Transcripts
1. Hey There: Hey, there and welcome. I'm Nina, even though everyone knows me as Diujdi. I'm an artist, illustrator and pattern designer. In this class, we'll be working our magic to create a beautiful dance floral illustration, and turn it into a pattern using only Procreate. This time, the pattern that we will be creating is going to be a half drop. You'll learn about the benefits of this kind of repeat, and I'll show you my step-by-step methods from making it in Procreate. We'll talk about how to even start a project like this. I'll share with you some of my illustration tips and tricks, and ways to arrange everything and not get lost in the abundance of all the elements. Also, the patterns swatch that we'll be creating is going to be editable, so we can make adjustments as we go and we'll be able to recolor it once we finish. Let me point out that this might look more complicated than it is. But don't worry, just believe in the process and go with the flow. You're amazing, and you're able to do anything you set your mind to. This class is for intermediate levels, but if you're a beginner with a good basic knowledge of Procreate, you will be able to follow along. Grab your iPad and let's get started.
2. Project: For this project, you'll be making a dense floral pattern in a half drop repeat. You can think of it as illustrating one small part of a beautiful flower field. The main goal is to play with colors, movement, composition, and create that layered dance pattern. Once you finish, go to the project and resources section of this class and click on the Create Project button and share what you've made and tell us a bit about your process and results.
3. Half Drop Explained: Before we get into creating, let's talk a bit about a difference between a full drop repeat patterns and half drop repeat patterns. In the previous class, I showed you a method for making an intricate floral pattern, and in that case, we made our patterns swatch to be a full drop. That simply means that, when we repeat that swatch, it will fit perfectly when we move it from the center on the horizontal and vertical lines. Half drop repeat, the one that I'm going to show you in this class, is a repeat where a patterns swatch is fitting perfectly together when we move it up or down by half of its size. The main reason for creating a half drop pattern is to hide the repeat. Our goal as pattern designers is to make patterns that don't look like they're obviously repeating. Our goal is to hide the elements that are sticking out and catching the viewers attention, and therefore discontinuing the flow of the pattern. A full drop repeat is perfect for many different types of patterns, like for example, these intricate floral patterns that we made in the previous class. In case of a more bold and bigger floral motives then we'll be using for this pattern, a half drop repeat is a perfect choice. Our final pattern design will look more natural and we will be able to hide the repeat.
4. How to Start: Hey again, and welcome to my workspace setup. I'm already in Procreate and we can open a new custom canvas. Just click on this plus icon here and this little one here. You can now add the size of 3,000 by 3,000 pixels and the resolution of 300 DPI. This is the size and resolution I use most of the time when making patterns in Procreate, and I will be using it throughout this class. One thing to note is that when you are making patterns in Procreate, always use even numbers and pixels as measuring value for your canvas so that you can later create a perfect pattern swatch, but we'll talk about that later. Also, I'm using the RGB color mode, but you can also use the CMYK. It all depends on whether you are going to print it and guessing that you do, the color mode mostly depends on the printing company that you'll be using. Some of them like Spoonflower, for example, are working with RGB colors and some others with CMYK. So here we are with a blank piece of paper, digital or not, the question that always pops is how to start filling it. These dense layered patterns, fill from top to bottom, have intimidated me personally for quite some time. Because getting into making complex floral compositions right away can feel a bit overwhelming and you might not be sure where or how to start. So in the next video, I'll show you a few exercises that will help you start with simple ideas that you can gradually connect and move into creating more complex compositions. I'll share with you some of the things I learned from my own process and give you a bit of guidance on places where you can focus your attention while sketching.
5. Sketching Exercises: Think of these as little warm up exercises where you will gather as many ideas as you can or you will simply practice without strictly thinking about the final pattern. After some time, your brain will do the work. Thank you brain. You will be able to easily start making connections and creating your complex floral compositions as base for your pattern. So let's start exercising. You can imagine a piece of flower field that you're illustrating. Let's say it has four different kinds of flowers. So it has the main flower, the bold one that is going to catch your attention instantly. It also has the medium one that is important but shouldn't overpower the main one. You also have the smaller flowers, they're blooming everywhere and you can easily use them as filler elements for the pattern. As you can see here, these are the flowers that I'll be using for my pattern. And please don't worry, the ideas I'm showing you are something that I already came up with. Of course, this didn't happen in five minutes. I'm no genius. But through hours of sketching, exploring, observing, and rethinking. So when you find your inspiration and start sketching, try to make some different kinds of flowers and think about their scale and importance they have in connection with each other. Flowers are amazing, aren't they? They have all the necessary elements that you can use to achieve a beautiful flow in your pattern. The best way to do that is to play with stems, greenery, and shapes of flowers. Try catching that movement in your sketches. You can draw leaves in different positions and forms, like they're in a light breeze and the same goes for stems. This will bring more dynamic into your composition later. Also see how you can catch that movement in the shapes of flower heads. You can make the same types of flowers in different positions and viewpoints. I like doing that with flat colors, shapes, and adding small details. Once you've finished sketching and you've gathered the ideas about flowers that you can use and explored different ways in which you can illustrate them. You're ready to start bringing them together. It's good to make many different compositions to explore the connection you can create between the elements and observe what's happening in each one. I made these four different compositions to show some examples. In each of them I used my main flower as a starting point. So let's see the first one. So in this one, many things are simply not working together very nicely. You can see that the stems are more straight. There isn't a lot of movement going on there. Also the leaves on the yellow plant are too small and in connection to my main plant, they are simply not fitting together well. There is a lot of negative space that I cannot fill and the yellow plant also has very flat and boring flower heads. This is not bringing any dynamic to my composition. Let's see the next one. This one looks better. The stems have more movement. Now I brought some movement to yellow leaves. I also made them bigger, so the overlap between yellow and green leaves is looking nice and my negative space is becoming more dense and rich. But a problem in this one are these flowers that are overpowering my main flowers, mainly because of their size, but also because of the color I use. So let's see the third one. Now this one is much better. It's in my maybe category. I have the movement, overlapping, density. The medium yellow flower head is more interesting because I illustrated it in different positions. But what I'm not sure about are colors and that is something that is purely a style decision. I'm looking for something more reduced in color, which brings us to the final composition. In this one, the yellow plant is in one color and I will enhance its flower heads with more details later. My little tip when it comes to these complex, overlapping, floral compositions, is to sketch them in color so that you can clearly see what's going on. Also because even though these won't be your final color combinations, you can at this point, see different ways in which you can use color to make a better balance in your illustration later. Also, when you sketch your floral compositions, try to keep them in the center of the canvas and fill as much space as you can or as much as your idea allows you. It's also good to use the same size of the canvas for the sketch as the one you'll be using for the pattern. So out of these four composition sketches that I showed you, I will use this one as the starting base for my pattern. As I said in the beginning, these sketching exercises are here so you can loosen up, explore the possibilities and warm up those wonderful ideas before you start making your pattern. Just play with it and see where it leads you. You don't have to follow these rules strictly, but simply have them as a concept in your mind. Whenever you see possible, just break the rule. That's the biggest beauty of creation. All right. I'll leave you to it and see you in the next video.
6. Half Drop Method: So before we move to the main part of making our pattern, I want to show you a method for creating a half drop repeat in procreate. I figure it's good to know what to expect and see the basis of the process that we will use throughout this class. For this example, I'll be using the composition sketch that I showed you in the previous video and you can see that it's merged in one layer. The canvas is in the same size as in the beginning, 3,000 by 3,000 pixels and with a 300 DPI resolution. You can now turn on your drawing guides, click on actions, canvas, and click here and then you can edit them. To divide the canvas horizontally and vertically in half, you can just add the value of 1,500 pixels here, which is the half of the size of our canvas or you can simply drag them to maximum and you'll get the same results. We have four squares now, which I numbered so as to make everything a bit easier to explain [NOISE]. What we need to do now is basically cut this in half and swap their places. I will now show you how we'll do it. First, we will create another layer and place it underneath. Thereafter, we will just fill it with color. You can also drop the coloring. It's very important to have that additional layer to be able to move everything correctly. Now, I will select all three layers and I will group them as well as duplicate this group once. Now, one of the groups is selected, and I will click the arrow here, and make sure that magnetics is on, and I will drag it to the left. Additionally, you can see this blue line that helps in dragging it without moving it up and down. Let's place it on the grid. When you feel that you have hit this spot, do not deselect it, but press the arrow and hold it. Now, we will zoom in until the end, which means until it's not possible to zoom anymore. Now, we can drag it a bit on the left and you can see that everything is on the grid and I can deselect it. This is the method that we will be using each time we move our groups. So make sure to position them perfectly on the grid without accidentally scaling them or moving them off the grid. This is because if you do this part carefully, your pattern will line up correctly. As I mentioned in the beginning, this is the reason why you should always use even numbers and pixels for your canvas. This is because if you don't, procreate will basically play tricks on you. No matter how perfectly you place your selection on the grid, procreate will move it to the nearest big slope and it will look as if your selection is jumping. Anyway, it is just something useful to keep in mind. Okay, let's see what's next. We moved number two and four. Now we need to do the same thing for this one, and we need to have here 1 and 3. Let's select the other group and drag it to the right. We'll do the same thing as before. Now, to make your patterns swatch a half drop repeat, you need to duplicate the group that is on the right. I will duplicate it. I will move one of them down and one of them up. Here, let's select one, and I will drag this one down. Make sure that, this one is positioned correctly on this central grid. Zoom in again, and position it correctly [NOISE]. Okay. Then the other one, I'll drag it up [NOISE]. What you're looking at right now, is a half drop button swatch. Let's see how it fits when we test out. I will go to actions share, and I will save it as a JPEG. Now I can go to add and insert a photo. I just dragged it up and duplicate it at two times rate. Now we will position these images. But before we do that, I will just adjust my drawing guides and I'll put them now to be 750 pixels. That's the number I got when I divided 3000 with number 4. Lets now select one image, click on the arrow, and we will now scale it down. You can see up here, I have the information of how much I'm scaling and i want to snap it to 50 percent. Do the same thing for the other one. But I will put it in the other corner, and also for the third one. Since this is the half drop pattern, this image cannot be placed here, but it needs to fit with everything when we drop it by half. Let's do that and place it on this additional guide. That we made. Just zoom in again so I can position it correctly. Great. You can see how everything now fits perfectly. Let me just fill these two parts. I will duplicate this one two times and I will drag one of these up and down to just fill these parts. Okay, great. You can now see how everything fits perfectly. These are the very basics and the logic of creating a half dropped repeat patterns swatch in procreate. In the next video, we will step up our game and learn how to use this technique in a more practical way, when we start arranging our dense floral pattern.
7. Pattern Making: We are now ready to get into pattern-making. You've explored, sketched, and made your flower composition, and you also know how this half-dropped method works in Procreate. So let's start, I already have the new Canvas opened, and it's in the same size and resorption as before. I also have my sketch ready and merged in one layer, and I can now simply lower the opacity. I can create a new layer that is going to be on top of it. For this, I will be using the technical pen. You can find it here in the inking category, and the only difference between this one and the original one, is that I adjusted it a bit because I have shaky hands. So if you want to do the same thing, you can just duplicate the original, click on this one, and then in the streamline, you can just set it until 12 percent or however you need, and this will make your line more smooth. Okay, let's go back, I'll delete this one. Also when it comes to colors, I will be using the working colors right now, and later if I want to change them, I will be able to do that. So don't worry about picking the best color combinations right now, you can recolor everything later. I will start by drawing the main flower hats, and I will draw them in one layer, and I will also draw the stems and leaves in separate layers as well. I will do the same thing for the other flowers. Basically, when it comes to layers, I'm thinking a bit in advance. I want to separate everything, so that later when I have more elements, I can play with dragging some layers to be on top, and others at the bottom, because I want to be able to create that overlapping. I'll speed this up a bit with the magic of editing, so I can show you the examples. Okay, here we are again. I finished everything, and it took me quite some time. Now, let me explain what's happening in my layers, and how I will organize everything. You can see that everything is separated in different layers as I mentioned before, and I will now start grouping the flower hats with a layer, where I drew the details. By the way, these details that I made, I made them with this mercury pen, and you can find it in the inking category. Here, these little speckles as you can see, I made with this wonderful brush. It's the brush that I purchased, and I'll leave you the link in the resources section of this class. The only difference with this one, is that it's made in a clipping mask layer. You can click here and you can see how it looks when I turn it off, and this is how it looks when it's turned on. Okay, I'll group these as I said, the flower hats and the details, and I will rename them and arrange them. As you can see, I place the smallest one on top, and then the middle one, the main one, and the small ones. This is the arrangement in which they will overlap with each other, and each group has flower hat, and then the details. The main reason why you shouldn't merge these two or three together, is so that you can edit them and recolor them later. Here at the bottom you can see all the greenery separated in different layers. I also rearranged them and positioned them correctly, and made one quick at edit. Just as with flower hats, it will all depend on the overlap you want to achieves. Some leaves from the main flower will be up and some can go down. Also, the same goes for this yellow one. So in case I want to move this one to be on top, and to overlap. On top of the green one, I can just basically select this layer and go to this selection tool, and then using the free hand option, I can just simply select it, and then swipe with three fingers, and then cut and paste. This is now in another layer, and I can drag it up and move it here. As you can see, I'm using layers not only to separate elements by color, but also very importantly to separate them by their position. Okay, I'll now group the greenery. We are now ready to move into making our pattern swatch. Great, we can now start to rearrange these blocks in the exact way as I showed you before when I explained the half drop method. First of all, I will just delete this sketch, I do not need it anymore, and we can now turn on the guides, and as before, I will just drag them to the max. I will create another layer, and I'll put it underneath, and I will just fill it with color. Then we can select everything and group it. I will duplicate this group. Now I can drag it to the left. I will hold the arrow and zoom in until the end. Let's do the same thing for the other one just to the right, and let's duplicate this one and drag it up and down just as before. Amazing, the first part to our pattern swatch is finished. Before we move to drawing and filling this empty space here, we need to organize the layers. Everything that was once together is now cut in pieces that we need to glue together as it was before. This can be a bit of a boring process because you need to do it each time you move the blocks. But it's the only way in which you have control over what you're making and the only way in which your patterns swatch will be editable in procreate. If we merge everything together, there is no more editing, adjusting, or recoloring. That's why this five minutes of work will save you a lot of time later, and we're in this for a long run, right? Okay. Let's open these groups. I will now select the backgrounds, and I will delete them. Now I will just select the same groups, these two, and I will drag them to this one. Now I can open them, and I can drag the same layers next to each other. For example, this one is empty and I can just delete it. Okay. Now I can basically just pinch these and merge them together and then delete these two groups that are empty. Great. I will do the same thing for each of these layers and I will basically make them to be as they were before. Everything is organized in the exact same way as it was before, and I can now start filling this empty space. You might be a bit confused with how to continue and where to place your elements. My little recommendation is to always start with the main flowers and see where you can fit them. So take a good look at what you have here on the canvas and try to think in advance. I will now just open a new layer, and I will create a very quick sketch, just to have an idea of how it's going to fit. I can may be place here two main flowers and maybe one yellow flower right here. I'm just going to make a very quick sketch to see if that could work. I know that this main flower head can go until the edge because the upper part of this pattern swatch and the bottom part are connecting. So the stems from this one will come right here and everything will fit perfectly. If you're not sure whether this composition will fit nicely inside your pattern, you can always make a quick test before you proceed with your idea. Let's test it out, as I showed you before, just go to actions, share and then save it as a JPEG, and then you can go to add and insert a photo. I will just duplicate it two times, and we can now downsize them as we did before. I will downsize them by 50 percent, and now I just need to adjust my guides. Let's go to canvas, here I will add 750 pixels so that I can arrange these photos correctly. Let me just arrange this quickly. You don't even need to be precise at this stage. It's only just a quick test. So this is a great way to get a sense of where this pattern is going, and you can now see that these two flower hats are positioned nicely. Even though, I could move this one a bit on the left side, so that the stem will not come right above the yellow one, but maybe from here. So, what I can do now is just our first, oh, let's delete this, and I will merge these images and open a new layer. Or I can make a sketch with some different color. So, I can make myself a little guide so that I know what's happening and I can also visualize what I will do next. For example, this could basically go until here, so that this stem will come right here. As you can see, this will fit very nicely and this one wouldn't fit because it would go through the center of the yellow flower. This one is perfect right here and everything seems to be nicely placed. So this test that I made is just going to be my guide and I can basically just turn it on and off while I'm making my final drawing. I will continue drawing over this sketch and I will make the final illustration. I'll speed this up with the magic of editing so that you don't have to watch the whole process over and over again. So, see you in a bit. [Music] So this part is finished and as you can see, everything that I made is in separate layers. So I worked on this central part here and I also connected these stems. Let me just show you. I had these stems over until here and I just connected them and creating new ones. So this is how it looks. So, now that I'm happy with the final drawing, I will basically merge each of these layers together, the old one and the new one. You can do that by pinching them, or you can just go ahead and click here and click merge down. So, we'll just merge each of these layers with the corresponding layer. All right, now is the time for moving these blocks again. As you can see, this upper part and the bottom part, you see that I have these gaps. These two needs to be completed and to do that, we need to move the blocks again. So, as before, I will just create another layer and I will fill it with color. Since this is already a group, I can just simply duplicate it. Okay. So, now the only thing we need to do is to move these groups up and down. Just drag one down and make sure that you position it correctly on this central grid, and will move this one up. Great, now we can again make some order in the layers. Wait, I will do that in the same way as I showed you before. This is a process that repeats. But I don't really mind. I find it even relaxing all in all, you know the draw. Once I organize the layers, I will finish the illustration that will fit in here, and I'll speed this up until the next step. [Music] So, we're almost done, I finished drawing and organized the layers, and the only little thing missing is what goes in this little part here, and I'm sure you guessed it. Yes, we need to move the blocks one more time. The only thing that is different is that to get to this part, we'll move them in the opposite way than we did in the step one. So, let's make another additional layer, and I will just fill it with color and I will duplicate this group, and now I will duplicate this left part and I will move it up and down. So, everything is ready, once more, I'll organize the layers and finish illustrating this pattern. I will also speed this up and I'll see you in the next video where we'll talk about re-coloring and where we'll finally see this pattern in its repeat. So, see you in a bit. [Music]
8. Recoloring & Testing: Now let's see the magic of everything we worked for. At this stage, I will go back to the gallery view and I will just duplicate this canvas so I have it saved. As you can see, the layers are ordered perfectly so I can start the recoloring process. This is something I spend quite some time on. I like making different coloring options and then choosing the one that feels the best. That's also a great way to play with colors and see where it takes you. First of all, I'll select the color for the background. And this dark green that I used before looks nice. And now I can select the layer that I want to recolor. So let's do this one with a green leaves and I will go to adjustments and then click on Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. So you can see that in this way, I can change the color of the elements while having a live preview, and that's such a useful option, especially now that the whole pattern swatch is finished. So in case I want to look how it was before, I can just press with one finger on the screen and in case I want to get it back to the original color, I can just step anywhere and click reset. Basically, I'm very happy with the colors I used, but I might adjust them a bit. So let's adjust this one. Okay, so if I wanted to go with this color for the leaves right now, I also need to recolor the stems and they are in another layer. And I'll do that. I'll just select the stems and then I will hold here and click on the leaves to pick the color and I can just drop it on the stems. Just make sure that when you're dropping the color, the color threshold is 100 percent. In that way you will fill everything inside that layer. And that is the method in which you can change any color on your pattern swatch now, isn't that amazing? I'll play with these colors later, but for now, I'm very happy with how everything looks. So this is my final pattern swatch. I can use it to print my own fabric full of flower. This will look amazing on a dress or I can license it to clients. So let's test it out. As before. I'll save it as a JPEG and now I can add it. I will just drag it up and duplicate it two times. Now I can scale it to 50 percent and since my guides are on I will just quickly place it. As you can see everything fits together perfectly. I absolutely love it, and I can not wait to see what you'll make.
9. Thank you: Hi again, thank you so much for spending your time with me and watching this class. I hope you enjoyed it and learned a new method for making a dense, floral, half draft patterns in Procreate. Our little journey ends here, but where one journey ends many more begin. As always, I'll be here waiting to see your beautiful projects. Don't be shy and share what you made so that we can support and inspire each other. If you have any questions or something I was showing wasn't clear, feel free to ask anything in the discussion section of this class. To get notified about my next classes you can follow me here on Skillshare and if you want to keep in touch, you can find me on Instagram @diudji, I'm sending you lots of love and hugs, and I'll see you in the next one.