Creating Vintage Arts + Crafts Era Inspired Surface Pattern Designs in Procreate

1. Course Introduction: There is a rustic beauty and vintage floral surface pattern design and fabric from the arts and crafts era. Curling leave tendrils, wild flowers, weeds, and beautiful organic forms are a staple of the vintage prints of this era. And an incredibly inspiring, creative moment for myself and many other surface pattern designers. This month, I'm bringing you a new service pattern design course focused on the era and style. We will be creating arts and crafts inspired and stylized repeat patterns in Procreate. Hello everyone. If this is your first class with me, welcome. If you're a returning student, welcome back. I'm Jen, and I will be guiding you through this creative course. I'm a freelance graphic designer, illustrator, and educator based up in the Midwest, and I run Bella and Sophia creative studio. If you want to learn more about me, you can visit me online at www dot Ellis Sophia creative.com, and you can check out my YouTube channel, the creative studio. There. You'll get a behind the scenes view of the work that I do as a creative freelancer and educator, as well as access to a huge library of free tutorials relating to art, design and illustration. What is this class about? This month, I'm coming back with another surface pattern design course inspired by the arts and crafts era and designers like William Morris, we will be illustrating and building a repeat pattern inspired by this era using the Procreate app, Morris believed that true art came from the direct observation of nature, which he experienced firsthand and his exposure to the countryside where he lived. And in following years as you establish a wild garden and his self designed red house and Kent, this home was decorated inside and out with beautiful floral motifs. Morris also collected herbals, which are 16th century books containing accurate plant and flower studies and their medicinal properties, giving him a really extensive knowledge of botany, he utilize these everyday resources and books along with a huge dose of imagination to produce great works of design and ornamental pattern work. We will tap into this very idea by looking to nature and botanical research books to find inspiration for illustrations and motifs for patterns. We will casually but strategically explore nature, photograph it and pulled directly from those photos for own botanical illustrations. I will also share some of my favorite botanical book resources. Once we've sourced our material, we can then begin to sketch process, fine tune our illustrations, and begins to build the repeating pattern all in the Procreate app. When it comes to the skills you will learn before we jump into creating, I want to share more about the arts and crafts era, share some of the influences as well as the unique characteristics of the style when it comes to themes, composition and layout, as well as things like a typical motifs and colors, stories that you might see. Then I will walk you through my process for sourcing natural elements, how to tap into your local nature woods or even the nature you see on your walks as a source of inspiration. And then we can photograph these sources to tap for illustration inspiration as well as some great botanical focus textbooks that you can utilize. Then we will walk through translating those sources into illustrations and motifs in Procreate. That can then be translated into repeating patterns. I will share tips and how to draw motifs inspired by the arts and crafts era. How to plan your repeating pattern and how to draw a repeat using the grids and guidelines that we have access to in Procreate, we will utilize layers to work through colorizing and finalizing the motifs in Procreate. Finally, I'll walk you through my process of building the seamless repeating pattern using a template and procreate that you can use over and over again. At the end of this class, you will have the skills and knowledge to create layered arts and crafts inspired repeating patterns using inspiration that you can source right out of your own backyard. So who is this class for? This is more of an intermediate class. So in order to follow along, I suggest you have some basic knowledge and how to create patterns. But if it's your first time building your pattern in Procreate, don't fret. As I take my time walking through this part of the class is you want to have a basic understanding of pattern design. I do suggest checking out some of my other Intro to surface pattern design courses. And I'll be sure to link some of those in the course description below. So when it comes to the class project and the tools that you'll need, the tools you'll need to work through this class include an iPad, Apple pencil, or a stylus of your choice, and the Procreate app, I also suggest having access to some sort of camera. Your phone can even work through this as we go throughout nature, trying to source the botanical inspiration that you want to photograph for your class project, you will be creating one arts and crafts inspired pattern using the steps and the techniques that we're gonna go through together in this class. It can be as simple or as complicated as you would like to make it. But I will likely use multiple layers and more than one type of motif in the class example. But you can opt to have one or two layers with only a few or multiple types of motifs for your project. Make sure you check out the class resources for the course guide and template that you can reference as you work through the class. I'm really excited to create with you today. Let's get started. 2. What is the Arts + Crafts Era?: So before we get started within the creation process, let's talk more about the arts and crafts era to what is it? The founders of the arts and crafts movement, where some of the first major critics of the Industrial Revolution disenchanted with the impersonal, mechanized direction of society in the 19th century, they sought to return to a simpler, more fulfilling way of living. The movement is admired for its use of high-quality materials and forth emphasis on utility and design. The arts and crafts era emerged in the UK around 1860, but it spread across the Atlantic to the United States and the 1880s. And this enabled it to last much longer, at least well into the 1920s. When we talk about this era, we often think about the aesthetic, the arts and crafts aesthetic ride greatly depending on the media and location involved. But it was influenced most prominently by both the imagery of nature and forms of medieval art, particularly the Gothic style, which enjoyed a revival in Europe and North America during the mid 19th century. One major artists that's really well-known for his work during this time is William Morris. Who is William Morris? Well, He's a key figure in the arts and crafts movement. Morris champion of principle of hand-made production that didn't particularly believe in the Victorian era's focused on industrial progress. Morris attended Oxford University and connected with artists Edward Burne-Jones and a group of creative students known as the set. Belonging to this group gave Morrison awareness of the deep divisions in contemporary society. And it sparked his interest in trying to create an alternative to what they considered the dehumanizing industrial systems that produce poor-quality unnatural objects. After university, worse pursued work in architecture, but he showed little talent for the field and he eventually left to pursue a career as an artist. He eventually connected with artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and joined his team painting murals at the Oxford Union. In 1859, Morris married his wife Jane, and they commission architect Philip Webb to build Red House. With this home, Morris wanted to realize the idea of a craft-based artistic community that he and Burne-Jones had been talking about since they were students at university. Morrison Jane moved into red house in 160s and unhappy with what was on offer commercially, they spent the next two years furnishing and decorating the interior with help from members of their artistic circle. Huge murals and hand embroidered fabrics decorated the walls, creating a feel of a historical manor house, prompted by their success of their efforts and the experience of joy and collective labor, Morris and his friends decided in 1861 to set up their own interiors company. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and co. Everything was to be created by hand. A principle that says the company firmly against the mainstream focused on industrialized progress. Initially specialize in the wall paintings and embroidered hangings that had been produced just for red house. That house can now be visited as a museum in the UK. And you can still explore the gardens and be amazed and inspired by the interiors. In the late 1880s, William was busy producing his first wallpapers whose designs were inspired by English gardens and hedgerows. To make them he researched and revived historical printing and dyeing methods. This insistence on establishing off from scratch understanding of process was to become a hallmark of Morris's career and overall design work. 3. Characteristics of the Arts and Crafts Era Pt. 1: So now that we understand a bit more about the history and a little bit more about William Morris, who is most famous for his arts and crafts. Aristotle patterns. Keep in mind that there are other artists that are quite famous, but he's one of the hallmark people that kind of move this forward. Now I want to talk about the characteristics of the arts and crafts. Aristotle pattern. The arts and crafts movement did not promote a particular style, but the communist static emphasized nature and simplicity of form. The dance precisely interlocking patterns were very prominent. And they use curved or exaggerated forms of plants, flora and fauna. And all of this became a hallmark of morrison companies fabric and wallpaper and a lot of the other designers that you'll see in this era. The relationship between craftsmen and object was a key idea of the arts and crafts movement. To this end, they promoted and celebrated activities such as woodcarving, block printing and even embroidery. And even though the first wallpaper printing machine was patented in 1839, William Morris continued to have his wallpaper printed the traditional way. He used carve wood blocks to print on long rolls of paper, which were then hung to dry before the next color could be printed on top. Obviously, in this class we're gonna be using technology to create a work. But we'll want to keep these ideas in mind as we attempt to translate some of these concepts into the digital format when it comes to the themes and typical motifs of arts and crafts era, you'll want to look to nature. The designs, motifs, and patterns are often inspired nature, but in a simplified manner. You're likely to see beautiful blooms characteristic of an English garden. Column binds roses, pansies, corn flours, lavender. With some designers opting for more intricate flowers arranged in a highly stylized formation. You'll also see leaf forms, plant life, branches, and curling stems. But they're not hyper-realistic. Most of them are simplified and just brought down to the general character of what these items look like in the real-world. The arts and crafts movement borrowed inspirations from a variety of different places. One was from medieval art, especially the Gothic and the Celtic. Japanese art also focused for its linear quality and the flattened sense of space and form. Islamic art inspired the movement as well with its ornament and pattern surfaces. When it comes to composition and layout of the arts and crafts error patterns, you'll often see trailing style, floral elements within a lot of these patterns. Serpentine, scrolled, reflected and geometric style patterns. When it comes to the composition, it could vary. You might see more simple, Sparse, a little bit more minimalistic feeling layouts. Or you can see more of an all over print that is very dynamic and has a foreground and a background. And then you'll also likely see simple filler style prints. This is often utilized behind more strong hero style motifs within patterns. They might be in single colors, very simple linework, just elements to fill in space. While it was inspired by simplified nature, the patterns themselves were not always simple. Now when we talk about color stories found in the arts and crafts era patterns, often this aesthetic is inspired by nature and then extended into the color palettes. The interiors of the red house, for example, are really great in terms of showcasing the types of color used in this era. There were warm, rich, earthy tones that were favored by the craftsmen of this style. Colors that would essentially complement the beauty of natural wood. You'll also sometimes see contrasting key motifs, often unmuted and rather moody backgrounds. Many of the colors were natural tones, deep greens, Brown's rich, reddish terracotta has similar earth tones, colours like cream terracotta, mustard, yellow, olive green, and a deep crimson are often used. 4. Characteristics of the Arts and Crafts Era Pt. 2: It's also really important to note that much of the stylizing that we see in the arts and crafts era surface. Petrarch is directly inspired by Islamic art. Islamic art is an all encompassing term, often used to describe historical examples of arts and artifacts and even architecture related to the Islamic world. And a lot of cases, these were produced in parts of the world where Islam was or is the dominant faith. Islamic art span many centuries and it continues even to this day in all parts of the world. Places like Turkey, Spain, Morocco, Syria, and Pakistan still hold some beautiful examples of historical sites, monuments, and working mosques covered in beautiful patterns are really great example of this is the ethnic ceramics that were produced during the 15th through 17th centuries during the height of the Ottoman Empire, the name of these ceramics was taken directly from the city where they were produced. In addition to beautifully shaped ornamental jugs, vases, bowls, plates, towels were actually produced to decorate the interiors of mosques and other really important buildings. And you see a lot of beautiful symmetrical design done on these, alongside stylized flowers. The three main elements that make up this visual culture are decorative geometry, floral motifs, and Arabic calligraphy. You will often see arts and crafts era designers and artists pulling inspiration directly from these cultural influences. And I think it's really important to note this from the scrolling floral branches and binds to the symmetry that we see in the compositions and even in the more simplified background motifs that support some of the hero imagery within the designs themselves. 5. Tips for Sourcing Inspiration Outdoors: Sourcing visuals for surface pattern design is a vital step in the creation process. As we're working with the arts and crafts, era. Flowers, leaves and branches and small creatures like birds, are a staple for this type of surface pattern design imagery. When sourcing imagery, I like to think about what kind of tone and feeling I'm trying to convey. And it keep that in mind when I set out on my photo taking adventure. I also like to keep in mind who I'm designing for. Is this going to be a sophisticated living room wallpaper? Or am I creating a pattern for something like a nursery? I like to imagine what it might look like and how it will be used. This helps me keep in mind motif, elements, scale, and colors that I might use. Before I head out, I prepare myself by grabbing my camera or phone. And then I set out on my outdoor sourcing adventure. You can make a list of items you would like to photograph before you set out. This can guide you. But I also like to not limit myself when I'm going outdoors. For this project. In particular, I decided to explore some local gardens in my area. This particular park can technique has a wide variety of plants, trees and flowers all throughout the gardens. So I didn't make a list as I had a feeling. I would have a huge variety of items to photograph. I was not disappointed. The park had a huge variety of display gardens, rose gardens. And so much more. My focus for pulling inspiration for this course was to get as many photos taken as possible before it got too hot, I made it a point to take photos of flowers, plants, leaves, and branches and all kinds of different angles to ensure that there was a variety close-ups to further away in different angles like side views, top view, front and back view all help to add depth to your drawings when you're creating your surface pattern design. As I explored, I focused on seeing how the plants and flowers arrangements work together so I could keep that in mind when I created my own designs. I was also pleasantly surprised when I stumble across their liberty heck creatures of the dream world exhibit. If you saw the film cocoa, you might remember the algebra has featured a liberty here. Go back to 1936. That's when a 30-year-old Mexican city artist named Beverly notice had a strange but inspiring fever dream. After becoming ill. The dream he's walking in a forest when he encounters amalgamations of colorful creatures that speak to him saying, I liberty has a library. A library has a total of 40. Olivary has run exhibit created by six established artists from Mexico City. There are 18 large ones and 30 smaller sculptures. I made sure to capture the exhibit as well in order to save for future reference and inspiration for other projects. Once I got in as many photos as I could, as well as some fun videos and different shots on my phone as well as my point and shoot camera. I was ready to head home, download all of those images onto my iPad and begin the drawing process. 6. Tips for Sourcing Inspiration in Books: So in addition to sourcing your visuals, your imagery, flowers, plants, things like that in the outdoor setting. I also like to utilize resources, textbook resources, and they type book resources, go into the library and going through the gardening section is a great way to go about finding books relating to plants and flowers. Whether it's how to cultivate them or learning more about them. Taniqua is a huge illustrated book that features over 10 thousand garden plants and how to cultivate them. If there was one textbook or book that I suggest you get, it would be something like this because you have such a wide variety of different flower types, plants and things like that within this book. So you can reference it multiple times for different projects. And it's just a fantastic resource that you can utilize to tap into all the different kinds of plants that you could find all throughout the world, essentially organized by type. And then there's information on how to take care of them, grow them, harvest them, things like that. Obviously, we like this war is because of the beautiful imagery and the ability to use this resource as reference when drawing our plants and flowers just makes it easier for me at least to have one big book versus multiple other books. But obviously, I also make it a point to go to the library to research preferences. I go to the Internet and utilize things like Pinterest. But the book that I really wanted to highlight and share today was this book here, just because of the breadth and width of the amount of information that you can find in it in terms of different plants and flowers. And they even talk about certain kinds of trees and things like that. So it's just a really great resource that you can utilize when you are working on your surface repeats and the drawing and illustrations and sketches in terms of the floral pieces and elements that you'll want to use for your motifs. Within the arts and crafts inspired Prince. 7. From Inspiration to Sketches: Now that we've gone out, we've pulled together some visual imagery for our inspiration out in nature, we'll wanna do is transfer all those photos from something like your phone to your iPad. Personally, I like to utilize the AirDrop function because it's just quicker for me. Go into my phone, hit Select, and then select all the images with the floral photos that I've taken that I liked. Then once I've selected them, I'm going to hit the little arrow button in the lower left-hand corner and it's gonna give me this pop-up. And then I can select AirDrop, and then I can AirDrop to whatever device I'm working with. So I have my iPad and my computer connected. So in this case I'm just going to select my iPad. And then it's going to AirDrop it automatically from a phone to my iPad. And then I'll hit Done. And then you'll see the images will pop up. And now I can utilize these images as a reference when I'm working on my sketching phase. Now that I have all my images loaded onto my iPad in terms of my reference photos, I like to do is do a side-by-side view of my images in my Procreate app so that I can sketch. So I'm going to pull up from my bottom dock. And then I'm going to select my Procreate app here, my tap on it. I'm going to bring it up so that it goes right next to my Images. And this way I can get a side-by-side view. And I can zoom in and utilize this kind of setup for my sketching, but I can also do something else if you want to have more room. To close this, all I'm gonna do is take my finger and drag on the in-between section between the Procreate app and between my images here. And just drag it to the right to remove my images and just keep Procreate open. I'm gonna go into my stack where I have some files already set up. I'm going to just select this plus icon, and I am going to just create a basic 8.5 by 11 sheet that I would use to sketch at 300 DPI. I'm going to select this one that I already have set up. But if you don't have one like this, you can just create a new canvas by selecting this little plus icon in the upper right-hand corner. So I'm going to tap on that and it's gonna give me my untitled new canvas options set up. So I'm just going to make sure I have everything in inches. And I'm gonna change this to 8.5 inches by 11 inches, 300 dpi hit Done, and then just hit Create. And this will give me a page that I can work with. Just for basic sketches. We don't have to worry about our tile just yet for setting up the file. This is just to kinda get our ideas down. So instead of doing that side-by-side view, if you prefer to use your full-screen for your sketching. Well, you can also do is add a reference image. So if you go into your wrench icon here and you select Canvas and you turn on reference. You'll be able to add a reference photo that kinda like a hover, hover window. You can kind of move throughout your screen. Once you've added that reference. And what you need to do then is pull up an image so you can select Image and then import an image. You'll get this pop-up and then you can import the picture of whatever element that you're trying to sketch. So I'm just going to select these little daisies. You can zoom in by pinching out. And then you can zoom out by pinching in and move this around as well. So I'm just going to pull this to the side and I'm going to select my first layer and then use this as just a place to sketch out some concepts or motif elements that I'd like. A lot of what you'll see in the traditional arts and crafts include floral elements, leafs. And often the florals will be the centerpiece and then the leaves and stems will be part of that background. Whereas you'll see the floral pieces, the bigger elements, things like birds and stuff like that in your foreground. So I'm going to just start by sketching some of these floral pieces that I have. What's nice is that you can utilize the shape features. So I'm going to just start with a circle, hold my pen down, and then it will automatically snap it into a shape with my finger down. And then it will transform it into a perfect circle. So basically if we look at this flower, it's just, you have a wider circumference and then a smaller circle in the center. And then you start to see the leaves pulling out from that center piece. So I'm going to use this as a way to like create my shapes, all of that flower and then add in the little details. I want to move something. I can utilize my selection tool. I'll tap on that selection. I can select it on the piece that I want to move. Then select my move tool or my transform tool. And then I can re-size this shape and then I can also move it around. All right, once I've done that, then I can start to build out the leaves. So these are thinner leaves that come out from the center and they have pointed ends. Remember, this is just sketching, so it doesn't have to be perfect because we can always clean it up afterwards. Remember with the arts and crafts form, you don't want this to be an exact replica of what you're seeing in nature. You want us to be close, but obviously it's stylized and that's done for a reason. Once you're done with the overall shape, then you can go in and fine-tune, erase any elements that you no longer need. So in this case, I'm just going to go select my eraser tool and then erase the outermost part of the circle that I no longer need. And you erase anywhere where it overlaps. Once I'm done cleaning up the outside, then I can go in and add in more detail to the center area as well. This really just looks like a bunch of smaller circles that make up the inside of the flower. Again, this doesn't have to be perfect. You want it to feel stylized and loose. Once I'm done with that, I can move on to the next image. So if I want to escape out of this, this image, all I have to do is tap on it. Then I can select Clear. And then I can just tap on import and find the next image that I want to import for this. Then again, I can zoom in and begin my sketch process once more. What I like to do is go into my layers functions here, tap on layers, hit the plus icon and then set up a new layer for the new flower that I'm working with. Just to make it easier when I transfer all of these into my repeat pattern tile, when I start to clean up and finalize my motifs and things like that, I can rename this layer as well. So I'll tap on the layer and then select Rename, and then I'll name it something like Daisy because I believe that's what these are. And then do the same thing for the next few layers. So I'm going to start this next sketch. Zoom in. Start with this same process. This is a circle and then what you'll notice is that as overlapping petals and then that center as well. So just kinda keep that shape in mind as I'm creating with my brush. I'm just using the six B pencil that it just gives me a nice kind of sketch really feel to my images. And I use this before I clean anything up within my sketches here. What you'll notice with this flower, the petals closer to the center of the flower are shorter than the petals that you see behind. So it kind of creates this radiated layered effect. Then as I add petals behind it, I'm just going to lengthen them. And some of them you'll notice are doubled up as well behind these petals. Then I'll just continue to build on this layering effect as I go. Then once again, I'll go in and I'll use my eraser tool and erase anything that is not needed. Instead of circles. These centerpieces look more oblong war, cylindrical in their shape. So that's how I'm going to draw them without putting too much thought into it. And then there also seems to be little stems that kind of go towards the center from some of these. Right? Then I'll continue this for any other additional flower arrangements that I want to create. Then we can jump into looking at some other elements like stems and leaves. For these pieces. Now that we have some floral elements drawn, let's just start to add in some more of the branches and then we'll play around with leaves as well. So I like to do is create a new layer underneath everything that I could add in these additional stems and branches and things like that. So I'm just gonna do some really simple kind of S curves. And then we can add leaves to this. So I'm going to start with this flower and then I'm just going to add a really simple S curve. And then I can begin to build out the shape of the stem here. And then we can add things like leaves and stuff like that. I like to add these curves in order to kind of help me flesh out the shape of the stem because it just makes it a bit easier. And then I can always go in and erase that center area and thin out the stem if needed. And the ideas that we're building on top of these shapes. You don't have to be super complex. We can overlap and add as we're working through them and building out our pattern. You can also build in multiples as well. It doesn't just have to be one stem. Could be that some of these stems are overlapping and building on each other in the natural elements. And what's nice is that we can overlap shapes and then utilize the eraser tool to clean up those bits and pieces. And it just gives a little bit more personality. I like the idea of incorporating multiples. And then we can always add in additional things like leaves to these areas or more flowers and things like that. I can even go into my layers here, go to that original flower here, duplicate it. I can duplicate the flower by tapping on it, swiping left on it, and then swiping duplicate. And then I can take my move tool, that arrow tool, the upper left-hand corner, tap on it and it'll allow me to move this flower and then even re-size it, rotate it. We can build off of this piece here and connect the pieces with the additional branches that we're adding. I'd just like to work in different layers just to make it a bit easier for me. In case I mess something up or I want to change something. I don't have to worry about any of that being on the same layers as the floral pieces that I've drawn. It allows me to just keep things separate and then I can go in and edit and revise as needed. So just, I like the idea of keeping the layers separate. But what's nice, like I said, is we can always condensed these layers down and flatten them so that they're all on the same plane. But because we're working in a different file than what our repeat pattern will be. Often find that it's helpful to keep these pieces separated. Once you've added those stems, whether you can go through now is start to play around with the leaves. You can make your stems as simple or as complex as you'd like. I'm going to keep these really simple, but some, you'll see in some of the themes of the motifs, a lot of these stems might have dots around them and little detailed elements. Just to add to the personality and the effect of the arts and crafts era style. But for now, I'm going to keep these relatively simple. And if I want to add some more details, we can always do that when we're working in the beginning phases of the building, the actual pattern. But for now I'm going to keep this really simple. Then I'm going to start to add some leaves to them. There's all kinds of leaves. We can add lobe leaves, more almond shaped leaves. What I like to do really quickly is go into our photos and reference some of the leaves that we might find from our artwork. So these are some really simple, pretty low believes that we can utilize that shape in the motifs that we're working with. These are just some generic kind of like almond shape leaves with a bit of texture on the edges. Here are some more simple shape loose, but if you zoom in, you can see the edges are quite jagged on this. These are some more white shaped leaves with multiple lobes, but they're a bit flatter. Then we can also just go back to those original photos to see what leaves were coordinated with the original images. So if we look at this, it's more of an almond shape but with jagged edges. So we can just utilize this as reference for where we're going to play. So where we're going to place leaves and what their shape will be. So I'll go back into my sketch. So I'm going to create a new layer. I'm going to go into my layer studio, select the plus, create a new layer. Then I'm going to rename these really quick just so that I know what I'm working on. I'm going to tap where it says layer sex, rename it to leaves. I'm gonna go to Layer three, rename it to flour three, and then go into my daisies. I'm going to rename this one daisy large and the other one daisy small, just so that I can of, keep track of what the elements are within these layers and then rename this one flower too. And then I'll go into my stem layer, tap on it, select Rename, then just rename it to stems. And then I'll go back to my leaves area and I can begin drawing the leaves. So again, if you want to utilize that reference folder, you can just go into your wrench icon, go into Canvas, turn on reference, and then tap where it says image and select Import. If you have an image there, you can just clear it and then select Import Image. And then I'm going to find the photo with the leaves and these little daisies. I'll zoom in so I can see what I'm working with. And then I'll start to add some of these into this drawing here, making sure I'm on the right layer and I am, I can begin drawing. I like to utilize again curved lines, shapes to start me off. Then I can build the shape of the leaf around it. And then when we're looking at these, a lot of these seem to be kind of like curving upwards. So I'm going to keep that in mind as I draw my direction line. So it's kinda curved upwards. And then we're drawing the curvature of the almond shape around it. Starting at a point, thickening and then sending out at the other side of the point. On. Then I'm gonna go in and add bits of jagged line. And again, it doesn't have to be exactly the same, doesn't want to have the personality of the leaf show through. This is also why I like working digitally. I don't have to worry too much about eraser marks because I can just go in and clean up any of the areas that I don't want. And it just kinda makes the drawing process a bit easier. Then I like to add some of these leaves to the inside shapes as well. Not just the outside of the shape, but also the inside of the overall drawing. Once I get that general shape, I can begin to add the little t here that you see within those jagged edges. I'm going to just add them to the edge of the overall almond shape and then go in and erase the parts that I don't need. The line work on the inside. So once I've done that, I'll select my eraser tool. I'll zoom in and I'll clean up the line work and remove any lines that are not necessary. Alright, so once I've created these, I can go back through and add any additional elements that I need for any of these other flowers. So again, I'll use that movement line to create the shape that I want. And then I'll build, build out a skeleton and add where the veins might be. Then I can use this skeleton to build out an ad lobes. If I need to, I can always go into the stems and erase or adjust the size of them so that I can fit more of these larger leave elements to this. Once I've added those in, I liked their placement than what we can do is begin to finalize these details and start pulling these drawings and motifs into our repeat pattern tile. 8. Prepping Sketches for Use in Repeat Tile: So once you're done with the overall drawings and I'm happy with the placement and the overall details. I can start to flatten these, but still keeps certain elements separate. So what I'm gonna do is select my stems and leaves and my layers palette. I'm going to tap on stems, Flip Writer class leaves, and then I'm going to select group. And then I'm just going to flatten them. Then I'm going to take these stems and move this layer so that it goes right below the original three flowers with the daisies that I drew. And I'm going to select the stems. Swipe right across Daisy, large Daisy spawn flour two. And then again, I'm going to group them by slept in group. And then I'm going to tap on the image or all the layers are. And then, then, and then I'm just going to select flat and it's gonna give me two groupings. This smaller flower in the upper right-hand corner here. And then the two flowers here. But what's nice is that you can always utilize your selection tool, direct select any element within this. Then our background layer, of course, is still separate. And if you notice anything, you could always go in and clean that up. Again, what we're gonna do really is just utilize these as our base and then clean them up by drawing over them and then finalizing our colors and things like that. So our sketches are now complete and we can begin moving them into our actual pattern tile and start the whole coloring and finalizing process. 9. Setting Up Your File: Now that we have our sketches done for our main motifs, Let's go in to our gallery and begin to set up our file for our repeat template. And then we can take these sketches and finalize them in the template and then begin to build out the repeating pattern. I'm gonna go onto gallery, and then I'm going to hit this little plus icon in the upper right-hand corner. And I'm going to set up a new canvas by clicking on that other Plus icon that is in the black rectangle. For this particular file, I'm going to set this up at 4 thousand by 4 thousand pixels at 300 DPI. We're going to want to do a square shape because I'm going to do a straight repeat. And then hit Done, and then select the orange button up top and select Create. So this is what our file is going to look like. 10. Setting up the Actions Template: Now what we wanna do is build out our template before we start, before we start adding anything to our art board here. So essentially, I'm going to go back onto gallery because I have an example that I want to show you first. Essentially when we're doing a straight repeat, the setup is basically like this. Whatever is going to be at the top of your square has to match in the exact same place at the bottom. Whatever's on the left side of your square has to match in the exact same place. On the right-hand side. This is basically how we build that repeating seamless tile. You have to be careful with these because they can be a little bit easier to see where that repeat starts and ends. There are some other options that you could utilize, but for this class we're just going to keep it with the basic straight repeat. But there's also the half-drop repeat, which is a little bit more complicated. We're basically dropping our repeat down by a half. So in this case, your seams are going to match up at the top and bottom just like in that straight repeat. Whatever's at the top has to be in the exact same place at the bottom. But whatever is in your lower left quadrant of your square will match up with whatever's in your upper right quadrant. So basically you're dropping your tile by half of its actual measurements. These are a little bit better in terms of not being able to see that repeat seem a little bit easier. But just for the sake of ease for this class, since we're dealing with complicated motifs, I wanted to just keep us within the straight repeat pattern. But if you're interested in something like that, I do have some other classes that I will share in the description box of the class that show you how to work with half drop patterns as well as rectangular patterns instead of square shapes as well. And then I also have some on YouTube as well. So this, this little sample here is from one of my YouTube videos where I kind of walked through that process. But for now, we're going to stick with this straight repeat just to make it a little bit easier as we're working with setting up this reusable template. I'm gonna go back out into gallery. And then I'm going to select my new operator. I'm actually going to rename this arts and crafts one. And you could also name it like a template if you'd like, so that you know, you can reuse this template over and over. Once I'm done renaming, I can just tap on the blank icon and it'll bring me to my art boards. What we're gonna do is set up a template that allows us to create the repeat, the seamless repeat really easily. And it also saves us in terms of layers. So to begin this process, what we're gonna do is go into your color wheel and update the color to something that's easy to see. And we're going to start to build out our quadrants using this save and load function. So it's basically like a action that is already saved and loaded, loaded into the system that we can reuse over and over again. We're going to basically draw or pull our elements or motifs in the center of our art board here. And then using the save and load actions, we're then gonna be able to transform them so that they go out into the corners and the edges. And then we fill in the center kind of similar to the affine function that you might see in something like Affinity Photo or Photoshop. But we're doing it manually. So once we've updated our color wheel, we're going to drag and drop it into our art board here. And then what we wanna do is go into our, go into our transform tool here, a little arrow tool. And before we do anything, we're going to turn on snapping and we want to make sure magnetics and snapping is turned on. Distance from velocity are both at max that we can tap out of that. I'm gonna make this a little smaller so you can see what I'm doing. For this first quadrant. We're going to take our corner, pull it in so that it's basically in one-quarter of our square here. So there'll be 2 thousand by 2 thousand pixels. Once you're done with that, we're going to go back into our layers here. Select the layer, select the icon in that first layer that we've just transformed. You'll get this pop up and what we wanna do is click on Select. And then we're gonna go to this bottom pop up and you'll see a heart icon that says save and load. So we're going to save and load it by tapping on it and then hitting this plus icon in our selections, and this is gonna be selection one. Then we can just tap on our selection icon here to de-select everything. I have a layer in here to show you how this is going to work. It's not exact, but basically our square tiles basically cut in half lengthwise and then width wise. And you'll see four quadrants, 1234. And what we wanna do basically is create a transformation for each of these four quadrants. And then we'll be able to move forward and build out the repeat from there. Once we've added our first selection, you can just go into that layer for you. It'll be layer one for me It's layer-2 because they have that little example showing how the tile is split in half. What you'll wanna do is tap on your image icon here within that layer. And then just select Clear. Go back to our color picker, drag and drop color into our shape. Select our transform tool that round that. And we're going to drag from the lower right-hand corner up to our second quadrant. So we already did this first one. Now we're doing the top one. And what's nice is with snapping and magnetics turned on, you'll get these crosshairs and you'll know you're in the exact place that you need to be. When your width and height pops up and says 2 thousand by 2 thousand or whatever size parameters you may have been using in your file here. And also because you'll see a yellow cross-hair and then you'll see these diagonal blue lines. Then you can release it. And then we're gonna go into our layers. Again, select the little image icon with the color. Tap on, Select in this pop-up at the very bottom. So let's save and load and then hit the plus so that this loads this to your next election that's gonna be selection to. You can tap on your selection icon to de-select, go into your layers, tap on the color icon and then hit Clear. Go back into your color picker here, drag and drop into your square, and then select your transform tool. And this time we're going to bring it from the lower left hand to the upper right hand and will be in our third quadrant, you'll see the double cross hairs pop up and you'll see the width is at 2 thousand by 2 thousand. So you are in the exact quadrants that you need to be. Then you can just release your selection. Then we can go into our Layers, tap on your color icon and then tap on Select. And then you'll get this pop up, hit, save and load. Select your plus icon. That'll be your third selection. And then tap on your selection icon in the upper left-hand corner to deselect everything. Go into your layers, clear this out once more, and then drag and drop your color into your square again. And then this will be our final transformations. Select your transform tool, that little arrow bag from the upper left-hand corner down to the lower right hand corner. And this is gonna be your fourth and final quadrant. Release it and then go into your layers options. Tap on that little icon there. Click on Select. You'll get your pop-up, tap on save and load, then hit the plus icon and you'll get your fourth selection. Now you can go into this layer and delete it or clear it, whatever you want. So before we pull in any of our new elements, I want to quickly show you how this works. Basically, we're gonna be creating or artwork the center of this tile without touching up going over any of the edges. This is really important. So I'm just going to create a simple Polka dot for now. And then I'm going to fill it. And what we'll do is work through those transformations that we just created. So with that new layer selected that I just filled, I'm going to turn on this little example icon so you can kinda see we have the four quadrants. And basically what we're gonna do is take these elements and transform them so that they go out to the edges and then we fill the center. So I'm gonna go into my layers. I'm going to add a new layer because this is a very important part of this, we have to have a layer of color underneath our motif elements. So in this case, I added a new layer and I'm just going to drag and drop color into that layer. And I'm going to group these layers so the background color here. And then I'm going to drag right over, over the polka dot layer and I'm going to select Group. Then I'm just going to rename this pattern task. Now with that Grouped layer selected in blue, what we'll do is tap on our selection icon in the upper left-hand corner. And then you'll get this pop up. And you'll see that save and load icon option again, we're going to tap on save and load. And then what we're gonna do is select that first selection. And then we're going to tap on our transform tool, which is the arrow. And then you'll see that first selection is selected and then you'll want to flip horizontally and then Philip vertically. What this does is bring everything to our edges. Now we're going to repeat this process again, making sure that layer group is still selected. Tap on your selection icon, you'll get this popup, tap on save and load. And then we'll tap on selection to then tap on your transform tool and then select flip horizontal, flip vertical. And then we'll repeat this process for the next two. Tap on your selection tool, tap on save and load. Hit Selection three, tap on your transform tool, flip horizontal, flip vertical. And then tap on your selection tool to deselect and then tap on that selection tool once more. Tap on save and load, hit selection for tap on your transform tool and then flip horizontal, flip vertical. And what it's done is basically brought everything to her edges, is creating our seamless pattern. And then we'll, we'll wanna do is fill out the center. So I'll go back in making sure I'm on my layer where I drew the poke it out. You could also make copies of the original. So you always have that original that you can copy and paste. And that's what we'll do when we're building the more complex elements. But just for the sake of being able to show the example, I'm just going to edit as is. Once I've done that, I'm going to go onto the layer that had the poco dots and then I'm just going to fill in my center. And now we've created essentially a seamless pattern. So what we could do now is test this. I'm going to minimize this layer group. I'm going to duplicate it by swiping left and selecting Duplicate. I'm going to take this first one, turn it off by tapping on that little checkmark box and it'll turn off the layer group so you can no longer see it. And then this new duplicated version of the layer group, I'm going to merge it so that it's just one flat file. So I'm going to tap on the little image icon, select flatten. And then I'm going to make three more copies of this. So we have four total. So I'm just going to drag left and then hit duplicate and do this until I have four total pieces. And now we're going to piece it together like a puzzle. So we'll take that first layer, the second layer, the third layer, we're just going to turn them all off. And then we're gonna pick our fourth layer. Then I'm going to tap on the transform tool, that little arrow. And then I'm going to drag this down into my first quadrant and then go back into my layers, turn on the next one, then drag it into my next quadrant. And then repeat this process for the next two layers, go into the next layer, turn it on, tap on the transform arrow, drag it up to my third quadrant and then go into my final layer, turn it on, select my transform tool so I can resize it and then drag it down to my fourth quadrant. And we've created a repeating, seamless pattern that we can reuse over and over again. And what's nice is that typically when you're creating these transformations, you have to create whole new layer. But because we're able to utilize the trends, were able to utilize those save and load actions. We can basically make those transformations really easily without having to add additional layers. This is how the process works. Now what we'll wanna do is build on top of this. We've already saved and load all of our actions. We can select all of these layers and just delete them. We can now begin to pull in our motif elements. So we have our file setup, we have our actions created. Now it's time to bring those sketches and start to finalize them and build out our repeat. 11. Finalizing Your Motif Sketches: Now that we have our sketches done, we wanna do is pull these sketches into our template. And then we can start to refine them. In order to take these, we'll wanna do is copy all of the elements. So what I like to do first is go into my layers, de-select my background color so that I just have the drawings. And then I'll take three fingers and swipe down and I'll get this pop up and I want to select Copy All and then go out into my gallery, select my arts and crafts template that I created. And then I'm going to take three fingers swipe down. And then I'm going to select Paste. And it will paste all of my elements on here. And then what's nice is I can just resize this as I need because this is just the sketch, so I don't have to have it. Perfect. And I can just pull whatever elements I want as well. So in this case, I think I'm just going to use this to peace flower. Then we can add in some additional background elements as we work on this. So what I'm gonna do though is re-size this. I don't want this to be too big because I wanted to fit two so that I can create a reflected views similar to some of the arts and crafts Aristotle patterns that we've seen in the example. So I'm just going to resize it so that I can fit two of these in the center of my layout without it going over the corners. Once I've done that, I can then use my selection tool and select around all of the elements that I don't want. And then with that selected, I can then go into my eraser icon and then I can just increase the size of the eraser that I have. And then just erase the elements that I don't want. This is why I like to sketch in a different file just so that I have access to those original sketches later on that I utilize a selection to erase here because I can kinda be sloppy and fast with my eraser without worrying about erasing elements from the piece that I did want. So that's why I just selected around the elements that I wanted to remove. Alright, once I've done that, I can just tap on my selection tool. And then I can tap on my move tool here and just adjust the placement. And then what we'll do is clean this sketch up and outline it. And then we can copy that and flip it so that we'll have two here. So in order to do this now, we have our sketch layer. I'm gonna go into my layers here and I'm going to select the plus icon to add a new layer on top. I'm gonna go to this original layer. I'm going to tap on the N and I'm going to bring this down so that I can bring the opacity down just a bit. Then I'll go into my new layer and this will be my final revised sketch. So I'm going to go into my recent brushes and I'm going to select my smooth line work brush because I like the way this one looks. I'm going to update my color wheel so that it is a darker blue using the color palette that I've created and we'll go through that later. Then I'm just gonna kinda see if I like the size of this or if I need to resize it down. But I think this works. So I'm going to zoom in by taking my fingers, putting them on the screen and pinching out and it will zoom in. And if you want to zoom out, you can just pinch in to zoom out. So I like to just see it close so that I can follow my lines as closely as they can. This is similar to what you might do if you were vectorizing. I tried to use a brush with a nice clean line just to make this process easier. If you want to have more of a sketchy feel, you can use a brush that gives you that, that's the beauty of working in a raster based program. But I want this to feel really clean and easy to fill in in terms of my coloring process. So I'm going to close my shapes off completely and I'm going to use a nice clean, bolder line. So just keeping in mind where everything is, I'm basically just tracing over my original sketch to clean it up. I'm going to close off these lines by basically creating an outline within the center of the flower to ensure that all of my lines for my petals are closed. And then I can go in and add the detail work for all the little seeds. Now that I've closed those up, I can go in and add the seeds. Once we're done outlining everything, we can go into our layers and we can uncheck mark our original sketch layer to turn it off. And then we can zoom in just so we can see what this final cleaned up version looks like. I think this looks great. There's nothing out of the ordinary with it. So I'm just going to go into that sketch layer and delete it for now just to save me some layers since I no longer need it. So I'm going to swipe left and then I'm going to select Delete. And then this new layer I'm going to tap where it says layer two and I'm going to select, rename it, and I'm just going to name it linework. And then I'm going to create a few other layers underneath it so that I can group them all together and create a folder with just my pattern motif elements. So I'm going to duplicate this line work by swiping left and then selecting Duplicate. And then I'm going to zoom out a bit so you can see what I'm doing here. So since I duplicated it, I'm going to select my arrow tool. And then this pop-up, my Transform options will come up. And then I'm just going to select Flip Horizontal. And then I'm going to drag this over to the right and then create this mirrored effect here. So it's fine if things are overlapping for right now, I'm going to go into the other line work file. And then I'm going to select my transform tool and I'm going to drag it over to the right just a bit. And then I'm going to select both of them by tapping on the first one and then dragging and selecting the next one. And then I'm going to tap on my transform arrow once again. And I'm going to center this kind of like in the middle. What I wanna do is go in and clean up some of this line work to remove wherever the overlap is. I'm gonna I'm gonna go into the right side. Just to delineate the two. I'm going to rename line work, one to linework, right. Then the other one above it, linework left. So I know which is which. So tap on my merch and then select Rename and the pop-up and then just add left this. Now that I've done that, before, I clean up the overlaps, as you can see, there's a bunch of overlapping. For I do that. I'm going to turn on my grids just to kind of give me some additional leeway in terms of placement. And it'll allow me to kind of eyeball placement a little bit better. So I'm gonna go into my actions options here. It looks like a little wrench icon. I'm going to select Canvas. And then what I wanna do is turn on my drawing guide and then I'm going to select Edit Drawing Guide. And I'm just going to increase the thickness of it just so they can see it a little bit more. I'm gonna go into my grid size and I'm going to increase these just a bit as well to about 289 pixels. And then I'm going to adjust the color of the grid just to make it easier to see. So I'm going to select kind of like a pinkish color just to make it easier to see. And I'm going to adjust the thickness just a little bit more so it's easier for you all to see on screen. And then I'm going to hit Done. Alright? Now if we zoom in, you should be able to see my grid lines just a bit, but this will help me with placement as well. So I'm going to select line work left, swipe right on my right, and then select my transform tool and move this around in terms of my placement so that I have it more or less centered. But then these lines can also help me with placement of other additional elements that I might be adding after we do the transformation, after we add color and things like that. So once I've done that, I'm gonna go into linework, right? And I'm gonna delete, erase some of this overlap here. So I'm going to select my eraser tool. Then I'm going to zoom in. I'm gonna make sure I have a thinner eraser tool. I'm going to select this model line. And then I'm just going to adjust the size just a bit. And then I'm going to zoom in and start to erase elements that I don't want to have. And it makes the overlap look more realistic because it's onto different layers, even though erasing over the left-hand side, it's not going to erase any of that artwork on the left side. It's just the artwork that I have on the right. 12. Creating Color Palettes: Now that I'm done erasing all the elements that were overlapping that I didn't want to overlap. We can begin the coloring process so I like to color before I transform. It just makes it easier for me to see what I'm doing. Um, and then I'll be able to build off of this base as I move forward to color. I've created a color palette and I'll share that in the resource guide. But what I did was find some inspiration from traditional arts and crafts patterns by designers like William Morris and pull some of those colors into my color palette. So to do that really quickly. So the easiest way for me to do this is go into my color. We'll select the plus icon to create a new palette. And we're going to create a new palette from photos. So we're going to select that one. I'm going to go down too. One of the images that I pulled from my research. And I'm going to tap on that photo. And what you'll find is that it creates a whole new palette based on that photo that I can then pull color from directly within this. Or you could always go in and manually add in your colors as well by going into your palettes. Then you could also go into your actions icon here, turn on your references, pull an image, and then you can drag and drop. You can color pick directly by holding your finger on an area of the image. To pick up a color. You'll see this little circle pop up, and then that color will come up in your color. We'll select it. And then you can tap on an empty square within your color palette and it'll add that color in. So that's just two quick ways that you can go about that. I have a whole YouTube video on how to basically create your own color palettes in Procreate. I'll now make sure to leave that link down below if you want to utilize that. So now that I'm done with this, I'm just going to hit the X icon and remove it off of my screen. 13. Coloring Your Motif Elements: Then what I'm gonna do is add a background color so you can see what I'm doing, especially because I'm likely to use some lighter colors here within the petals. So I'm going to tap on my layers. And then I'm going to tap on my background color. And I'm just gonna give myself a soft, kind of neutral background color for right now. I think I'm gonna utilize this kinda like off white beige color. So now that we have our colors selected and we have a base background, what I'm gonna do is go into my layers. I'm going to add a new layer and drag this so that it's underneath my linework. And I'm going to add another layer and drag that underneath my line work for my right set of flowers. And I'm going to rename these color right, color left. Then I'm going to Select Color right, and then drag right across line work, right? And I'm going to group them. Then I'm going to select Color laugh drag right across color, linework, left, and then group them. Then I'm going to take both of these and rename them. So I'll tap where it says New Group. On the pop-up, I will select Rename and every man named this motif, right? Then I'm going to select my new group tap where it says new group, select, Rename that pop-up, and then rename this motif left. This is just to keep everything organized as I'm working. And then I can group all of these to start to build out the pattern. But I'll also be able to still make copies of this so that I can reuse some of the elements. So now that I have my layers organized, I can begin to color. I'll go into my first set of motifs and line, which was linework, right? And then I'm going to select the color right layer so that I know that I'm going to be coloring on that specific layer versus in the layer with the line work. And this just makes it easier because again, in case you need a copy something, reuse an element so that I can add, revise, change colors if needed, things like that. So in order to do this though, what we need to do is turn on reference for our line work. So I'm going to tap on the layer that says landmark right? Tap on the little icon where you can see the drawing. And I'm going to select reference. And what this does is basically referenced the lines so that I can fill a color on a separate layer. So I'm going to then tap on my new layer, the color right? Then go into my color picker tool, select my palettes. Can either have disks turn-on or go into palettes. I have a ready my arts and crafts color palette as my main palette here. But you could also go into your palettes. And if you created a new one, you can select the little three dot icon in the upper right-hand corner of your palate and set it as default. And then if you go back to your disk, it'll be that default color option. So I'm going to select this off white. And then I'm going to tap on my color wheel to kinda pull everything in. And then what I'm going to do is just start color dropping and it'll color drop it within my lines. And if you notice that as your color dropping, it goes to like it fills the whole page or it doesn't go directly to your line, you just have to adjust your threshold. So to do that, when you color drop, don't lift up your pencil, you can either drag it left, decrease your threshold, or drag it right to increase. And then I'll just do this process to fill in my whole, entire set of petals and flowers and stems. Now I'm gonna go back into my color wheel, and then I'm going to select one of the greens. And then I'm going to use that to fill in my stems and my leaves here. And then once I'm done with that, what I'm gonna do now is color in my centers. But what I wanna do is utilize my outline and then fill capabilities here. So I'll need to go back into my layers, tap on my line work right layer. Tap on the icon where you see the image in the pop-up, de-select reference, and then go back to my color layer. Then I'm going to update the color to this kind of like light beige, brown. Then I'm going to select my paintbrush. I'm still using that smooth line work paintbrush. Again, making sure I'm on the right layer and I am. I'm just going to basically quickly outline this whole shape of the center where the seeds are, creating a closed shape. With my color here. I'll do this really quickly. It doesn't have to be perfect. And then I'm going to drag and drop into that shape that I just created. And then I'm going to fill it. And then after that, I'm going to go in and select this more reddish color that I have. Again to kinda play off of those neutrals, giving some sort of like pop and contrast. I'm going to utilize the red and then I'm gonna go in and color the individual seeds, read and keep anything that's in the center, that beige, brown. You could utilize the drag-and-drop function for this as well. But I also like the fact of being able to do this by hand to just again, kind of embracing technology, but at the same time also embracing the traditional way of doing things. So this feels more traditional, like coloring by hand, even though I'm doing this on a digital item like an iPad. 14. Building the Pattern Tile - The Foreground: Once I'm done filling in and coloring both sections of flowers, what I'm going to do is begin to create our tile. So first things, first, group, everything for the lake, for the motifs, and to build a pattern. So I'm going to select a, have a copy of that original set of flowers here, just the outline for when I need it in the future. And then I have my left motif and my right motif. So I'm going to select all of these, and then I'm going to group these. And I'm going to rename this new group editable motifs. And then I'm going to make a copy of this. So I'm gonna laugh, swipe. I'm going to select Duplicate. And then I'm going to tap on where it says editable motifs and I'm going to rename this to pattern. Then I'm going to turn off the original set that I have, just so that they're out of the way. I'm going to tap on my pattern set here. Then what we're gonna do is utilize our saved actions so that we can start to pull whatever is in the middle here to our four corners to create the seamless tile. Now that I have everything organized and my layers, I'm going to go into my pattern group here. One of the important things that we're going to need to do is add a layer here that's empty and then we're going to have to fill it. So this is a vital step in ensuring that are actions actually load properly. We need to have a background layer here. So I'm going to turn off this original background color. I'm going to tap on this new layer. I'm going to rename it background. And what's nice is that you could change this, remove it in the future if you want, do whatever you want. But for right now in order to get this seamless tiling effect to work, we need to have a background color that isn't the actual background of the file, but the Grouped layer has to have a background itself. With that done, what I'm gonna do is tap on that background layer and then I'm gonna go into my color picker tool. I'm going to select this navy blue that I have that I was utilizing for my outlines. And then I'm just going to drag and drop it in. And it is going to fill this for me. So now what I'll do is with this added in, I can minimize my layer here by just tapping on that down arrow. And then making sure that pattern layer is selected. It'll be outlined in blue. Then what I'm gonna do is begin the process of transforming this center piece so that all of these elements go to my corners. And then I can fill in the center, and then we can add our background to this key set of motifs that we have in our foreground. So to do that now what we'll want to do is making sure that we're on that pattern group layer. We're going to tap on our selection tool. We'll get this pop up and then we're going to hit save and load. And we're going to tap on selection one. And it's going to give me my first selection. Then I'm going to tap on my transform tool. And then I'm going to select flip horizontal, flip vertical. And then I'm going to tap on my selection icon again. Go to save and load, select selection to go into my transform tool, tap on flip horizontal, flip vertical, and then tap on my selection. I can again hit save and load, tap on selection three, then tap on my transform tool, which is that arrow. And then in this lower hand pop-up, select flip horizontal, flip vertical. Then tap on my selection icon again to de-select, tap on it again to select tap on save and load. Hit selection for tap on my transform tool and then hit flip horizontal, flip vertical. And then we're done with our initial transformation. So what you'll have seen now is that everything that was in the center has now been pulled to our corners. And you can now see that there is going to be a seamless repeat if we tile to the side and if we tile to the bottom. So whatever is down here will match up here. Whatever is on this side will match up on that side. Now we'll wanna do is fill in our center. And this is why I wanted to make a copy because we can always go into this editable motif. Pull this to the front if we wanted. And keep in mind, this is also directional, so everything is upside down. So to make it easier, we can just translate, basically rotate our Canvas just so that we can see the direction things are going in. And then we could turn on this editable group of layers and pull that to the front. We can keep it as simple as this, but I feel like this overlaps quite a bit. So it's kinda hard. So I think I would just want to pull one set of flowers as opposed to two. So I'm going to turn off motif left and right. And then I'm going to turn on my original copy and color that and pull that to the center. So to do that, what I'm going to need to do is pull this layer out of my grouping. I'm going to take this layer, pull it out to the top, take my editable motif grouping, turn it off by unchecking, marking it and dragging it to the bottom. Or you can delete it if you don't want that set of files in there anymore as well, then I'm going to turn off my new pattern group here, but unchecked marking it. Then I'm going to turn on my background color again just so they can see what I'm working with. I'm going to select my original copied image here, which is literally just the outline sketch. And I'm going to tap on my transform tool, which is that arrow. And then I'm just going to rotate this around so I can see what I'm working with. And then I'm just going to color this really quickly and then see how I can play around with the placement of this on my new pattern tile. Once you're done coloring, then we can go back in and turn off all of those additional elements like the background color on. Then we can take the solo motif reference. We can turn that off. We'll tap on that icon, we'll tap on that layer, tap on the icon with the image on checkmark reference. And then we can select the little motif and then drag right across the color layer and group them. Then we can rename this group motif add-in because this is the one we're adding in I. Then we can pull that into our pattern here or pattern grouping. Then we can just turn that on. Then play around with the placement. So as you see, we've added it on top and now we just have to play around with the placement. Again, it's okay to overlap things just to add some visual interests. So I think I'll overlap this, but keep it more towards the center. And this is the basis of our foreground. 15. Building the Pattern Tile - The Background: So the next step in the process then is to add some elements to the background. So I kinda have one that I've already started that I'm going to pull inspiration from. Let's go back out into the gallery. I'm going to go into my template file here. See it's very similar to what we've been working with. And I don't have anything overlapping because I've decreased the size. But you could go back through and do that as well. We can minimize the size and just depending on what you're trying to go for. But what I want to highlight though, is that I have these kind of like scrolling vines and leaves and little flowers in my background. So that is what we're going to emulate in this tile that we're working on now. This is something that you'll see frequently throughout the arts and crafts era. Were they fill in empty space. It's often with these little bits and pieces of contrasting elements that can be vines or leaves or small flowers, but often in a single color way like this. So we're going to pull some of this kind of concept in for inspiration within this new layout here. And like I said also, if you want to re-size this motif at, and you can just select the layer group motif add-in, Go to your transform tool, which is the arrow. And then you can resize and then adjust placement. But I also like the idea of elements being a little bit larger and playing around with overlapping as you are working within your design elements. Alright, so now that we have our foreground complete, we'll come back and start adding some of those delicate scrolling vine elements in to our background. Much of the inspiration for the scrolling leaves and branches and vines and things like that comes directly from Islamic artwork. We're looking at inspiration and characteristics of this time period when it comes to surface pattern design work. So what we'll do is go into our layers here. I'm gonna go into my pattern grouping. I'm going to open that up and I'm going to add a new layer. And I'm going to pull that layer directly into my pattern grouping. And I'm going to put it behind all of my motifs. I'm going to tap where it says layer 20 and I'm going to rename it with, and I'm gonna change it to background motifs. I want to make sure I'm specific so I know that it's not my background color, but it's the background motifs that are behind my foreground. Once I've done that, I'm going to go into my color wheel here and I'm going to update my color to match that off-white that I used within the floral elements here. And then based on the placement of my layers, you'll see that I'm able to create or behind the foreground floral elements. So keeping in mind where I have empty negative space on the area that I will place these background elements and background motifs. So I have space here. And the upper area on the left-hand side, the right-hand side. And then some little bits and pieces between all the leaves and things like that. So what I wanna do is just think about how I can fill that space with the vines and then also make sure I don't go off these edges though. Because we still want to make sure that they don't touch the edges because it won't match up when we create that seamless tiling. Repeat that we've already done with these outside elements. To anything that we add in should stay away from our edges. We can have it close but not overlapping. So I'm gonna select my paintbrush. I'm going to keep that smooth line work paintbrush. And I'm going to zoom in in terms of where I want to start the these placements. And again, this is gonna be very, very simplified. Just I can utilize the weight of my brush. I can adjust how thin or thick the line will be. And then you use that to create the vine of facts. So I'm just going to do some curlicues and I'm not going to worry too much if I go over. Because essentially this is behind these foreground elements. Once I've done something like that, then it can begin to add some more detailed bits and pieces. So just line work, keeping it really simple. Adding little stems and little buds that we can then follow the shape of this original line to add some visual interests. And again, as you see, I'm literally just doing very simple linework. Filling in shapes. Using this as just some visual interests that we can add in the space between the bigger foreground Hero Elements. And all, these are our lines and dots. That's it. Now we see we have this really lovely element of this nice curling vine with little buds and pieces outside of it. Then we can even add some simple flowers using circles to fill in space here as well. Then essentially, I'm just repeating this process within each of these key blank areas and adding these little elements and any places that I feel like it could use a little bit of extra visual interest. What's nice also, if we're on a separate layer is that we can go into that layer and we can modify it. We can adjust the color if need be, or we can even adjust how opaque it is, which could also help to alleviate if it feels like it's too bright, you want it dull it a bit. You can adjust your opacity. I like the way it looks with the bright white. So I'm just going to keep it as is. But again, just the beauty of working within layers. You can adjust and edit each bit by itself. So I finished the top part and I'm just going to go through and do the same thing on the left side. I'm just going to add some interesting curls. With line work. I'm going to add a flower element to the end of this one. And then just, again add, add in those buds by just creating these simplified branches with lines and shapes. Now, I'll continue this process until I finish filling up any key areas that I think can utilize some of this additional visual. And then we'll stop in and begin to test our repeat. 16. Finalizing and Testing the Repeat: Now that we're done with the addition of the background, I like the elements that I've added. Again, these really simple floral elements, well we can do now is test to make sure this repeat is working properly. So I'm going to make this a little bit smaller so you can see it in its full glory. And what we'll wanna do is take this pattern grouping that we've created and make a duplicate of it. So we're going to swipe left and then we're going to select Duplicate. And then what I want to do is tap on the original pattern group and then just uncheck market so that it's turned off and then select this new pattern group. And we're going to flatten it. And what we're gonna do is flatten it and then make four total copies so that we can re-size and rearrange to task the repeat. I'm going to tap on the icon image where you see all of the layers. We'll get this pop up and I'm going to select flatten. Once I've flattened it, then what I can do is make additional copies of it. So I'm going to duplicate it three more times so that I have four total. So I'm going to swipe to the left, select Duplicate, and do that three more times until I have four total layers. What I'm gonna do now is turn off three of those layers and then just keep the top one open. Then what we're gonna do is transform this down, scale it so that we can test to see if this repeat works in all four quadrants. So I'm going to turn on, once I've selected my transform tool, which is that arrow, I'm going to turn on snapping again. And I'm going to turn on magnetics and sapping and then make sure distance and velocity are at a 100%. And then I'm also going to go in and remove my guidelines just so that I don't have to worry about seeing them in the background. So I'm gonna go into my wrench icon and I'm going to go to Canvas. And then I'm just going to turn off Drawing Guide. This way I don't have anything messing with the overall visual appeal, what I'm trying to do. So I'm going to select that transform tool, the arrow. And then I have snapping turned on. I'm just gonna make this a little bit smaller so you can see what I'm doing on screen. Then I'm going to drag from the upper right corner. And I'm going to bring this in so that it snaps to the lower left quadrant and you'll see those double lines popping up and you'll see 2 thousand by 2 thousand. So we know we're right where we need it to be. And then I'm going to release it. And then I'm gonna go back into my layers and then I'm going to turn on my next layer. Then I'm going to tap on that next layer. And then I'm gonna go back into my transform tool. And then I'm going to drag from my lower right-hand corner and drag it up into my upper left-hand quadrant. And then I'm going to release it. I'm gonna go back into my layers again. I'm going to turn on the next layer and tap on that layer, which will be our third layer. And then I'm gonna go back into my transform tool. And then I'm going to drag from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand quadrant. Again, you'll see those crosshairs in orange and you'll see the 2 thousand by 2 thousand pixels. So you know, you're in the right spot. And then I'm gonna go into my layers once more, turn on my fourth and final layer, tap on that layer, and then go back into my transform tool. And I'm going to drag from the upper left-hand corner and resize it down to the lower right hand corner. And you'll see the double cross hairs and you'll see the pop-up that just 2 thousand by 2 thousand, then I can release it. And then what I can do is zoom in and make sure everything is working properly. And it looks like our pattern is perfect. It is a seamless pattern. There's no breaks in the same, There's no lines. So it looks like everything is good. If you wanted to, you could go back and you can kinda look through and see if there's any areas that you might want to fill in. It could be these key little blank areas. But I kind of liked it that gives your eye some space to rest. But this is the final pattern. I think it turned out great. So now that our final pattern is tested, we can group all of these elements together. So we'll go into our layers and also lack those layers that we use for the tester. And I'll select the first one and then swipe right over the next three to select all of them. And then I'm going to group them and rename this group by tapping on where it says new group, select Rename. And I'm going to name this pattern test or just so that I know what it is. And then return. And then I can minimize that and then I can turn it off. I can turn this pattern back on this pattern tile, which is our final tile. This is what will export. 17. Exporting the Repeat: So again, what we can do now is go into that original tile. If we wanted to remove that background, we could do that by uncheck marking it. Or we could also change the color if we want it. I personally like this. Blue. I feel like it's this creates like a dark moody feel with this, with these elements. But we can go through and revise and edit on a color areas if we needed to. Because we kept this grouping, these elements within that group separate. But I'm going to keep it as it, I'm actually going to keep my background off. And then I'm going to export this tile as is. So in order for you to be able to use it or upload it to something like Spoonflower will, you'll wanna do is upload the tile and not your tester, because your tile is what is the actual seamless repeat. So to do that, we're gonna go to our wrench icon. And then we are going to go to Share. And then we're going to share it as a JPEG because it has colored background. If you wanted to have something with a transparent background, you would turn off that background color and then you would export as a PNG. But in this case I'm just going to export it as a JPEG. And then I'm going to save it to my files, and then I'm going to save it to my Affinity Designer file. You can update your template name as well or your filename as well, and then hit Done. What's nice is that this template can be re-used over and over again. You can basically go out of your file back into your gallery. And then on that file you can swipe left, select Duplicate. And then you can go into that new file and just remove your pattern pieces from in here and just add new layers. And you will still be able to utilize the save and load selections. Or you can just keep the same file and go in this file, go into your layers, turn off the layer with your full pattern, and then add new layers and create new groupings. Again, depending on how big your iPad is, you might have to adjust for your link layer limitations. That's why I prefer just making a duplicate of the original, renaming it and then deleting whatever it is that I would use that I wouldn't want to use in my layers. And then just kind of starting over, adding in new motifs, updating the colors, and then repeating that process. But then utilizing the save and load selections that I already have saved in the file. So just makes it a little bit easier. So that's how you could reuse it. And that's it. That's how we create an arts and crafts inspired repeat pattern in Procreate using an actions template that can be re-used over and over again. I hope you found this helpful. 18. Course Outro: Thank you so much for creating with me this month. I hope that you feel inspired by the nature right outside your door and you feel more comfortable creating vintage inspired arts and crafts, stylized repeating patterns in Procreate. Feel free to share your work in the class gallery or on social media if you're on Instagram, just tag at philosophia creative. I'd love to see what you create and if you need it, I can even offer some feedback. Remember, if you want to learn more about me and my work, you can visit me online at Bella Sophia creative.com. And finally, if you want to get a behind the scenes view of the work that I do as a creative freelancer. Make sure you follow along on YouTube app to creative studio. Thank you so much for learning with me today. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.