when I traced them, and I'll show in a second. There are some other bigger ones, and then I have the traces. So for this one, some big flowers and some medium-sized, and another one, and this one. As you can see, I have just made more or less some outlines with some little details too, but the reason is why I just focused on the outlines here with my tracings, is because I will add the details and the different layers within the petals and the leaves with the colors later on. Now these are ready for scanning, but before we start scanning our drawings, we need to make some leaves as well. So I'll see you for that in the next section. 22. Drawing the motifs 3 - The Leaves: Back to my posted sketch and let's take a look at the leaves that I put down here. Well, they are a few different ones, but for my leaves, I have a plan in my head. I am not sure that it will be these firm like or prickly leaf shapes maybe a bit. But what I will do is to make like three or four different types of leaves to alter and to mix. Let's take a look at the sketches. The sketches I've made so far are a bit rounded and detailed. I was inspired by a couple of the patterns that I had on my inspiration board. Here is one type of leaves. Then I made a second sketch with some altering leaves as well. Here is a stem where I can connect an extra flower if I want to and some other fillers like these ones. This is a mix of both, it's both flowers and leaves and this one and another one. I think I have enough for start building a pattern with these leaves too. As I go along, I might discover that I need some more leaves. I think I might actually make some more sketches with some smaller leaves just in case. Now I just have to go and trace them. I have a bunch of traced drawings here. Those leaves that I showed you the sketches for. Here are some others. When I kept going and tracing, I just came up with a bunch of new ideas and made some more leaves. I ended up with tons of leaf, but now I have at least some to choose between. Like this one, I decided that I will have some coloring details in between here, but with no contours. That's why I left that out. That is something that a principle that I am applying to a lot of the sketches actually, like the leaves will be striped and on this stem over here as well, we will have small little dots as buds or small flowers perhaps. But I don't want to have contours for them, so that is why I left them out and I will do that freehand later on in Illustrator. Then to a fun little detail. I also wanted to have some insects in my pattern. I have found some in a couple of the patterns that I have as inspiration and drew some butterflies and flower bees or whatever it is that I will stick here and there in the pattern. These ones are going to be really fun to color, I think. Now I have all the drawings and tracings and motifs that I need, I think. If I have to add some more, I will do that later on when the pattern is coming along. But now it is time to scan all these babies. 23. Digitalizing your motifs: Now I have put two of my first traced sketches on the flatbed in my scanner, and now let's do some settings. As you see, my interface is still in Swedish, but I'll translate for you. With the first one, the type you can choose black and white because we don't need to scan any colors. When it comes to resolution, 300 DPI is more than enough but if you want to, you can definitely go up. But for me I think I will stay with 300. I have created a folder in my Pattern folder that I call Scans, and that's where I will save all my scanned illustrations. Then I will name my scans, something like Skillshare Indian floral. Then when it comes to the image settings, we can use the standard settings. That's actually quite good. But if you want to enhance your scans and make the disability a bit better, so these are presets. Then you can play with brightness up and down, and then contrast to see what will give you the best scan. I think with brightness somewhere in the middle and then increase the contrast will work pretty well for my scans. Then select all your illustrations. Make sure everything is included in this frame, and hit "Scan". Then you just go ahead and do that with all your tracings. For me, it's going to take awhile. I'll see you on the other side with all the tracings scanned and ready. Here I have all my scanned illustrations neatly collected in the Scans folder. The next step is to vectorize them. I'll select them and pull them into a new Illustrator document. Then I'll select my first one with the branches, and to vectorize them, we'll use the live trace tool. You will get this Settings window. We can go down to Advanced, opened that up, and here you'll find something that says "Ignore white" and check that box. Then the trace tool will not save the white areas. Then you can play around with the values over here if you need to. But I'm not going to go into this function too much this time. You can also keep black and white and then just go with the pre-settings. You can choose black and white logo 2, but then you will still have the white areas. I'll just go with this one because that's definitely sufficient for what I need. Then click "Trace". Here I have my branches. They are now traced, but now I need to expand this and then you go to "Object", click, "Expand", and just press "OK". All my branches are now vectorized. But when you do that with a light rays tool somehow it will group everything. Now I have to ungroup it by going to Object, again, Ungroup, and you have to probably do this a couple of times. We also need to do some polishing, some editing. For example, I can see that this branch over here has a misshapen from some ink smudge, I guess. Select that one that you need to edit, and then I will use the eraser and just take this one down like this. You might have to smoothen the lines a little bit too. Then you can, by keeping your shape selected, go to the smooth tool and you will find it under the Shaper tool, and then if you hold it down, you'll find the smoother. Then you can just go with that little cross like this, and it will smoothen the lines. Then you can go through all of your traced and vectorized illustrations and see if you need to polish some more. The next thing to do is to group all the branches. Because if you take a look at these guys here, this branch here consists of two lines, and if I just select one and move it, it's not connected to the other, but I want this branch to be one shape that sticks together. Select both of them and then press Command G, and now it's grouped. Then I have to do this with all my branches that has lines or elements that are not too connected. Here I have polished and grouped all my branches and I'll select them all and now I'll scale them down, and I'm just set these guys aside. Now I'll trace the rest of my drawings and polish and group. Here it come to my favorite little guys. I think I would like to make a pattern with just these little bugs that will be fun. Now I have all my illustrations digitalized by scanning and vectorizing them. Now they are ready for coloring. 24. Coloring your motifs with gouache: Now it's time to start coloring our motifs and I will show you two techniques for this, one is analog and one is digital. The first one I'll show you is to go authentic by coloring with watercolor or preferably wash or perhaps markers, and this can be done in the computer, of course, now I'll take a step back again and used the [inaudible] paper. What we are going to do now is to create a print file with our motifs. Print them on watercolor paper or the papers suitable for the media you want to use. Then we will paint our motifs, scan the painted areas, vectorize them, and match them together with your vectorized outlines that we just made. Here is how you can create a work print file for coloring your motifs. Start with creating a document and art board with the same size of the paper you want to paint on. I will start with creating a new document, enough to show you as examples, I have picked out some motifs that I will color. Now, let's arrange them and resize them a little bit so that they are a good size for painting. You want them to be big enough for being able to include the amount of details that you want in your motifs. I will just resize them and I think that principle of using the palm of your hand as a measurement for the size of your motifs is pretty good. Something like this. Now I have fitted them into this art board. We are going to use this printout as our painting template so to speak, but here we don't want to have these pitch black outlines because they might shine through the color. Let's pick, as light gray as you possibly can, but still being able to see the outline, so this might be a bit too bright, I think. This one is fine, and now it is time to print this. The first thing we need to do is to mix the colors that we're going to use, and I am using a set of gouache colors. I think that gouache for this purpose is the best option because you need it to be very solid and not shine through too much. You don't want the colors to be too gradient because that's going to be difficult to vectorize and create too complex motifs. I have chosen a dark red that I'm mixed in with some black just to darken it up a bit, and red and white. It's not really important the exact use or colors that we are going to use. The most important thing is that you have the four colors or the amount of colors that you are going to use that they are distinguished and separated from each other. The contrast is distinguished because we need to scan them and be able to vectorize them separately. I'm going to mix my colors a bit. I need a dark red medium tone and lighter pink or something and mix in a bit of water there. Then I need one that's almost white, like very bright anyway. As I said, the most important thing is that you have for in contrast, really separated colors that will be easier to scan and later on and vectorize. Let's start painting, and I'll start with my flower here. Start with the brightest color first. You have to use the brush that's suitable for your details. I might have to use a smaller one just for the edges. This is therapy work. Now remember we are mimicking the work of the 18th century cloth painters, and I don't have to paint all the way in, because I'm going to have some darker shades in layers. Now I just have to let this sit and dry before I continue with this second layer, and in the meantime, I can start with the leaf. When you start painting, you'll see that this really requires some planning before, you need to know exactly what color you need to apply where and in what order to be able to layer it in the perfect way. Sometimes when you want to have white accents like dots or lines that in a painted plot would really be an uncolored area where the white clock would shine through and create the accents. When using gouache or watercolor, you could use masking liquid to accomplish this. If you don't have that, you can just start applying gouache dots on top of it, and that will also work. Now I'm going to apply the second layer of pink, which is going to be a midtone to this flower here. I'll just start and I don't have to do it all the way in the middle either because I'm going to use a darker tone in the middle. Now I want to mimic the brush strokes, something like that, and then I'll do the same thing on the pedals. That was the second layer for the flower, and now I have started to apply these darker lines. Start for my next red layer. For this, I have a darker red. Let's see if this paint tool will be enough. Now I have the white accents left for my leaf. As you see, when using gouache or even if you would use markers, you would have to work in layers to apply the different details and access to your motifs. For my branches, I just want one fill color. Now, if you're a branch would have details like those shading lines, you would have to do the same principle here with applying a base layer and then painting those lines on top of this. Let's not drag it, but I'll give it a try, as with the fine liner or the brush pen. This creates a completely different look than a brush tools in Illustrator ever will. When you have colored all at your motifs with layers like this, it's time to scan the colors as well. 25. Digitalizing your painted motifs: Place your colored motifs on the flatbed in your scanner, and this time we need to scan colors. For this setting here, you choose color. I think 300 DPI will also be fine for this. As you can see, this is not showing the colors as strong as we want them to. Go to Manual mode for the image settings. Now let's see how we can enhance the colors in this image. Taking up the brightness is not going to do anything for us, but taking it down a little bit will make them more visible. Then we can also play around with the color tones. I don't think that did anything for me. Let's see with warmth. Well, maybe if I make it a little bit warmer, we'll see. Then saturation. This is where I think we can make the difference. All we need to now is have the scanner register the colored areas as good as we can. I think for this flower here, I just need three colors really to get registered. This light pink, the medium tone, and the dark one. See they are gradient a little bit, but we'll see how we can adjust that when we vectorize it later in Illustrator. Also for the leaf, I think I can see clearly that there are three different blues, or two blues and one white. Let's see if we can work with that. What I want to do now is to select the areas I want to scan, and then we'll hit scan. Then I'll pick up my scanned images and pull them into my Illustrator document. I'll start with this one. Now we need to trace in color, and I just want three colors, so I'll take it down to eight and see what happens. I think this is going to work. What I'll do now is to clean off everything that I don't want, and then we're going to decrease the amount of color. First I'll start with expanding, and then I'll ungroup everything. Now I'll start removing the colors that I don't want. The easiest way to do that is to select one of the colors, go to Select, Same, Fill and delete. Then I'll do that with the next one. Now I have ended up with light-blue, over here it appears almost turquoise, and two blue. Now I only want actually two colors because the white is going to be a separate color. What I can do now is to select this greenish blue and turn it into light blue. Then I can see that there are some areas with some other green. I'll select that and also make it the same light blue. Now I'll transform those blue stripes into one same color as well. I'll pick this dark blue, and then I'll change this into my dark blue instead. Then I do that with the rest of the color blue hues that I have and just make them dark blue instead. Now it looks like all my painted stripes are only consisting of the dark blue and the white are uncolored, and then I have this light blue base color. If I put this leaf now on a colored background, an off-white background, that one will shine through with these white ones. That's actually the effect that I want to accomplish because remember, on a painted cloth, the white highlights is actually non-colored area. That's where the cloth will shine through. The last thing you have to do is to select everything and group it because this consists now of very small little pieces. All those little bits and pieces will slow your file down and make it so heavy. One thing is to diminish them by merging them. Select one of the dark blue pieces, and then select them all, then go to your pathfinder and join them all. Now you will have a lot less pieces of the dark blue stripes. Now let's take a look at that flower and see how this one will turn out. Now I'll do the same with this color, and I will diminish it into probably a bit less than last time, and see what happens. Okay, not so good. I need to take the colors up a bit with 16 colors and see what happens. Now I do have the whole shape that I need, so I'll just keep this, and now we have to do some work on the flower. Now let's see if we can remove all these unwanted areas, there. Now I actually have quite a nice flower. The only place where it's not really covered or solid is over here, but we will just have to work with that. Now I can go in and replace the colors, but this time we have 16 colors that we have to find and replace. One way to do that is to select the whole flower and create a new color group using the color of the flower. Now let's make 16 boxes, and fill each one of them with the colors over here. Since I had already removed two colors surrounding the flower, it was only 14 colors, so I'll just remove the two last boxes. Now we're going to find all these colors within the flower, and we'll do the same trick as I've done before. Now I'll select this one, and by selecting Same and Fill in, I will now find all the same colors as this one. Then I will use one of the dark red flowers from my color palette. Then I go with the next one and do the same thing, select Same, and then I'll find those, and I'll just use the same color. Then I will go through all of these colors. Now I have found all the colors for the middle part already, and what I'll do now is to remove these top ones with that color, select one and all the rest of them. Now I only have this center part selected, and I'll join them. Now I'll do the same for the middle part of the flower. Then I just have three colors for the outer part of the flower. Here is my flower, and I think I'm going to make this one a bit brighter, and remember to group it. Then for the final touch, you find that outlines for these motifs and place them on top. Recolor them if you want to have another color for them. Next, we'll color with Illustrator. 26. Coloring your motifs digitally: For the second coloring technique, we're still going to paint the motifs, but this time we'll do that digitally in Illustrator using the live bucket and the brush tools. This way, you can create a bit of an authentic impression to not to the extent of using gunge, but where the benefit of being able to edit and adapt much easier while painting. I'm going to start with the branches. I'll select the first collection of branches that I made, scale them up and I think I'm going to put these little guys side for now and concentrate on the branches. One way to color your branches is to fill them in with the Live Bucket tool. But as you can see, my branches, they are not enclosed shapes. In order to use the bucket tool, you need to have enclosed shapes. First, I'll select my branch I want to color. Now double-click to get into isolation mode and now pick a color that you want to color your branch with and the Blob Brush tool and now we're going to make those little endings like this. Then select everything, then go over to the Live Bucket tool, now with the same color that you use for your endings. You can now just go in and color the whole thing in one sweep. Now we need to fix those endings though. To be able to do anything, we need to first expand the effect that we created with the Live Bucket tool and make sure that you have ungrouped it until you can't ungroup it anymore. One way to clean up the endings is to erase the little leftover bits and pieces that were created. Then you will have clean and sharp edges too. This is the quickest way to color your branches. Another way that's a bit more painty is to use the Blob Brush tool and paint your branches. Again, select your branch that you want to color and I think it's best to go into isolation mode. Now pick the color you want to paint with and go and select the Blob Brush tool. Now start painting on top of this and the thing is, you will probably paint outside of the outlines, but that's the thing. Because we want to accomplish that imperfect look you get when you paint. You will paint a little bit outside. It will be an even and I'm using webcam tablet, which is a lot easier than to do this with a mouse. Now to fill it in, select the pink area and instead of Bucket tool, let's go to the Shape Builder. But now we want the contours to be on top. With the pink area selected, put it in the back. Now I have a more of our painted look for the branches. The next step is to color all your branches and I'm going to do that with my branches, but I'm going to use the Live Bucket tool because it's a bit quicker than with the Blob Brush tool. All my branches are now colored but they will not be pink with black outlines. I will definitely recolor them later on, but for now, I have the raw materials for my pattern and that's all I need at this point. I'm going to put these ones together just to have them nice and neatly sorted. I'll select them all and scale them down and just put them aside for now, and go to color the next motifs and I'll go with this one I think. This leaf I will color with the help of the Blob Brush tool. I'll zoom in a little bit and get started, and now I'm going to paint right on top of the contours like this. I want to have that painted look with its perfect imperfections. What lyric is that from what song? I'll do this to the whole contour and when I have circled the whole leaf like this, I'll select this blue outline that I just created, go to Shape Builder and make that shape. Now when it's still selected, we can go to Object, Sort and [inaudible] back. For this leaf, I just want three colors. I want the blue background, and then I want a dark blue for the contours and the nerve lines. Then I want to have white highlights for the middle nerve and some accents as I did with the watercolor painting leaf. I'll start with making the contours dark blue instead. Select Blob Brush tool and my white color and let's zoom in, and then I just have to start painting. If you want to raise some of the unevenness, and you can use the smooth tool to adjusted it a little bit. I think that's going to be nice and then I want to have the nerve accents come in from the sides as well. Now there will be some pieces sticking out that I'm not going to want to look like this because it looks so much like I have used the Blob Brush tool so this is something I can adjust afterwards. Now I have painted all the white nerves, the white highlights I wanted for this leaf, and I think it looks pretty good. All I have to do now is to select the outlines and bring them to the front. Now there are some imperfections that I don't want, and I can go in and smooth in some of the areas like this so that it will get a bit of a smoother transition in these corners here, and just take away those things where you can see it's done with a Blob Brush tool. What I also have here now is some bits and pieces sticking outside where you definitely see that roundness, that end of the Blob Brush tool. Now you can probably do a clipping mask for this. But what I will do is just how the white area selected and go and erase those little bits and pieces. There is that completed painted leaf where I have edited and polished it. Now my next step is to go in and color the other leaves of the same theme in the same way. Here are my finished striped leaves. Now, I'll do some of the other leaves just to show you some more examples. Let's see if I can grab these guys here. These ones have just a little bit of contour, but now to give it some more detail with color, I'm going to start with coloring the background. I'm going to paint some, let's call it shading with mid blue tone. You can also mimic the brush strokes like this. Just make these spiky lines and fill in those spaces. Here are two ways to do that, and as you can see, you get two effects. This one has smaller brush strokes and then you have this one with a bit thicker brush strokes. I'm going to redo this one in this manner so that they look the same. Then let's bring the contours to the front and I'll also color them dark blue. Next I want to give some details to the middle of this little drop shapes and then I'll use light pink. The contrasts are not perfect with the bright blue, but I'll adjust that in just a couple of seconds. Then when you're done, you group them. We'll resize them and just put them aside for now. Then I'll go in and color all my leaves with a level of details that I wish for each motif. Here I have a bunch of colored leaves and the next step is to start coloring the flowers. 27. Coloring your motifs digitally - continued: Now for the flowers, you apply the same principle as for with the branches and the leaves, you paint, highlights and the shades, and the details with colors. You can either use the Live bucket tool for the background colors or you create it with the blob brush tool. So the more details you add, the more worked and authentic the pattern will look. So now I've added some white highlights, that's going to be the equivalent part of painted cloth where the paint has been left out, where the cloth is shining through. So now I'm going to select the dark outlines and bringing them to the front and there you will see completed illustration and I'll group it. For this flower I'm going to start with filling in some of the spaces with the live bucket tool and I'm going to choose the blob brush tool and make some details. Now let's see if we can bring them to the back so let's take these pink ones, group them and print to pack and then we'll bring the dark red outlines to the front. So here is some shading for those leaves which I think is a very typical Indian floral look. Let's see what else I can do, I think I'll do the leaves here, which then I want to be blue and I will use the live bucket tool again, I think. Now I'll give them some white accent, let's see what we can do with these blob brush strokes to make them look a bit more authentic and I'll just smooth it with them a bit like this and I want to fix the endings of these ones so that they are not so rounded, so I'll just sharpen them by removing some from the edges, something like that and I'll go to the next one. There, so that looks pretty okay, I think and now continue with these big front leaves here and let's see what I will do. I think I'm going to use the live bucket tool again, this pink here, start out with that and see what that will bring us. Unlike in the top right away, say that I want to have these and another color so let's see perhaps even blue. Now let's see what I'll do with these ones, I think I'll do that and then I will choose the blob brush tool and that off white and then let's see what I can come up with. Now some more details and the last one, now bring the contours to the front and we'll see if I need to do some adjustment. Actually I saw another thing I would like to do, for this one will do some accents with white again. So now to make this a bit easier I'm going to group this, double-click and go into isolation mode and now draw on these ones and then they will be grouped already when I go in the isolation mode. There let us see and now I'll group it and bringing it to the side and then on to the next flower. Finally here I have all my colored flowers and I might not use all of them but at least I have a pool of flowers and motifs that I can choose and pick from and here are my favorites, the little bugs which I'm really pleased with. They turned out really nice and now I would love to make a pattern with only these guys. So now I have all my motifs and it's time to start building the pattern so I'll see you for that in the next segment. 28. Building the repeat: Now it's time to start building the repeat. First, I'm going to prep my art board a little bit and I'm going to go to my folder where I keep my scans and pull in my posted scan. This one would be great to use as a reference. Now we've got to start placing the branches and the flowers and other motifs. You can build the repeat in different ways. One is where you build that repeat swatch manually or you can use the pattern tool. Since our repeat in our posted sketch is a square, we need to have a square repeat box to start building with. 600 times 600 will be fine for my repeat box. Now, I'm going to use my posted sketch as a blueprint and place it behind this box. First, I need an outline so that I can see it. Then, I place it in my art board and resize it until it fits more or less, something like that. Now, select the square and the scan and go to layers, lock these two so that they won't move around when we start building the pattern. You will find they're two selected items because they are the ones that have these blue markers next to them. Click these two boxes here to lock them and you will see that there is a little lock appearing. Now you can't move them around. Now let's start building. I need to first place this on top of everything. I'll start with this one first. Let's see if I can resize it a little bit. It doesn't have to be exact because we're just using this as a reference. The next one would be this one. This one is going to be attached to that one. Can we re-scale a little bit? Now, if I zoom in, you will see that the branches are attached like this. You can keep it this way. It looks good, but you can also merge them. I'll show you later, first we have to get the whole web of branches down and also make sure that they are repeated the way we want them to. Then this one perhaps. If something doesn't fit, you make it fit. I think this one needs to be a bit stretched out. What else do you need? This one, I think is over here, roughly like that, then this one will be repeated up here and this one over here. I think we have the basics right now. These ones I can save for later, and we'll see if I will use them at all. For now, I'm going to just put them over here a little bit. We have our repeat box, then we have our branches, and now I'm going to move them in a half drop over here and here, maybe on top and in the bottom. Because this is going to make it easier to place the flowers. I'll select them all, right-click and go to transform and move it. I'll start with moving this down. Horizontally, I want to move it zero pixels and vertically, I want to move it the whole length of the repeat box, which was 600 pixels, then click copy. Now, you can see that, it wasn't moved exactly the way I wanted it. I need to make some adjustments because I want this one to meet and connect with this one as in my sketch. But if I move this one, I need to move this one as well. I'll select them both and then you start to move them a bit like that. Zoom in to see what this looks like. I think that's going to work and then I can merge them if I want to later. Good. What about this one? I think this work, we'll see depending on how it'll look what the flower. Let's keep it like this for now. Now, I'm going to move the whole repeat box and repeate it a half distance up and a whole distance to the side, and also a half distance down. Where the branches selected, right-click, go to transform and move. Now, I want to move it horizontally, I want to move it 600 pixels all the way to the side. But vertically, I want to move it up and I then I need to enter minus first and half the distance up, which is 300. Copy. Now, I can move this one like I did before. Copy, great. I'm going to move these ones. Let's put them over here instead, to the motif library. Something is cooking here, I think. Let's see. The branches are repeating nicely now. Now it's time to place the flowers. All of these ones are going to be on top of the branches. I'm going to select them and order them on top of everything. I don't have to do that every time I place something. I'll start with this one I think, because it looks like that [inaudible]. Then, the next one, this one, definitely for here. I could place it as a part of this branch that it's growing on this branch. But, I think I'm going to add something. I think I'm going to move it a little bit and have it coming out from the branch like this instead. But, then, I need to have a low branch to connect it with. That's why I was creating these guys. Let's see what I can do, I think I'll reflect it. That could work. Here is the reason why I wanted to have modules, because it's so much easier to adapt and arrange and change when necessary. What else? Perhaps, this one. When you build a pattern, makes sure that the flowers are tilting in different ways that would create a greater harmony. It's good to place the flowers first, then it's easier to get an overview of the whole pattern. Now, I'll just continue to place my flowers. Now, I think it's time to test if there'll be any holes in the pattern regarding the flowers. I'll select all my flowers. Now, I want to move them to the side and down to see how they fit together and where I need to place more flowers or perhaps move some of them. I think it's quite evenly distributed. There will be leaves too. I think I'm going to leave it for now. Then, I think it's time to start placing the big leaves too. 29. Building the repeat continued: I have moved things around quite a lot and added some more leaves here and there, and exchange motifs and flowers. Now it's time to test the overall pattern again. Then I will delete everything. That's not a part of my square box. Here is actually what remains of the original box. I'm going to repeat it up and down and to the side, just to check if there are any holes or inconsistencies or anything that needs to be fixed. I'll select all my motifs. I can already see that there is something going on there, which might not be so bad though. I'll see how it looks. I'll repeat it down. I'll just remove the minus and copy. I think it's going to look really nice. Then what I can do now is to be the efficient, I'll select all of it. Then one distance to the side and half the distance down and copy. There I have everything repeated. Now I can go in and see what needs to be fixed, perhaps like I said these ones too here are colliding. That's fine. You could probably need some more adjustment. I see that there are some branches that are just left that needs to be either removed or fixed somehow. There's also another problem that needs to be taken care of later on. It will show if I zoom in on this one. Here the branch, that little extra branch has been copied in front of the others. But when we create the final repeat box, we're going to go through all of these little details and make sure that they are fixed. What else, are there any holes? If I look at this area here, is there anywhere, I think that needs some more detailing. I also have to remember to include my little box. Here's a favorite one. It's landing on that flower, I think. I'm now adding some more details. Here's after another round of editing or I have moved and adjusted and exchanged some of the motifs. For example, I added some of these small leaves and some of the frills here and there. Now it's time to test and see if this works again. I'll remove all of the motifs that are not included in the original repeat. Let's give this a try again. Now I have repeated it to the side and above and below. As far as I can see, there are not really anything that looks like it's colliding or doubling. There are a few holes here and there that I can adjust like this one, I will probably do something about, and now I'll just move it up to this one or it's belonging. Now I'm going to collect the leftovers and move them out of the way. Now I want to build the actual repeat. I will remove. Now I have removed all the excess motifs that were doubles. I also gave the background square a solid fill and removed the stroke. We're going to do half dropped repeat box first. I see I have a little bit of a redundancy or so I'll remove this one. Since this is a half drop, this one needs to be repeated one distance to the side and a half distance down or up. Everything that's sticking out from this bottom edge of the repeat box needs to be perfectly repeated on the top edge as well. I'll select everything. I got the box too, so I have to de-select that, and then right-click and go to transform. Now I want to move it zero pixels to the side. That's horizontally, I want to move it zero and vertically up. That is this time, I want to move it 600 pixels, the whole distance of the box. Since it's up, I need to enter the minus before then 600. If you have this box checked, you can preview where it will end up. This seems correct, so I'll copy. There are some motifs now that are not ordered the way they should be, but this is something I can fix as the last step. Now comes the tricky part, which is not really tricky. Everything that's sticking out on this side needs to be repeated on this side as well. But now we need to move it half the distance. These ones here are going to end up over here. This little guy, I can't forget, he is going to be repeated down here. That's just how it happened when I arranged my motifs and removed the excess. I'll select everything on this part that's sticking out on this edge and transform and move. Now I want to move it horizontally a whole distance of the repeat box. Since I want to move it left and needs to be a minus before, and then I want to move it up, so still a minus sign, but half the distance, and that is 300 in my case. While I'm at it, I'll just make sure that I do the same thing with this one. It needs to be moved down. I'll remove the minus sign and it will be where it should be a copy, that's taking care of. Now I have some empty space here, which is these motifs over there. I'll select them and do the same thing. Now I want to move it the whole distance to the right. To the right means no minus and I want to move it up, which is a minus. That seems to be correct. I'll click copy and there we have a perfectly repeated half drop box. Now we should be able to turn this into a pattern using the pattern tool. But before we do that I want to check every motif, how it's ordered, and how it's attached to the branches, and make sure that everything looks nice and neat. For example, over here, this flower should be arranged on top of this leaf. I'll go to object and make sure it's on top. There are some other imperfections that I have seen that needs to be taken care of. For example, this one over here has a bit of a stem that I don't want to keep. To take care of that, I'll double-click on the motif and then I can go in with an eraser and just remove this one. I'll just go over all of these little attachments and see if I need to erase something like on this one. I would probably take this one off and see what that looks like. This one, I want to move to the back together with a repeat box, of course, otherwise it's going to be hidden. Now what I could do also, if I don't like that line here, is to select the branch and double-click, and then again double-click the outline and now go in and just erase this part. Now, it seems like it's one branch and I'll group them to make sure that they are sticking together. I can do the same here and over here if I want to. Now we're going to see how this will work with the pattern tool. 30. Half drop pattern swatch with the pattern tool: First, I'm going to show you one way to make the half dropped patterns swatch using the Pattern Tool in Illustrator. I'll zoom out a little bit and then select everything that is included in the pattern, go to Object Pattern and Create. This looks a bit weird. This is not repeating as it should be. If you haven't used the Pattern Tool before you'll probably know how to use it, but we'll go through it just briefly. You can name your pattern here, and then here you select the type of repeat you want to create. You want to choose a half drop. Here it's called something else in Swedish, it's literally Brick by column. I don't know if that's the same in English but you can see that little icon where the bricks are repeated as a half drop, just select that one. They are at least repeated as a half drop but as you see there's a big space in between and that's because they have automatically entered a completely different size of the repeat box as I have. Let's just adjust that and adjust the width to 600 and that height, 600 as well. If you set the marker in the other box, you will get a preview. Now it's repeated as it should be in a half drop, and here you can also choose if you want to have more copies. 3 by 3 is fine for me to see how it looks. This one has a presetting where the repeated box is surrounding. The original one is faded to 70 percent. If you are pleased with how it looks, you can click this little check sign. Now, you have a pattern swatch saved to your swatches panel. Let's see if this works. I'll make a larger box and then just click this one to fill it with a repeat, and here it is. I can see that it's not repeated perfectly because there are still some problems with some motifs on top of others so that I need to adjust too. Otherwise, I think it looks really pretty, and I'm happy with this pattern. Now, I'm going to build the pattern repeat swatch manually. 31. Half drop pattern swatch done manually: Another way to build the pattern repeat swatch is perhaps a bit more old fashioned, but it's the way I prefer to, it gives me a bit more control over their motifs and what's overlapping what. That is to build the patterns watch manually, so to speak. What I wanted to do now is to create literally a straight repeat box where all of the half drop elements are included already. What I need to do then is to repeat everything multiple times and then create a larger repeat box. Then we would have to erase everything on this side, not the box though, and then everything on the bottom side, sticking out from the bottom side too. Now, everything exists only once on the art board. Now, I rub all of it and repeat it multiple times, I'll start with repeating it to the side. One distance to the side and half distance down. Then I'll use this one that's selected already and do the same thing but this time I am going to repeat it up, so I'll enter a minus. Now, I can select everything. Now, I want to move it to the side zero and down 600. My background boxes are overlaying some of the motifs, but we're going to have remove the boxes anyway. Let's see, I need to repeat this one once more to bring it up here, so I'll just deselect this one. I probably have more than I need but that's fine for now. Now, I'm going to repeat this one up actually, I need to repeat it twice up, right? Zero to the side and twice up, which is minus 1,200 this time then I'll copy. Now, I'm going to remove all the background boxes. Now, I can see that my repeat is repeated from here to here, to here, and to here. That's how large my repeat box should be. It needs to be 600 for the height and then two times for the width, let's see what it will give me. If I'll start in the middle there to that, and then to this, it will be 1,200. I can just draw that and then I can adjust so that I have the exact measurements. Then I'll bring it to the back. Here's a straight repeat including a half drop repeat really. Now, I can just erase all of the motifs that I don't need. Now, we have to do that really careful to make sure that you don't erase too much, if you do, you just have to repeat it again. There, when we test the repeat we'll see if there are some inconsistencies. There are some troubles already that we have to take care of and that is how they are ordered on top of each other. Like here you can see the branch is on top of the flower which is something that I don't want, and here too, and here. Just go through the whole pattern and see if you find similar problems, and don't use to order them on top. Try to remove all of the motifs that are not inside the repeat box. One thing you could do to make sure that when you print later that the pattern is fine is to select all of your branches, then group them and together with that background box, go ahead and place them at the bottom. Now, you can be sure that they are not overlapping a flower anywhere. There might be other things that you want to be tucked in behind something else and then you'll do the same, like for these motifs I want them to be tucked in behind a branch, so I'll select all of them too. Here is the one that seems to be attached to the branches and I'll just fix that one later. But the other ones I'll just group now and together with the repeat box I'll place them behind everything else. This one, I also want to do something with actually because I saw that there is something that's not perfect. I'll go into isolation mode and then I can erase this little twig here that's sticking out, that one can be attached to the branch. Okay. When you have gone through all of the motifs and made sure that they are ordered correctly and all the imperfections are taken care of. Now, we're going to create the repeat. I'll choose the background box and I'll copy it by pressing Command C, and then paste it by pressing Command B to the back behind that box. Then I have to make sure that it has no fill and no stroke. Now, I'll select everything, all of the motifs and the background boxes and drag it to the Swatches panel over there. Now, let's see if it is repeated as it should be, this is so exciting, every time. I'll make a larger box and I'll select my fresh pattern, and it looks great, I think. Now, you can go over it for the last time or for their last times if necessary, and see if there are some details you want to adjust, move something here and there, and I can spot something right now that shouldn't be there, and it's because I moved one of the branches which I thought was not going to be visible. Can you see it? Like over here, the branch is cut off. Then I can see that this branch here should be tucked in between this one. There are some things here and there that I need to adjust and I think I'll just go and do that. Then when you have adjusted everything that needs to be corrected, you do the same thing. You select everything and drag it into your Swatches panel to create a new pattern swatch. I will throw this one away and adjust stuff that needs to be fixed. Here is my final pattern with all the little adjustments that I made for example. Know that stem here is complete and I made sure that everything is arranged as they should be. Now, I can't wait to see all of your patterns, which is the project for this class. I'll talk some more about the class project in the next segment, I'll see you there. 32. Class project & End note: For every course here on Skillshare, you can create a class project where you share with other students what you create. This is a great way to connect with others, get feedback, and get help if you encounter any troubles in your pattern-making and sharing your project is also a great way to gain more followers. The assignment for this class project is to create your own engine floral pattern, surprise. For a completed class project, you should include; an image or images of your motifs and also an image of the final pattern. If you want to, you can also write a few lines about your idea for the pattern, the theme, and the motifs you wanted to include, and an image of your inspiration board. It's always fun to get a bit of behind the scenes and know a bit more about other people's processes and progress. In the about section of this class, you'll find more details about what you can include in your class project. Another great way to connect and share what you create is by using the #IndianFloralWithBarbel on Instagram. If you need any help with your pattern or have questions, always feel free to post a comment in the community section of the class. Now we have come to the end of this class and I hope you have enjoyed learning more about Indian floral patterns. If you did, it would be great if you'd give me a thumbs up. That will help other students to find this class too. Finally, you can also find me on my website or blog at bearbellproductions.se and let's connect on Instagram at bearbellproductions. I'll be checking in on your projects and I can't wait to see what do you make. That's all folks. Until next time. Take care.