Create a Funky Abstract Pattern in Procreate using the Half Drop Repeat Technique

1. Welcome: Hello, my name is Mel Armstrong and I'd like to welcome you back for my 16th Skillshare class. I'm a professional illustrator and surface pattern designer living in Wellington, New Zealand. I illustrate children's books, novelty products, surface pattern designs, for licensing of fabric homewares, and clothing. In this class, I'm going to show you how to create a funky pattern by using simple and interesting shapes, that you can just find around the house. We will draw these shapes in procreate on the iPad, then create a half-drop repeat pattern. You can then use that pattern to apply it to products such as fabric called print-on-demand websites like Society6. If you haven't already, don't forget to follow me on Skillshare by clicking the "Follow" button up top. How about we just dive in and get started? 2. What you'll need for your project: For your class project, you'll create a set of motive shapes drawn from random objects around your house. You'll then create a half-drop repeat pattern with them. All of those will be done in Procreate on your iPad. For your project, you'll need an iPad Pro, an Apple pencil. I'm using the second-generation Apple pencil, and you will need Procreate installed. I'm using version 5X. That's it. Let's get started. 3. Finding shapes for inspiration: Before we start drawing we need some inspiration. To do this, I went around my house and found a bunch of objects with interesting shapes. I found these rocks. My son loves to collect rocks. We often go to the beach and he will discover some really cool shapes. This one here is a ruler with bumpy lines on it and I really love that shape. Shells are always interesting. I like to collect these whenever I'm out at the beach as well. This is a lid of a container and it's got this really cool spiral on it, which I think I might use. Basically just go and have a look. You go outside as well and get plants as well, flowers, leaves. They always have some interesting shapes. Anything that grabs your attention, just bring it back and have a look at them and pick out your best or your favorite shapes. Then we're going to start drawing them in Procreate. See you there. 4. How to setup your canvas: The first thing we need to do is to set up our canvas. I am going to create a 10 by 10 inch, 300 dpi canvas. We then need to go into our canvas and turn on the Drawing Guide, then click on "Edit Drawing Guide" and increase the grid size to 100 percent. That will give you the four quadrants and ensure that assisted drawing is turned off. Now, we need to fill this layer with a color. Any color will do, this is just to set up the canvas. Now, when you drag the color in, hold it down and ensure that the threshold is 100 percent. Just drag it across until it reaches 100 percent. Then let it go. This will ensure that it fills the entire canvas. We're going to duplicate that layer. Select the original layer, and ensure magnetics and snapping is turned on. We're going to drag that over to the left until it snaps, and you can see the orange line there to check that you're in the right spot and then let it go. Then go back in and select it and click on "Save and Load". Click on the "Plus" and save it as selection 1. Then click on "Invert', and click on "Save and Load" again, and edit as selection 2. Now we've got two columns, one on the left, one on the right. Next, select that original layer and drag it into the first quadrant. Now, go back into that layer and select it, click on "Save and Load" and edit as selection 3. You can then duplicate that layer. Drag it into the second quadrant. Select the layer, click on "Save and Load" and edit as selection 4. We'll duplicate that original layer. Select it and drag it into the third quadrant. Select the layer, click "Save and Load" as selection 5. Then one more time we'll duplicate that layer and drag it into the fourth quadrant. Select the layer and click on "Save and Load" and edit it as our sixth quadrant. We now have six selections; two columns, and four quadrants. These will assist us in creating our half-drop repeat. 5. Drawing the shapes: I've got all my shapes around my iPad so that they are easily accessible so that I can refer to them as I'm drawing. The first thing we need to do is just group our selections and hide them as we don't need them anymore. I'm also going to turn off the drawing guide. I've already got a palette selected and you can download that in the resources area. I'm going to use two brushes from the calligraphy brush library, the monoline brush and the script brush. But you can use whatever you like and feel comfortable with. Let us start with the squiggly line. Just create a new layer. I will have a new layer of each one of my shapes. Now, remember your shapes don't have to be perfect. This is abstract, not fine art. I'm going to place all my shapes, basically in the middle here. Make sure you don't go off the edge, otherwise it will get cut off. The good thing about abstract shapes is that you can just make them fit in nicely around each other. So they're nice and snug and keep the flow of the pattern really nice. I'm just going to group these together, just so I can move them around a bit. Then I'm just going to add a few more little dots to give it a bit more interest. I'm just going to create a background layer. So I've just created a new layer and I'm putting it at the bottom of my group and I'm going to drag this navy color in to make it my background. Then let's just add a few more dots and detail to fill in some of the gaps. I'm pretty happy with that. In the next video, we will create our half drop repeat. Let's get to it. 6. Create your half-drop repeat pattern: Before we get started, let me show you what a half drop repeat is. In a square page, the artwork is repeated along the horizontal and vertical lines. However, in a half drop per page, the horizontal repeat is staggered so that the motives are shifted half the length of the repeat, either up or down the vertical line. Half drop repeats are great for concealing the repeat within the artwork, whereas full drop repeats or square repeats, can be quite obvious to the eye. There is a place for both of these types of repeats depending on what you are designing for, but I love half drop repeats and I think they make your patterns more seamless and more appealing to the eye. To get started with our pattern, let's first duplicate our motives as we want to retain originals. With our new group, select the layer and select save and load, then selection one. You're then going to flip it. So select it, flip horizontally, then flip vertically. Then select it again, save and load selection four which is the top right quadrant, and then flip it again horizontally and vertically. Then once again, we will select, save and load selection six, and that's our last quadrant, which we'll flip horizontally and vertically as well. Now we are left with a gap in here, so we will just fill that in with our motives. We can go back into our group and copy and paste anything we want to use, and we can just adjust the size and position and squeeze it in. Now if anything's been cut off, we can just grab that from the original group. I can just copy and paste it and drag it up into my new group and then position it. Just continue doing that until you filled the gaps. I'm pretty happy with that, I'm going to select and repeat the process we did before by selecting the first selection, then flipping it horizontally and then vertically. Then, select selection four which is the top right quadrant, flip it horizontally, then vertically, and then the bottom right quadrant, which is selection six. It's starting to look pretty good, I might just fill in a few more areas. Just repeat the process until we're happy. We'll leave it there, in the next video, I will show you how we can test it and make sure that it repeats seamlessly. See you there. 7. Testing your pattern: Now, before we can use our pattern, it's a really good idea to test that it actually works and it is nice and seamless. Let's go ahead and duplicate the Canvas. In this new copy, we can delete the selection and the originals and they will flatten patent layer. Now, I'll select that. Make sure your magnetics and snapping is turned on, and then reduce the size to that first quadrant. Make a copy of that and drag it down. Then make another copy and this time we need to drag it halfway down. Let's drag it to the middle and then across, and that is your half drop repeat. Let's duplicate that one and take it up to the top. Then duplicate the middle one again and drag it down to the bottom. Then you can say that it is repeating seamlessly, that there are no lines, nothing is overlapping where it shouldn't be. This actually, this whole Canvas could be used as a standard books repeat. You could upload this to Spoonflower. Let's share it, save it as a JPEG. Let's pop over to Spoonflower and upload it and see what it looks like on the fabric. To upload it, just select the tile from your image library and confirm copyright, and then upload. In here, you see Spoonflower does have a choice between a standard block repeat or half-drop and a couple of other options but you can keep that as a standard repeat if you using the test one. Otherwise, use the half drop repeat if you're using the original half-drop tile. You play around with those settings to check how it looks on different fabric and then make sure you give it a good title and use as many tags as possible. Then you're ready to go, and that's it. You've created a half drop repeat in Procreate. 8. Final words: Thank you so much for taking my class. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it. If you loved it, please do leave a review. They really do help me, and motivate me to continue making these classes. If you have any questions, please post in the class discussion area. I check in once a week and try to answer as many questions as possible. Also, don't forget to follow me on Skillshare by clicking that follow button up top so that you'll be the first to know when I launch a new class. Finally, if you want to see what I'm up to when I'm not making Skillshare classes, hop on over to my Instagram page and follow my journey there. Thanks again for watching and learning with me. I hope to see you again soon in my class. See you. 9. BONUS: Timeplase: So in this case.