Design a Travel-Inspired Mini Pattern Collection in Procreate and Adobe Illustrator

1. Introduction: I don't know about you, but nothing inspires me like traveling to an exciting new place. So why not leverage this inspiration into a stunning, mini pattern collection? I'm Jamie Alexander, and I'm a surface designer and illustrator in Toulouse, France. I've collaborated with partners like Disney, Minted, Target, Trader Joe's, and Hawthorn Supply Company. I've had the pleasure of seeing my patterns on wrapping paper, fabric. Stationary and a variety of other products. In my experience, creating a pattern collection is a powerful way to demonstrate cohesiveness and skill as a designer, present your work, and get noticed by art directors and companies. A collection of patterns that can be mixed and matched has unlimited potential on a variety of products that you may not have even imagined yet. Basing your collection on a place that is meaningful to you adds depth and narrative to your artwork and makes it more engaging to your audience. Locations are a rich source of visual and cultural inspiration that will add authenticity to your work and set your collection apart. This class, you'll learn how to capture the essence of your favorite travel destination and design a collection of three patterns, including a hero print, a coordinate, and a blender to pitch to a company, sell on print on demand sites, or simply to create your own personal project. I'll provide a glimpse into the artistic process that has led to my designs being licensed. I'll show you how I gather inspiration and brainstorm ideas, my preliminary sketch process, how I illustrate motifs and build repeats, and how I choose a color palette and alternate color way. We'll also create a compelling story and names for our patterns and learn how to showcase your work in a beautiful mockup. At the end of this class, you'll have created a stunning collection that will allow others to experience your favorite travel destination through your eyes. This class is intended for students who already have basic knowledge of Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop. Well, I will walk you through my process. I'm assuming you're already at least a little familiar with creating repeating patterns. I am so excited to discover your favorite place through the mini collection that you create. I'll see you in class. 2. Class Project: I can't wait to share my passion for patterns with you and provide my insights into creating a mini pattern collection. In this class, you'll create a collection of three patterns in two color ways, including a hero print, a coordinate print, and a blender print that you can pitch to companies, sell on print on demand sites, enter in art challenges, develop your portfolio, or simply use for your own personal projects. After explaining the important components of a pattern collection, I'll guide you through the following eight steps. Number one, the brainstorming and inspiration gathering phase. Number two, writing a compelling story and naming your collection. Three, the preliminary sketch process. Four, Illustration of motifs. Five, vectorizing and coloring your motifs. Six, building the repeating pattern. Seven, making a logo for your collection and naming your patterns. And step eight, showcasing your patterns in a mockup. So here are the materials that I recommend for this class, a pencil and paper for sketches and notes, an iPad, Apple Pencil, and the Procreate app for the illustration of motifs and your computer with Adobe Illustrator, where we will vectorize color and assemble our repeating patterns. And also we'll be using Photoshop to showcase our pattern in a beautiful mockup. I have also prepared a workbook, especially for students taking this class that you can print out or use and procreate to help organize your inspiration, brainstorming, sketches and notes for your mini collection. To download this free document, head to Jamie alexander.net slash WCBok. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the important details to consider when creating a mini pattern collection. See you then. 3. Creating in Collections: Before I explain the elements to include in your mini pattern collection, I think it's important to understand the importance of creating patterns in collections instead of just standalone patterns. First of all, it's a great way to present your artwork to potential buyers and increase your chances of securing licensing opportunities. Designing in a collection will allow you to create aesthetically and thematically cohesive patterns that can be mixed and matched on a variety of products. It also develops a more polished sense of color, balance, and unity and makes your work more appealing and sophisticated. Unlike standalone patterns, collections tell a compelling story. Not only does a collection of multiple patterns that work well together improve your exposure to companies and buyers, they are also great for creating a unified appearance to your social media feed and your portfolio. So what is a mini collection? Well, in the fabric world, full pattern collections are typically eight to 12 patterns, and mini collections are typically anything less than this. So there are three types of patterns in a collection. Firstly, we have the hero or the focal pattern. And in a full collection, we may have two or more hero prints. Although I'm suggesting just one for this mini collection. The hero is the star of the show and really embodies the theme of your collection. It will be the most complex, the most colorful, and the pattern that makes people fall in love with your collection. So next, we have the secondary coordinate print, which is a step down from your hero pattern. In full collection, we usually have four or five secondary coordinates, and in our mini collection, we'll do one or two. They're going to have fewer colors, and they will be less complex than your hero print. Their role is to support your hero pattern. I see them as the best supporting actor. They're not the main star, but their role is still very important. And lastly, we have the blender prints, which are the simplest and the most understated patterns in the collection. They're going to be on a much smaller scale and they'll only have a few colors. In a full collection, you'll see maybe four or five blenders. And in our mini collection today, we'll stick with one or two. To stick with the film analogy, these are the extras in the movie. They aren't very noticeable as individuals, but without them, the movie just wouldn't be complete. The blender print is going to support and coordinate with the hero and secondary coordinates, but will be the least complex of the three. Think a simple poka dot, a stripe, or a sparse floral Dizzi. In this class, our mini collection will feature three patterns. I suggest creating one hero print, one secondary coordinate, and one blender print. Creating many collections is less overwhelming, complex, and time consuming than a full collection, but it still allows the artist to explore a theme and create an impactful family of patterns. You could always expand your mini collection into a full collection later on if you feel like it. It could never hurt to have more patterns than you need. If you do decide to create a full collection and pitch to companies, just know that you may not license every single pattern in your collection. I have had companies remove a few patterns or pick and choose from other collections, so it can't hurt to have more patterns than what you actually need. And those unused patterns can always be revised or incorporated into other projects. If you become a licensing artist, you'll find out sooner or later that a large proportion of your artwork takes a while to find a home, and sometimes it never does. It kind of stings a bit when that happens, especially when it's a great work of art, but it comes with the territory of surface design. The majority of my design income comes from a handful of designs. I am currently sitting on a lot of artwork that is waiting to find a home, but you never know when that can change. I recently licensed a pattern to a kids pajama company, and I created this pattern three years ago. So don't lose hope. So to recap, we're about to create a mini collection with three complimentary patterns that has a cohesive style and color palette, consisting of a hero print, a coordinate print, and a blender print. In our next lesson, we'll choose our travel destination and explore the brainstorming phase of building a mini collection. 4. Get Inspired: Choose Your Destination: No, Welcome back. It is time to choose the travel destination that will be the source of inspiration for our mini collection. I have chosen my most recent family vacation to the French Caribbean island of Martinique for the theme of my mini collection. Martinique is nicknamed Lille Afleur or the Island of flowers, and I am so excited about the potential for beautiful patterns. The diverse flora, fauna, spices, music, and traditions offer so much possibility. I honestly don't know how I'm going to narrow down my ideas to only three patterns, so I may have to expand this one into a full collection later. Now, please don't worry if you haven't traveled anywhere distant or exotic, you could choose a destination that is close to home like a park or a garden. In fact, I based my a Ville Rose collection on my adopted hometown of Toluse, and I based my hero patterns on a nearby botanical garden and the window styles in a typical neighborhood in Tuluse. My coordinates were based on simplified architectural details and flora from the garden. I've even done a mini collection based on the wildflowers in a roadside ditch near my parents' house in Michigan. So, believe me, when I say, you do not have to go far, the point of this mini collection is not for you to travel, but to make your viewers travel. The goal is to help your audience experience a place through your eyes. Once you've decided on your place, it's time to gather your inspiration. You can dive into your photos and keepsakes and souvenirs from your past travels. Or if you have a trip coming up, you can plan to collect ideas while you're there. If you're able to squeeze in a bit of time for sketching and jotting down your ideas during your trip, that is fantastic. But don't worry if that doesn't happen. On my trip, my twins were learning to walk, and my 7-year-old was learning to snorkel. So needless to say, I did not get much artwork done. How I imagined the trip in my head and how it actually turned out are two very different things. I was mindful of the fact that I wanted to use my trip as inspiration for a pattern collection, though. So I purposefully took tons of photos and video with my phone, often while carrying one of my children on my back through the rainforest. I took a lot of close up shots of flowers that I would want to draw for later, and I took them from multiple angles. I also took a lot of photos of textures or tiny details that could have great potential for detail or even blender prints. Since my hands were often full, I made sure to, at the very least document my inspiration and take some mental notes about the themes I wanted to explore later on. I suggest compiling a mood board or even just a photo folder of your favorite images. You can include not only individual elements you'd like to draw as motifs, but also photos that convey the atmosphere, the colors or the feelings that you want to express. You can also create a Pinterest board and compile inspiring images there or even cut out images from a magazine or postcards. You can even add patterns, illustrations or color palettes created by other artists that you can use as inspiration, obviously as inspiration but not to copy. So the point of the mood board is just to gather your inspiration in one place so that you can get a better understanding of the vibe that you want to capture in your collection. So I've got my mini collection workbook here in Procreate, and I've curated some photos from my trip. As you can see, there are a lot of flowers, leaves, and colors that I want to incorporate into my color palettes. Now, I'm ready to start brainstorming and refining this inspiration. So now it's your turn. Once you've chosen your destination, make a selection of your personal photos in a folder on your computer or in your mini collection workbook that I created for you. You can also create a Pintres board that contains the colors, feelings, imagery, and ideas that you'd like to express in your collection. In the next lesson, we'll brainstorm ideas for our patterns. 5. Brainstorm: So are you ready to start brainstorming for your mini collection? There is a special place for you to record your ideas in my free guide, which I created specifically for students in this course. Remember, you can download my free mini collection workbook at Jamie alexander.net slash Workbook. In my workbook, I have created a space to jot down your ideas and sketches either directly on your iPad or printed out on paper. Of course, you can also do this in a notebook or on your computer. Alright, so I've got my workbook open in Procreate. As you can see, there is a little space here to do a brain dump. Well, that doesn't sound very poetic. How about heart storming, which means using the emotional part of your brain to brainstorm? I'm going to jot down a list of the meaningful sights, sounds, smells, textures, tastes, feelings, and anything that embodies my trip. It helps if you look through your photos or at least your mood board while you do this. I also like to free associate and just allow a free stream of words to flow, writing down whatever comes to mind. And while I made several notes while I was in Martinique, I am not going to skip this important step of reflecting on my trip and writing down these ideas right now. So here is the list, the stream of consciousness, if you will, that I came up for for my trip to Martinique. I've also provided a space for colors in my workbook. And I already know from memory and from my photos that I want one of my color ways to incorporate a brilliant turquoise blue of the ocean, the fuchsias, reds and yellows of the beautiful tropical flowers, maybe some neutral sand colors, and as well as the emerald deep greens of the dense rainforest. Finally, I have also included a space to record any adjectives that come to mind and that convey how the travel experience made you feel and how you can carry that into your visual patterns. So here are my adjectives, tropical, lush, verdant, vibrant, serene, crystal clear, shimmering, sandy, breezy, blooming, warm, aromatic, melodic, inviting, zesty, ornate, creole, historic, proud, authentic, expressive. I'm going to keep these words handy. They're going to help with the visual development of my patterns and also in creating the story and the names for each color way. So now it's your turn. You can download my collection creation workbook or grab a notebook and jot down your ideas. And the more you have, the better. In the next lesson, we'll give our collection a name and write a compelling story to get started. Oh 6. Set the Tone: Give Your Collection a Name and Story: Welcome back. Before we get too far in our collection, I would like us to write a story and give a name to our collection. The story is the theme of the collection, and it should make it perfectly clear what your collection is about. Moving forward, your patterns and your color palette should tie in with this story. Your story sets the tone for your collection, and it should help determine how you proceed with the artwork. You can always tweak your title and your story as your collection evolves, but I think it's very helpful to have something to start out with before you build your patterns. Story is this grounding force that I periodically return to during the phases of creation. So here are a few examples of stories that I've created for collections. I decided to call my new mini collection Lille Haufler or the Island of Flowers, which is the nickname of Martinique. So here is the story that I have written. Remember, it might get tweaked as my collection develops, but it gives me a definite vibe to aim for in my designs. Wander through Martinique's lush gardens where coconut palms sway in the salty Caribbean breeze. The air is alive with the sweet scents of hibiscus, plomeria, and sugar cane, while the earthy hint of cinnamon and spice drips in from the island's rich soil. Each pattern evokes the island's natural beauty and intoxicating fragrance, inviting you into its tropical paradise. Okay, so now it's your turn. In your workbook, write three to five sentences that explain the meaning behind your collection, what inspired it, or the feelings you're trying to evoke in your audience. That will be the compelling story that will become the basis of your collection. Don't forget to give your future collection a name. In the next lesson, we'll create the preliminary sketches for our mini collection. See you there. 7. Thumbnail Sketches: Alright, so it is time to start sketching our ideas. This is your moment to let your creativity flow and bring your ideas to life. Don't skip this crucial step, please. It is the foundation for shaping your mini pattern collection. Thumbnail sketches are quick, rough preliminary drawings that lay the groundwork for your finished design. I use thumbnail sketches for just about everything I create from greeting cards to wall arts to surface pattern design. Focus on creating as many ideas and variations as possible, spending no more than 30 seconds to a minute on each sketch. Since they're small and fast, you can experiment without fear. There's no wasted time if a sketch doesn't turn out as you'd hoped. Embrace the ugly duckling phase. These sketches might not look impressive at first, but they pave the way for your illustration to transform into something truly beautiful. So I recommend sketching at least eight to ten thumbnails before settling on your favorite three for the collection. I encourage you to push beyond the first idea that comes to mind. Some of my best concepts don't emerge until I've explored several options. And remember, any unused ideas can always be saved for a future project, or if you decide to expand your mini collection into a full collection. In my workbook, I have a page dedicated to thumbnail sketches to help plan out your mini collection. You can either print it out or sketch with your pencil or use it on your iPad by importing it into Procreate. I've included space for hero prints, secondary coordinates, and blender prints, as well as a few lines to jot down notes for each sketch. So here are a few tips to consider when planning out your mini collection. Remember to vary the types of patterns in your collection. You can mix florals with geometrics, stripes, polka dots, checks, plaids, toss patterns, and so many more. Vary the scale. The largest scale should be used on your hero print. Use the medium size prints in your secondary coordinates and opt for small scale, minimal and often non directional patterns for your blender prints. Alright, so I'm pretty excited about this theme, as you can tell. For me, the real challenge is not going to be thinking of an idea, but picking just three of them. So as you can see, I've sketched out some very simple, minimal thumbnails for my mini collection. Here are my hero print ideas. I'm imagining a dense floral of interlocking medallions of tropical flowers and foliage. Perhaps two alternating vignettes. I have another idea for a hero print here with some stamps and postcards and little scenes with landmarks of Martinique and another one here of the beautiful varieties of fruits that grow all over the island. For my coordinate prints, I've got this idea for a scallop pattern. And if you know me, you know, I love a good scallop pattern. I was really struck by the beauty of the apre voyager or the travelers palm trees and thought that their natural fan shape would make a stunning scallop pattern. I've also got some humming birds, which are the official bird of Martinique. And here I've got a trailing floral of hibiscus. And for my blender pattern, I have a few ideas. I thought about doing a hand drawn Madras pattern. The Madras pattern holds a huge cultural historic and symbolic importance in Martinique as a key element of creole identity. I'm also going to try some cute crabs because they were literally everywhere, and I just loved them. May also go for these textures of the Fique mode or the banyan tree. The roots have these amazing textures, and I could turn them into an abstract pattern, which would function as a beautiful blender print. Okay, I'm going to put a star by my favorite patterns. It's so hard to choose. When this happens, that is a great sign that you are fully inspired by your theme. Remember, no one is obliging you to stop at only three patterns. Now it's your turn. Sketch out your thumbnail sketches to give yourself a taste of what your patterns will look like. And in the next lesson, we'll talk about color palettes for your pattern collection. 8. Color Palettes: Welcome back. In this lesson, we'll talk about color palettes for our mini pattern collection. While there are no set in stone rules about this, typically a pattern collection will feature 12 to 18 colors. I tend to favor the lower end of this range because I love the cohesiveness of a limited color palette. Color is one of the most powerful ways of creating unity between patterns in a collection. Personally, I try to feature a variety of warm and cool colors, as well as a few neutrals, which could be browns, creams, grays, tops, beiges, and even some greens. I also aim for a mix of lights, midtones, and dark colors and plan for a few accent colors that really pop. A good strategy is to choose a few main colors, for example, a pink, a blue, and a green, and then providing two or three different shades for each of those colors. For example, a dark, a mid tone, and a light, and then adding a few neutrals in different shades. So here is a color palette for my a vile Rose collection. As you can see, I have used 14 colors. Do you see the mix of light and dark to allow for contrast? Also, I have a mix of neutral creams and beiges, a few different pinks and oranges, and a few blues and several different greens. As you can see, I use pretty much every color from my palette in the hero prints for this collection. For my secondary coordinates, I am using fewer colors and less detail. And for the blender prints, even fewer colors and less detail still. Another thing I recommend if you're feeling motivated, is to create a secondary color way for your collection. This will create more options for companies or customers to choose from. As you can see, this is the first colorway of my viele Rose collection, and here is the secondary color way. The second colorway should be different from the first, but also maintain some cohesiveness. As you can see, this hero pattern is quite dark in the initial colorway, but it completely transforms in the second color way going from dark to light. So in this collection, you see two very different effects in the two colorways, but they are still cohesive due to the fact that I carried over a handful of primary colors and neutrals from the first color way into the second. This will allow the person who buys my fabric, if it's on fabric, to mix and match these patterns. The prominent colors that I carried over have become secondary colors in the new color way, and I have introduced new colors into the mix. This way, the two color ways are distinctly different and yet feel related. I tend to aim for contrast between the colorways, perhaps playing on warm versus cool or night versus day, summer versus winter or cheerful versus moody. In this collection, which is called Enchanted Autumn, you can really see the difference in the color ways. The first is lighter, warmer pinks and oranges, and the second is a lot more of the traditional Halloween colors that you're familiar with, with a lot of cool, deep purples and a black. Also, I usually don't choose my second color way until I've finished coloring all the patterns in my collection in the first color way. The only way to know if you have a good color palette is to color your artwork and see how it works. And when I'm coloring my collection more often than not, I don't like how the contrast or the color combination is looking. So I will then adjust the contrast in the color palette itself, switching colors around or even bringing new colors in until I get the desired effect. So I've got a few photos from my trip with inspiring colors, and I've pulled a selection of colors that I like the most by using the eyedropper tool in Illustrator to pull the colors directly from my photos. And once I'm happy with the amount of lights, darks, midtones, neutrals and accent colors, I will select ten to 18 of my favorite colors and create a palette here. As I illustrate my motifs, I will use these colors, and only then will I know if the colors need adjusting. If you'd like to see an in depth lesson on how I choose a color palette, you may enjoy my staff pick Skillshare class. Create a stunning wall art series, simple designs for any space and procreate. In this class, my lesson on color palettes reveals the process of selecting a powerful, limited color palette from a photo. Remember, if you don't feel comfortable creating your own palette, you can always use websites like Pinterest, Et Sea and Creative Market to download or purchase beautiful color palettes. Building a color palette is definitely a skill that improves with practice. So here is the color palette that I came up with for this mini collection. For my first color way, I want to focus on the lush greens and vibrant pinks and reds in the flowers. And so here we have my second colorway, which is more in the universe of the Turquoise blues and some pops of complimentary oranges and pinks. As you can see, I have carried over some of the colors from the first colorway, which will allow people to mix and match across my two colorways without creating a difference or clashing effect. So now that I'm happy with my selection, I'm going to select all of these boxes that I've made in Illustrator and then click on the new color group icon in the Swatches panel. It's asking me to give it a name, so I'll call it Martinique one, and I'll click Okay. Now you can see my color palette in the Swatches panel. So now I'm going to go to the Hamburger Menu icon in the Swatches panel and click on Save Swatch Library as ASE, and I will again name it Martinique one. Now, anytime I need to access this color palette in Illustrator, I can simply open the Hamburger menu in the Swatch panel. Click Open Swatch Library and click User Defined to find it. So now I will repeat those steps with my second color way and call it Martinique too. It helps to have a fully established first color way and see how it looks with your patterns before you color your designs in your second color way. Also, these colors are not going to be set in stone, as I mentioned earlier. On the contrary, they will probably evolve as I see how these colors interact and play together in the patterns that I create. It may be necessary to add lighter or darker tones or perhaps a new color altogether. I'm going to keep an open mind about it. All right. Now it's your turn. It's time to choose your color palette for your first color way. You could either go for a palette of 12 to 18 colors, or if that overwhelms you, you can opt for a limited palette of six to eight colors and then gradually add additional colors if the need arises. There are so many ways to approach this. Again, my suggestions are just that they're suggestions, not rules. If you're feeling motivated, make a second color way as well. In the next lesson, we'll create final illustrations for our motifs. O. 9. Illustrate Your Motifs: Preliminary Sketches: Welcome back. It's time to illustrate our motifs for the mini collection. I have my thumbnail sketches here, and I've selected three that I'd like to move forward with today. I think it will help my workflow to start by sketching all three patterns before moving on to the next step of inking my artwork for the final motifs. Okay, so I'm going to start with the hero print. I'm imagining these two interlocking medallions full of florals that will intertwine, and it will feature some of my favorite flowers and plants that I saw in Martinique. So I'm going to start by coming up with a rough sketch to kind of flesh out the idea from my thumbnail sketch. Alright, so I've got Procreate open now, and I'm going to start by creating a square by pressing the plus sign to create a new Canvas. I'll be using a square shape. The size is not as important as long as it's big enough to produce a clear sketch that I can vectorize later. So my Canvas is 2048 pixels by 2048 pixels. I've got CMYK for my color profile, although that doesn't really matter since I will be coloring my motifs in Illustrator today. And I'm going to hit Create. Okay, so this should be enough for me to get started. So what I'm going to do first is grab a lighter color, maybe like a light gray, and this is not going to be in the final design. It's just to help me see what I'm doing. And I'm going to fill that in by dragging the color onto my canvas. I'm going to then click the arrow on that layer and I'm going to make sure that snapping and magnetics are both switched on. And I'm going to turn this square like this, like a diamond shape. Don't use the corner handles, but the ones on the sides here. And I'm going to make sure that the square or the diamond is in the middle of my canvas like that. Because what I want to do is make a sketch in this lozenge or diamond shape so that I can plan out what I want to draw. So now I'm going to sketch out my idea in this diamond shape, knowing that there are going to be two alternating diamond shapes or lozenges that will feature tropical flowers. So what I'm going to do is once this inside square is done and these things can overlap the lines, as you can see, that's right. I'm going to then draw what's in the white spaces here as the inner square. You'll see how that works shortly. It's my little hack that I'm going to do to plan out my design. So I'm just going to be using the dry ink pen in the inking palette. So I can do something like this. Maybe the palm trees can be like this in the middle and two off to the sides like this. Remember, this is still a pretty rough sketch, just so you know, we're still not at the stage where we're trying to please anybody yet. This is just to get a more certain idea of where everything is and everything that I want to do. So I've got these fan shaped palm leaves that I think are kind of cool. And I think I want to draw the rose of porcelain, which has a nice ona shape right here. It's really a cool flower. It has these scale like petals kind of overlap. And below, I'd like to do some hibiscus flowers. If I want to copy and paste, I can do that, too, because it will save myself some trouble and some time, you know. Maybe some sort of leaves like this. They can overlap and intertwine with the other diamond shape medallion. And once again, I'm just going to reflect some leaves like this over again. So this is pretty rough, but it's enough to give me an idea of what I want to do, a more clear idea than my thumbnail. So now I've got this cool rows of porcelain flower here in the middle. And I've got these three palm branches here. And I've got these three hibiscus flowers here with some leaves and tendrils that will overlap the top of the artwork. So now I'm going to do a bit of a hack. Well, it's not really a hack. This is commonly used in surface design to make repeating patterns and procreate. But I'm doing this just for my sketch planning. I'm going to make sure everything is on one layer by pinching them together, and I'm going to duplicate it three times so that I have four of the same layer. And remember that we have the snapping and magnetics features turned on. So what I'm going to do is drag the top layer to the top left corner until do you see how those lines have lit up to show that it's aligned correctly? That's just going to snap into place. And I'm going to do that again with the next layer down and pull it up to the top right corner this time, okay? And you can kind of feel when it snaps into place. Okay, I think that's pretty close. And then the next layer down, I will pull to the lower left. And the last one I will pull down to the lower right. Okay, so now everything that was previously drawn in that inner lozenge is now on the outside, and everything that was on the outside is now on the inside, and we have a new diamond shape to draw. You can see that there are plants which are overlapping and intertwining, and that's what I'm going for. I'm going to fill in this square with my second sketch, knowing that there will be two alternating diamonds in the final design. So here I go, I'm going to start with some of these beautiful bird of paradise flowers. Okay, so here is the rough sketch of my second diamond illustration. I have filled in the space with some bird of paradise flowers, some nthuriums and some Bugava and some Balisie plants. Again, this is just for me. It's not meant to look beautiful. It's just to plan out exactly what I want to place where. And so now I would like to test this whole thing out. I'm going to merge all of my layers into one Again, I'm going to duplicate that layer three times so that we have four layers. And now I'm going to shrink them down to a quarter size and drag them into each corner and snap them into that corner. Okay, so they're snapping. I probably should have turned off the color of the square before merging the layers together, but oh, well, it will help me to line things up now. So now I can see I can kind of see what we're working with here. I think that maybe this tree needs to be bigger to fill in that square more. And then what else can we do? Maybe some flowers can cross over or this flower can come down to fill more of the space. So, again, we're only worried about these two squares, this one and this one. And we see what we need to tweak or fix before we continue. But I think this is going to turn into something very nice. I think we're on the right track. So I'm going to play with this a little bit before I proceed with the actual linework or inking of the drawing. And again, remember that the squares, these gray squares that I put behind there, they're not going to be a part of the actual design. Okay. So now I'm going to move on to the sketch for the second pattern in my mini collection. I wanted to do that scallop pattern with that tree that I really liked in Martinique, which is called the Abre de Voyager or the traveler's palm. So I'm going to create a new square shaped canvas in Procreate. I believe this one is 2000 by 2000 pixels, but again, it can be whatever you want it to be. And I'm going to grab the studio pen from the inking palette, and I'm going to draw a circle like this. Okay, and I'm going to hold my pen down without lifting it up. And then I'll press my finger down here, and you see what happens. It creates a perfect circle shape. And then I'm going to take the color white from my palette, and I'm just going to drag it over and fill in this circle. So that's going to help me build and see the scallop shape in my pattern. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to duplicate that circle, and now I'm going to drag it all the way to the edge. And if you notice, snapping and magnetics are still enabled, and that's going to help us to move things exactly where we want them. Okay, so now I'm going to duplicate that original circle and move so that it's centered. See the snap will come on, and then I'm going to move it halfway down. Got to wait for it to snap. Okay, here we go. See, now we have the horizontal and vertical stripe lighting up to show us it's perfectly centered. So now we're going to duplicate that one and drag it over to the right. So now you see you have that perfect scallop shape to use as a guide for our pattern. So like I said, before, I want to draw a traveler's tree inside and just repeat that again and again. Okay, so we'll get rid of all that. And what we're going to do now is merge all of these layers together and just blow up this one scallop shape because that's all I need as my guide. And I'm just going to make it really big and bring down the opacity so that I can draw on top. If you don't want to see all those extra lines, feel free to erase them. All we really care about is what's inside the space here. So next, I will take my dry ink pen and sketch out my tree. Okay, so here is my sketch for my secondary coordinate print. Now I'm going to sketch my blender print, which is going to be inspired by the Madras pattern. The Madras pattern originated in India but was brought to Martinique during the 18th century because of colonial trade between India and the Caribbean. It's a really significant element of creole dress, and it signifies cultural fusion of African, Indian and European influence on Martiniques identity. So today, it's a symbol of cultural pride and resistance to colonial oppression. Now, Madras has a lot of cultural significance, but it is also very popular in mainstream casual fashion. To avoid cultural appropriation when making a pattern, I think that context matters. As long as we are showing appreciation to the origins of this pattern and treat it with awareness and respect, it should be fine. Certain patterns and various cultures may hold a sacred meeting or use restricted symbols, and in that case, paying homage to the style might become more problematic. So I advise you to do a bit of research if you ever have a doubt about cultural appropriation. So for this pattern, I am using a square as the repeat, and I'm just creating some variation with the thick medium size and thinner stripes. What gives Madras its distinctive look and feel are its off kilter asymmetrical shapes. Okay, so here is the sketch for my blender print. Now that we have our sketches, it's time to ink our motifs. I'll see you in the next lesson. Oh. 10. Illustrate Your Motifs: Ink Your Motifs: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to ink our motifs. I'm going to start with my hero print. Now, because this design is going to have two complex elements or lozenges, as I've been calling them, I'm going to make two separate canvases and procreate. It's a good idea to duplicate this project in your project galleries so that you can go back to the original if need be. Okay, so I'm going to zoom in on this sketch and concentrate on inking the design in this white area first. I'm going to turn down the opacity on this sketch and create a new layer above that. I'm going to select the studio pen, and I've got that at size six for reference. Maybe I'll go up to size seven for the thicker outlines. So I want this to be like an arts and crafts style pattern where the outline is the same color as the background. I really love that effect because it appears like there is no outline at all, and I think it adds some beautiful detail. So what I'm going to do next is I'm going to make sure that each plant group is separate. So I'm going to treat the leaves of this bird of paradise plant like its own group. Another group for the bird of paradise flowers, another cluster for these narium flowers here, and another group for these little Bugenviler flowers which are right here. So essentially, I'm really just going to draw this part here. Same over here for the Balisie flower. I can just reflect it. These two details can be reflected to the left later on, so I don't need to draw them twice. However, my bird of paradise flowers are not completely symmetrical, so I won't be able to reflect them. I'll just have to draw out the whole thing. The objects that are closest to the front should be on the top layers, whereas the objects that are further away should be on the bottom layers. So basically, try to organize your layers in order of closeness from front to back. I'm going to start drawing these leaves on the back layer, which are further away from us. I'm making sure to close my forms that I draw so that I can easily color them in Illustrator later on. Okay, since my outline will be the same color as the background, I needed to use a different layer for the stem and the veins here. So this layer is closest to us, so we'll be on the top of the previous layer. Okay, so now I'm going to hide these two layers because I'm starting to have trouble seeing the sketch underneath. So I'm going to turn those layers off for a minute while I create a new layer on top of those bird of paradise flowers. So this is part of the stem. This is going to be a closed form because I'm going to color it in. This part at the bottom won't be visible because we'll have another flower in front of it, you see? And they have these really cool, I don't know what you call it. The stamen or something like that. Okay, so I'll let you watch me work for a little bit. Okay, so you can see that the whole outline for the Bird of Paradise flowers is on one layer. Everything has a closed space so that I can color it all in an Illustrator later on. And now I want to do some detail on top of these flowers in a different color. So for that, I'm going to get a new layer so that I can draw those lines, and those are going to be on their own layer in a different color. So, again, you can see that these details are on a separate layer from the actual flowers, and you can see underneath that I have my big leaves going on as well. So it looks kind of funky, seeing them overlap like this, but it will all turn out once I color them in in Illustrator later on. I can just hide those layers for now so that I can see what I'm doing. Okay, so now I'm going to create a new layer on top of everything else for the Aneium flowers. Remember that anything you want to have an outline around must have a closed form. Okay, so I'm making a separate layer that will go on top of these flowers with some details that will be in a different color, maybe a deep red. And I'm using the dry ink brush in the inking palette for the texture. And now I'm going to do another layer below these guys to draw in the leaves. And now I'm going to do another layer below these leaves for the stem. I'm making a closed form so that I can color it in later. Okay, so on top of these leaves, I'm going to add another layer for the veins. Remember, if it's hard to see, you can always hide layers temporarily so that you can see what you're doing. Now I am going to turn on all of these layers and I can see the existing plants, the bird of paradise and the antherium Okay, so now I'm going to draw the next group of flowers, the Bugenvdia on a layer behind everything else since they are in the background. I'll start with the branches with some lovely curved lines, and now I'll do the leaves. Okay, so now on another layer on top of that, I will draw the flowers. I want them to have an outline around them and color them in, so I'm making sure, again, that we have some closed forms. I'm just going to turn off the branch layer to clean up these flowers a little bit with the eraser tool. Okay, so now with these Buginvila flowers, there is this cute little detail that I love. It's a tiny collusor of white mini flowers on top. And I think I'll just draw one of them off to the side for now. I know that it's going to take me forever to draw them again and again. So once we vectorize it in Illustrator, I can just copy and paste it and rotate it and reflect it a bunch of times and place it on each flower. So it's a little hack to save some time. And now I'm going to do a layer on top of the leaves and the flowers with some more vein details that will be in a different color. I know it's not very pretty to look at yet, but I have a vision, and I'm going to pursue it. So I'm going to turn the vine detail on now so that you can see everything that's going on. Remember, I only need to draw the Bugenvila flowers once because eventually, I'm going to reflect that plant to the other side. Okay, so I have one more element to draw for this motif. I'm going to make one more layer, and on top of everything, it's going to be the Balisie plant, and it's going to overlap everything else. So I'm putting it on the very top layer. So I'm just going to draw the outline of the plant. This is such a cool plant. Apparently, it's a cousin of the banana tree, and these flowers are like little cups that catch the rainwater. Okay, so here we go, I think I also want to add another detail because you know me. I cannot resist another detail. I'm going to use the dry ink brush to make a stripe in the new layer behind the outline of this plant. It's going to have a nice bit of texture, and it's probably going to be yellow. And there we go. So now, I'll be able to reflect these two plants here to the left, and we can do that in Illustrator. And so here is our first lozenge. We're ready to go. It looks kind of funny right now, but we can see that we have everything on different layers because that's going to help us when we vectorize. And again, this is just my way of doing things. If it helps you to actually color in your motifs while you're in Procreate, you can do that, too. I wanted to skip a step and save some time, which is why I did it this way, but there really is no right way to do this, okay? So you can do whatever works best for you and your workflow. So I'm going to turn off the ugly sketch layer now in the background and only export the inked illustration over to Illustrator. But wait, isn't there another diamond to ink? Oh, yes. I love to punish myself. So before I export, I'm just going to go back to my gallery and grab the other rough sketch that we created. I'm just going to grab that layer and blow it up and concentrate on the other motif now. And now I'm going to repeat the process, the same one that I did for the first one. And thankfully this next one is a little bit less detailed, a little bit less involved. Okay, so now we're ready to export these two motifs to Illustrator and vectorize and color them in. So we'll just return to our Procreate gallery, and we'll go to select, and then we'll select our two diamond motifs here. And we're going to select share and then PSD file, which is a layered Photoshop file, but it can also be opened in Illustrator. And now I'll use the airdrop and send them over to my computer. Now, I still have to ink the other two patterns, but that won't take very long. So let's just do that right now. So I'm going to move on to our secondary coordinate pattern, which is going to be a scallop print with the oper de Voyager or the traveler's palm. So I've got the rough sketch open, and I'm going to turn down its opacity and start drawing on a new layer. I'm going to ink my drawing with the studio pen again. Okay, so here I go. I'm making some closed forms for these branches because I want to color them in and have their outline be the same color as the background. So now I'll do a layer in front for these leaves. And now I'll make a layer underneath those leaves but on top of the stem, and I'm going to draw the leaves that are crossing behind. Okay, and now I'll draw a layer on top for the veins. Okay, so now you can see my finished drawing. So with this, you can see that I've got separate layers for those veins, these top leaves, the next veins, and the leaves that cross behind, which will all be a different color. And then we have below that the branches or the stems. Okay, so this will be something that we can export into Illustrator and turn into a beautiful repeating scallop pattern. And now we just need to ink our Blender print, which will literally take no time at all, I promise. Okay, so for this Madras print, I could create the pattern directly in Illustrator, using the square or rectangle tool to make these perfectly straight lines. But I wanted to give my own spin on the Madras by giving it a hand drawn imperfect look. Now, stripe patterns are a bit special, so I'm going to make a square Canvas in Procreate and go to the tool panel here and click on Drawing Guide just to give me a grid. So this grid is just a guide to keep my lines more or less on the straight line. It won't be visible in the final design, but it's going to help me keep those stripes on a more or less straight line. A bit imperfect is fine, but I don't want them going across the page either. I want the lines to be a little bit wiggly, but straight enough for them to meet up when we create that repeating pattern in Illustrator. So I'm just going to take a model line brush that can do very thick or thin lines. And as you can see, I can vary the width here. Well, that one's a bit extreme. So this one I like, it's from Liz Kohler Brown's hand lettering collection, but there's also a mod line brush in the free kit that comes with Procreate. And I believe it's in the calligraphy set. So I'm going to play with the width and make a few wiggly lines in different widths. I'm going to stay on a mostly straight path so that I can make them seamless in Illustrator later on. So now I have some variation to pick and choose from so that I can build my Madras pattern. And once they're vectorized, I'll be able to adjust their width and pick and choose which ones will work the best with my pattern. I may need to squish them or stretch them a bit, and that's okay because they're not really an illustration. They're just some vectorized elements to get started with. So now I'll click the wrench icon and click Share. Since there's only one layer, I can just share that as a PNG instead of a PSD, and I will click AirDrop and send it over to my computer. I'll see you in the next lesson where we vectorize our illustrations and get them one step closer to becoming beautiful repeating patterns. 11. Vectorize Your Artwork: Alright, it is time to vectorize our motifs. Vectorizing your patterns has many advantages. First of all, it allows you to rescale your images infinitely without losing quality or pixelating. Vectorizing your artwork also means that each element is kept separate, which makes it super easy to recolor or tweak your design. And many printers or fabric manufacturers also require vector artwork since they print each color separately. Vector artwork is also much less cumbersome than the high resolution raster artwork and much easier to share with your clients. Now, I know many successful surface designers who use lots of texture or more painterly effects, and they don't vectorize their artwork. I have also worked with a few manufacturers in the fabric industry who did not request vector artwork. But personally, I prefer to take this extra step for maximum flexibility with my artwork. So I'm going to start by creating a new Illustrator document by clicking Command N. Letter size is fine. And I will make sure that CMYK color mode is selected. And I will place my exported PSD or PNG files of the illustrations we exported from Procreate. I've decided to start with the hero print to get the most complicated design over with first. Remember, for this one, I'm working with two alternating diamonds or medallions, and I'm going to do one at a time to simplify as much as possible. So I'm going to hit Shift Command P. Then select the file name Hero one from my downloads. Remember, this is the first of two diamonds for the hero pattern. And for the PSD files with multiple layers, make sure you click Show Import Options before you click on Place. Now, make sure that convert layers to objects is selected. And now you can click Okay. Now, when we move this design around, you can see all the layers are grouped together. So what we want to do is click Shift Command G to ungroup these layers so that we can easily edit them. And now I'd like you to click on the Layers panel and click the little arrow so that we can see each individual layer of our illustration. I'm going to go down this list of layers, and I'm going to turn off the little eyeball icon, which will hide the layers that I'm not working on so that we can avoid any confusion. I'll leave the very bottom layer turned on, which is the furthest in the background. Well, I can see that I have a blank white background layer, so I'll just delete that one. And let's start with the next furthest layer from us, which has these two beautiful fan shaped palm leaves. So I'm going to click on that layer either in the Layers panel or directly from the artboard, and I will go to Image Trace, which is in the shortcuts menu right here. If you don't have image trace in your shortcuts, you can find it under Window and Image Trace. So with that layer selected, I'm going to click on the black and white logo preset and then click Okay. I like this preset because it seems to capture detail pretty well. I'm also going to click on this Advanced arrow, and I'm going to check Ignore color so that Illustrator does not include any white background in the artwork. Now, with the vector artwork, it is very normal to lose some detail. So I'm going to zoom in a bit and see if I can play with some of these levels here for better results. See that the leaves have lost some of their pointiness, and I'm going to play with the threshold, moving it down, and then raising the number of paths to get some detail back. So for this particular layer, it looks like I am at 63 for threshold and 90 for paths. So I just kind of play with these a bit until I'm more or less happy. And if there aren't any issues that I can get rid of, I can also touch them up later using the eraser tool or the Smooth tool, or even the Blob Brush tool later on. Okay? So I'm pretty happy with this layer. I now need to go to the Object menu and click Image Trace and expand. You can see now that the line art has a blue outline when my mouse passes over it. And if I select a color, as you can see, it can now be modified. And now comes the fun part. We need to do this for every layer. So I'm hoping your pattern is less detailed than mine. I'm going to go back to the layers menu and click on the eyeball icon to unhide the next illustration layer. I will then grab that layer and go to Image Trace, select black and white logo, and I will select black and white logo, ignore color to get rid of the white, and play with the threshold and path levels until I'm happy with the detail. Oops, I just noticed that I forgot to draw one of the veins in the left palm leaf. But once it's vectorized, I'll just copy and paste one from the other palm leaf on the right side. Okay, so I'm happy with this, and now I'll go over to object, image trace, and expand. So now I'm just going to continue down the line for each layer. I have many layers because I love to torture myself by making life unnecessarily complicated. It doesn't really take that long once you get into the groove, but bear with me while I vectorize the rest of this. The Alright, so here is my hero pattern all lined up and vectorized. I'm going to repeat this process now with the second diamond medallion of the hero pattern. So Command Shift P to place the PSD file. Remember to click on Show Import Options and then convert layers to objects. Okay? So now I'll select the artwork and Command Shift G to ungroup the artwork. And then I will go to the layers panel, hide all the layers with the little eyeball icon. And one by one, starting from the furthest layer back and moving forward, I will select the visible layer and go to image trace, make the necessary adjustments to paths or threshold, and then expand. So here we go. All right. The two motifs for my hero pattern are all vectorized. Now it's time to vectorize the artwork for my coordinate print, which is my scallop pattern. This one will go faster, only five layers in this one. So Command Shift P to place the PSD file, show import options, convert layers to objects, and then we're going to hide all the layers except the furthest one away, image trace, and make any needed adjustments. So object, image trace, expand, repeat, repeat, repeat. All right, so we've finished vectorizing the coordinate pattern. It's time to vectorize our blender print now, which is just a few hand drawn stripes that will eventually become a madras plaid. So this one again, has only one layer. We'll save the easiest for last. So Command Shift P to place the image, select the image and image trace. Ignore color and make any adjustments to the threshold or the paths. Okay, not so much to do looks perfect. Object, image trace, expand. Alright, all of my patterns are vectorized. I think it's time for a coffee break or a cocktail. Well, I think we'll save the cocktail for the end. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll assemble and color our motifs. 12. Assemble and Color Your Motifs: Hello again. Now that we've vectorized our motifs, it's time for the fun part. We're going to add color and assemble our motifs. So I'm going to start with my hero pattern because it's the most important pattern of my collection. And as the star, it has first dibs on the best colors. So the coordinating print and the blender print are playing supporting roles. So the colors I choose for them are going to elevate the hero print. It's a good idea to use all of your color palette in your hero print so that it coordinates well with any other patterns which are going to work with fewer colors. So I'm going to open my color palette that I created in Lesson six by going to the Hamburger menu in the Swatches panel and clicking on Open Swatch Library. User Defined, and then the color palette I want. I'm going to start clicking on the vectorized artwork by clicking the shortcut V for the selection tool and then clicking on the element that I want to color. And then I just click the color that I want from the palette. I will probably click M for the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle and send it to the back and fill it with color so that I can see how the motifs will look against a colored background. I think I want to portray a dark tropical rainforest with some striking pops of colorful red and pink flowers. So let's start with these palm leaves. I want to color the inside, but if you notice, I can only change the outline color. So what I need to do if I want to color the inside is first select the leaves with the selection tool and then click Shift M for the Shape Builder tool. Now, if you notice, if I scroll my mouse over the image, these inside spaces are highlighted. So I will click once inside of each space and be careful because if you drag your mouse over them, they will unite everything into one solid shape. And since I still want to keep that outline effect, I will simply click once inside each shape that I want to color. So I'll select this dark green. I want it to be darker than the leaves in front to give us some illusion of depth. Okay, so now I'll do the other leaf. And now I'll color the veins on the leaves. So like I mentioned earlier, I'd like to emulate the arts and crafts movement by making the outlines the same color as the background. I find that effect very beautiful. So to select the black outlines of these leaves, since I use the Shape Builder tool to color them in, they are grouped together. So, see what happens when I try to move them. So I'm going to click twice on the black outline to take us into isolation mode. As you can see, everything that's not in isolation mode is grayed out, and only the black and green color in the leaves are selected. And since I don't want to change the color inside of these leaves, I'm going to click twice again on the black outline to take me to a further level of isolation mode. So now I can modify just that part. Okay, now I just need to double click outside of the image to leave isolation mode. Okay, so next, I'm going to color the center palm leaves using a lighter green to bring it forward. And I will use the Shape Builder tool by selecting the image and then clicking Shift M and then click once inside each space that I want to color. I will also go to Isolation Mode to color the outlines. Okay, so next, I'm going to color these branches. And since these elements make up one motif, I will select them all and hit Command G to make a group, and that will make them easier to work with. So next I'm going to color the porcelain rose and the detail layers. I will color the petals using the Shape Builder tool again and I'm going to group the elements for this flower together with Command G. Okay, so now I will group the elements for this flower together. Next, I'll color the three hibiscus flowers and group them together. Now I'm going to color this branch coming out from behind the hibiscus flowers. I will make the outline leaves, veins and flower bud its own group by selecting them and hitting Command G. And now I will hit Command C to copy it and Command F to paste in front. And next, I will go to object transform and reflect to reflect the branch on the other side. If I need to reorder the groups to make something go behind or on top of another object, I can simply go to object arrange and then either bring it to the front or bring it to the back as needed. I am keeping these two branches separate from the hibiscus flowers in case I need to move them slightly to better fit into the finished repeat. Alright, so I've got my first diamond finished, and now I'm going to repeat the same process with the second diamond. Remember to fill in the closed spaces, I need to hit Shift M for the Shape Builder tool. I can drag it to create a solid shape or simply click once to fill in the inner shape. Alright, I'll let you watch me work. Okay, here we have the two elements of my hero pattern. They're ready to be made into a repeat. We already have the objects in their own groups. But what I'm going to do now is I'm going to group them into two separate groups. That way, I'll be able to move them around easily. When building my pattern, but I'll also be able to manipulate the smaller elements of the group by double clicking the group and going into isolation mode. Okay, so I'm just going to select all of these elements for the first motif and click Command G to group them together. See now, they all move as one unit. But if I want to edit a specific element like this branch, I can just double click and double click again to enter the various levels of isolation mode. Okay, I'm just going to click outside here and move on to the next motifs. So next, I'm going to color the coordinate pattern using the same technique. Again, these colors will most likely change before we're through. But what matters to me right now is just getting some color down so that I can get on with the process. Once I see the finished patterns next to one another, I will certainly do some tweaking and experimenting. Okay, I like this a lot. This is a really nice start. I'm just going to drag this over to the side, and we've got one more pattern, our blender print that we need to color. So for the moment, I'm just going to color all of these stripes pink, and I'm going to decide more later on. Because this is a madraplaid, the stripes will change color where they intersect. And for that, I'd like to decide once the pattern is all worked out. Okay, so now it's your turn to assemble and color your motifs. If they are complex, try to group the like objects together so that they will be easier to move around when we create our repeat. So I'll see you in our next lesson, and we're finally going to build our repeating patterns. 13. Build Your Repeat and Test Your Patterns: Welcome back. It is time to assemble our motifs into repeating patterns. This part is magical, exciting, and sometimes very frustrating. It requires a bit of patience, especially when you're dealing with a more complex pattern like mine. So I've created a new Illustrator document right here. It doesn't matter what size. And I just went with a letter size, and I selected CMYK. And I'm just going to paste my two hero pattern motifs or diamonds, if you will. And I'm going to go to my Swatches panel, and I'm going to click the Hamburger menu and click on OpenSwatch Library, and then User Defined. And then I'll select the color palette I created for this collection. Okay, so there it is. I'm going to grab that dark green and click the shortcut M to draw a rectangle background. And I'll just go to Object, Arrange and Send to back. And now I'll just place my motifs on there and kind of play with it to get a feel for what my pattern will look like. When I select the motif, I can click the option button and make a copy of the motif, and then start dragging it. Click and hold down the Shift button, too, so that the copy stays on a straight line. Okay, so now I'm going to do the same for the second diamond, for lack of a better word. I'm going to duplicate it by hitting option, then drag it while holding the shift down to keep everything aligned. And I'm going to try and nestle it in there between the other medallions. Okay, looking pretty good. And now I'm going to grab those first three on top and, again, duplicate them all at once. And this time, I'm going to bring them down below. And now we can start to have an idea of what this is going to look like. I know there is going to be some overlap, which is fine, and I'm just going to kind of inch them around a bit until they overlap in a pleasing way without creating anything visually jarring or confusing. Okay, so now I'm going to get rid of that background and draw myself a bounding box. I'm going to hit the shortcut M to draw a square holding the Shift key. Okay, so what I want to do here is find the repeat. You can really use any part of the pattern to do this, but I think I'll use the tip of this red flower here. Okay? So we are going to look for the same detail over to the right. Here it is. And then the same detail down below. Okay, here it is. So now we will draw the square of the repeat. This is called the bounding box. If I go to Window Info, I can see the info panel which tells us now how big this box is. Okay? So as we can see, it's measuring in the partial pixels. So let's just round this number to something more simple to work with. How about 1,100 by 1,100 pixels? Okay, so let's get rid of this first square because it doesn't have a nice rounded number. And let's click the shortcut M to create our new square. So this time, just click once on the artboard and define the dimensions of the box, which will be 1,100 by 1,100 pixels in my case. Okay, I'm going to grab the first motif and just center it in the box right here. Okay, so now I'm just going to delete these other motifs, and we'll be left with just these two. So for this pattern, remember that what crosses over on the left also needs to cross over here on the right side. Same for anything crossing above or below the bounding box. So this motif here is crossing both above and to the left of my box. So now I'm going to hit V, which is the select tool, and then I'm going to click on this motif. And then I'm going to click the shortcut Shift Command M, or I can go to Object, Transform, move. So we're first going to move it to the right. So I will precise the length of the bounding box, 1,100 pixels to the right, and then I will put 1,100 pixels for horizontal and zero for vertical. Next, I will click Copy, and you can see the motif is now copied exactly 1,100 pixels to the right. So now it's time to copy them down below. So I will click V for the Select tool and then click on the two motifs that are crossing over the top. And I'm going to hit Shift to grab more than one at a time. And then the shortcut Command Shift M. This time, I will put zero for the horizontal and I will put 1,100 pixels for vertical. Now we have the motifs copied over the horizontal and vertical edges of the bounding box. Now it's time to test our pattern. Before we do that, though, we need to grab this box, the bounding box of our motif, and we're going to click Command C to copy it and then Command B to paste it in the back. And now while that new box that we've copied behind is still selected, we want to make it transparent by going to our toolbar on the left here and getting rid of any fill or outline. Okay, so now we're just going to select everything with our mouse, and we're going to drag it all the way over to our Swatches panel here and then let go. And as you can see, we now have a little icon of our pattern in the Swatches panel. So let's test it out. I'm going to click and draw a rectangle. And then while that rectangle is still selected, I'm going to click that icon of my pattern in the Swatches panel. And Voila there is our pattern. Now, I see that there are a few little issues I would like to change. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to return to the repeat here and make some adjustments. Just remember that if you adjust anything that crosses the bounding box, you need to recopy it over to the other side, or else your repeating pattern will have some visual flaws. Okay, well, I'm pretty happy with this, but I'm going to do a few more tweaks, and once I'm satisfied, I'll drag the new version over to the Swatches panel, and I'll test it out again with a rectangle. Okay, it's looking better now. So I'm going to go to the existing rectangle that's filled with the previous version of the pattern, and I'm going to select it and then click the new pattern swatch, and it will update our pattern, and it's looking so much better. Okay, so now I'm going to assemble my coordinate print, and this one is the scallop pattern. So I'm going to make a new Illustrator file for this one and paste the motif right here. Alright, so I'm going to start placing the scallops, like I did with the previous pattern, I'll select the motif and start to drag it over and then hit Option and Shift while dragging it. I'm going to hit Command D to duplicate that a few times. Okay. And now I'll select the whole line of scallops, and I'll hit Option and drag it down, and then I'm going to stagger it to the right to fill in those spaces and nestle them in there nicely. Okay, so yet again, I'm going to grab everything and duplicate it below. So now I have a fairly good idea of what my scallop pattern is going to look like, and I can adjust it if necessary, and then I can find the repeat. Okay, so I'll use the bottom point of the tree as my reference point to find the repeat. Okay, so I'll draw the bounding box. That looks close enough to a square. Okay, so I'm going to round the square to the nearest pixel again. Okay, so now I'm going to center the scallop in this bounding box and delete everything else except for this one scallop that crosses over right here. And I need to copy it to the right, and I also need to copy it down below. I'm going to click V for the selection tool and then click the motif that I need to copy. And now I'll compose the shortcut Shift Command M to move it. So let's move it 500 pixels horizontally and 500 pixels vertically. Click Copy. Okay, so here is the pattern. And now I will press V for the selection tool. Click my bounding box, and then click Command C to copy the box and then Command B to paste in back. And then, while that still is selected, I'll make sure that there is no fill in the box in my tool panel. Alright, so now to test our design, I'm going to select everything and drag it over to the Swatches panel. Now we'll click on M on the keyboard to select the rectangle tool shortcut and draw a rectangle, and then we'll click our pattern swatch to fill the rectangle with our pattern. Okay, so I really like this. I'm going to place it next to the hero print to see how it looks. So I'm not convinced about this color way. Although I love it on its own, I'm not sure it's fulfilling its role of supporting the hero print. So I will try to make some other variations in color, and then I will retest this pattern. It's really easy to change color. I can simply click on the shortcut Y for the magic Wan tool, and when I click a color I'd like to change, it will automatically select all incidences of that color. So if I grab this green here, it will select all of it at once, so I don't have to go around one at a time. And now I can switch the colors with a simple click. Okay, so I think that's looking a bit better, but I'm curious what my other options are, so give me a sec to play with this a little. Okay, so I may have gone overboard, but it's just so much fun geeking out over the color. I've made five variations of this pattern, all of which are very nice in their own ways. And I'm just looking at how they relate to the hero pattern. And I think I've got an overall preference for this dark green one and maybe also the pink one. Although the yellow one is also quite nice. So I really don't have to decide right now, but it's nice to have options that are ready to go. In one of my licensed fabric collections, the manufacturer actually offered one of my coordinate prints in several color options for each color way, which gave it a lot more versatility. Alright, so it's time to assemble our final print, our blender pattern, and this one is going to be a Madras plaid. And for that, I'm going to go for the hand drawn spin on the Madras. Okay? So I have my pink vectorized stripes here, and I'm going to make a bounding box square in this light cream color to start with. I think I'll make it 400 pixels by 400 pixels, but this scale may change. I'm just going to copy the sketch that I made of the pattern in Procreate, and I'm going to use it as a guide so that I can see where my stripes are going to fall. Okay. And I'm going to get rid of it once my vectorized stripes are placed there. Okay, so now I'm going to start to place my vectorized stripes. I'm going to make them slightly longer than the bounding box, which is 400 by 400 pixels. And I may have to stretch or squish them a bit so that they're the correct width. Because I hand drew them, they may not be very straight up and down. And so with the guides that I create here, I can straighten those stripes as much as possible to start with. So I can just select each stripe and click the shortcut R to rotate, and I place my anchor point here with one click, and then I can address that stripe as necessary. Okay, so now I'm going to place the stripe at the top, overlapping that top line. And so remember that anything that overlaps the top must also be copied to the bottom. So I'm going to select a stripe, and I'm going to click Command Shift M and move the stripe 400 pixels vertically down. Zero horizontal. Okay, so we see the stripe has been copied down, but there's something really funky going on here where they overlap. It doesn't look very seamless. So what I need to do is I need to select A, the direct selection tool, and manually move the anchor points on this bottom stripe so that it blends into the next stripe without any weird bumps or anything like that. Okay? So it's looking better. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to delete the stripe that I did not modify. So I'll just select the bottom stripe that I modified, and I'm going to click Command Shift M, and I'm going to move it up. Since we're moving up this time, we need to put in negative 400 pixels. Okay, so the line is copied over, and I'm going to select them both now. And in my Pathfinder menu, which is over here, I'm going to click the Unite shape mode to make this into one unified shape. So now I can reuse this stripe, no matter if I move it up and down, I know that it will be totally seamless for a 400 pixel repeat. So I can reuse the stripe and move it or reflect it, and it will remain seamless. As long as I don't modify the length of this stripe, I can adjust its width, and it won't make a difference in the seamless repeat. Okay, I'm going to make a few more seamless stripes, and then I'm going to reuse them, and I'm going to place them on my design. I probably won't use all of the stripes that I drew, which is okay. I'm going to try this medium stripe, and I'm going to adjust it a bit so that it's the desired length and width. Okay, and now I'm going to hit Command Shift M and copy it 400 pixels down. So I'll just use the shortcut A to access the direct selection tool and move some of those anchor points to make the juncture disappear. Okay, so now I'll delete the unmodified stripe. Select the modified stripe and hit Command Shift M and copy it negative 400 pixels, which will move it vertically. Okay. So now I'm just going to finish laying out all of my stripes where I want them to be. Okay, great. So now is a good time to choose the colors, although I may change my mind about them later on. I think I want the two fat stripes to be pink, and then this one can be light yellow, and maybe this one can be light green. And this one yellow again. Hm. And maybe these can be yellow, too. So now I'm going to do a little test before I finish the pattern to make sure I like the look of the placement of the stripes and also to make sure that this pattern is completely seamless. So I'm going to select the bounding box square, and I'm going to hit Command C to copy it, and I'll hit Command B to paste in back. And then I will remove the fill and any outlines. So now I'll drag the repeat into the swatches panel, and I'll test my repeat by creating a rectangle and filling it with this pattern swatch. Okay, so this is looking good. I may adjust the spacing of a few of these stripes before I continue. I need to make sure that it looks good because in the next step, modifications are going to get a bit more complicated to do. Okay, so we have a sort of plaid design going on here, but to make it truly look like a Madras plaid, we need to have the lines changing color, where they overlap one another. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select all the stripes one by one until they're all selected, and then I'm going to the Pathfinder panel on the right here. If you don't have a Pathfinder panel open, you just need to go to Window Pathfinder to find it. Okay, and I'm going to select the divide icon this time, which is going to cut those stripes wherever they overlap, forming some new shapes. Now I'm going to select those stripes and I'll press Shift Command G to ungroup the shapes. And now I will select each individual shape and color them as desired. So I think I want the intersection of the two light pink lines to be in this red color. I think I'll make the intersection of the light yellow and the light pink, this darker pink color. I'm just going to select all those rectangles where they intersect, and I'll change the color. Okay. And where the green and the pink intersect, I think that I'll make that a darker green here. And then where the green and the yellow intersect, I'll choose a more yellowish green. This is kind of challenging for me because I'm working with a limited palette here, and it's not exactly a mix of the colors, the way a true madras would appear. But, again, this is a tribute to the madras, so it's okay. Okay, so that's looking pretty nice. I'm going to select that bounding box square and copy it behind by pressing Command C and then Command B and remove the fill. So now I'll drag my pattern into the swatch panel, time to test it out. So I'll draw a rectangle. Again, I have to press the shortcut M, and then I'll click on the pattern swatch to fill my rectangle. And there is my maddress. Okay, so now I'm going to place these patterns together, and we're going to see how they all get along. So you may remember that I was pretty torn about which color to use for the coordinate pattern. And now I think it's between the green and the yellow. Overall, I think the green one is the best way to go. Okay, so now I want to show you my mini collection in its second color way. It was really easy to recolor. I simply used the magic wand tool, which is the shortcut Y and selected the colors that I wanted to replace. So as you can see, if we look at the two colorways together, there are a few colors that I carried over across both colorways. Now it's your turn to build your patterns and test out your repeats. You can even work out your second color way if you're feeling motivated. You may need to make a lot of tweaks, and that's okay. I never get a perfect pattern on my first attempt. I usually have to make several tweaks and several tests in my swatches panel before I'm happy with the final pattern. So I'll see you in the next lesson and we're going to talk about showcasing your mini collection in an attractive mockup. 14. Mockups: Congratulations on the creation of your mini collection. So now let's take a moment and show it off with a beautiful mockup. Using mockups make your art come alive and will help art directors or potential customers to visualize your artwork in a real setting. It's a great addition to your portfolio and your social media feed, and it can show how your patterns would look on a variety of different products. So I found this mockup on Creative Market. It features three types of fabric, which will really showcase my three patterns. There are many beautiful options that aren't very expensive. There are also plenty of free download options at websites like Mockup World, Graphic Burger, and Free Pick. Although some of them may require attribution if you share them. Don't just consider fabric, but also diapers, clothing, wallpaper, notebooks, and phone cases. Choose mockups that suit the industry that you would like to pitch to. So I've opened up the PSD file of my new mockup in Photoshop, and I'm going to go to my Illustrator files, and I'm going to grab the square that I filled with my hero pattern, and I'm going to select copy. And now I'll return to Photoshop from here, and it's really as simple as double clicking in the Layers panel. So I'm going to double click on the Smart Object layer to open it in a new window. So now I'm going to replace the placeholder image by adding a layer and using the Control V shortcut paste. You may need to resize or move it around a little. Once it looks good, you can hit Command S to save, and then you just close that window out and you head back to the original Photoshop window, and now the image should appear in the mockup. So now I'll just repeat that with the remaining patterns. When I'm ready, I'll go to File Export, save for web, and I'll export it as a JPEG to share on social media or add to my portfolio. It's really just as simple as that. And I just wanted to show you one more mockup that I found. How cute is this little girl swimsuit mockup. I couldn't resist also buying this one from creative market. I think it goes really well with the tropical theme of my mini collection, and I could see this on shirts, swimwear, towels, sandals, and even beach bags. Alright, I'd love it if you posted your mini collection either with or without a mockup in our project gallery. I really can't wait to see your work. I'll see you in the next lesson where we'll put the finishing touches on your mini collection by creating a logo and naming our print. 15. Finishing Touches: Create a Logo and Display Your Collection: Now that we've created our mini collection, I would love to add just a few extra finishing touches. First of all, I generally like to create a logo featuring the name of the collection and a few motifs from the patterns that I already created. A logo adds an extra professional touch to the collection and gives our audience a taste of the mood and vibe in our collection. In my current pattern portfolio, I display the logo and story together at the beginning of each collection's section. It gives a really nice preview of what's to come, and it rarely takes me very long since I just need to find a nice font that suits the theme and pair it with a few motifs pulled from the collection. I create my logos in Illustrator, and I start by choosing a typeface or hand lettering that fits well with my story, and then I play around with a few motifs until I find a configuration that I like. I usually save this step for the end because I will have already drawn all of the artwork, and it's just a question of pulling a few existing elements. So here are a few other logos that I've created. So now I'd like to display my finished mini collection, color palette, logo, and story together. In the course download section for this class, you can download an Adobe Illustrator template, where you can place all of these elements, simply open it in Illustrator, and then you can copy and paste your pattern swatches, your logo, your story, and mock up image. And once you're finished, it's time to export this page as a JPEG and post it in the student gallery. I am so excited to see your mini collection. 16. Final Thoughts: Cheers to you on completing your class, and thank you so much for joining me. I really hope that you enjoyed this class as much as I enjoyed making it. There are so many directions that you can take with your mini collection. Not only will it enhance your portfolio and your social media feeds, but you can also pitch it to companies to design challenges, or even sell it on print on demand sites. And if you're feeling extra creative, you can even use it for personal projects like home decor, clothing, or gifts. Whatever path you choose, I truly hope that this class has helped to spark your inspiration. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out in the discussion section. I'm always here to help. Whenever you're ready, please be sure to share your mini collection in the class project tab. I get such a kick out of seeing your creative progress, and I always make a point to leave feedback because I am genuinely invested in helping you succeed. Also, if you enjoy this class, I would be so grateful if you could leave a review. Your thoughts mean a lot to me, and it helps others to discover my class, and don't forget to hit the follow button next to my name so that you can stay updated on new content, tips and news. Now that you've created your mini collection, you might want to apply your patterns to other products like stationary, greeting cards, invitations or even wall art. And if that's the case, I've got some other Skillshare classes that might be perfect for you. In design a greeting card using inspiration from your everyday life, I lead you on an inspiration quest through my tried and true techniques for defeating creative block and designing and illustrating a successful greeting card. You can also check out Art of the Invitation, design and Illustrate for any occasion. This is a deep dive into invitation design, tone, typography, layouts, and more. If you're interested in applying your patterns to a wall art series, check out my staff pick class. Create a stunning Wallart series, simple designs for any space. Oh, and don't forget about the free download that I created especially for students in this class. My Mini collection creation workbook is a handy resource for you to organize your ideas and sketches as you bring your pattern collection to life. You can grab it at jamelexander.net slash WCBok. I'm so excited to see your favorite travel destination through your eyes with your Mini Pattern collection. To quote a famous Chinese proverb, the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single pattern or something like that. Anyway, I hope your mini collection inspires and tells beautiful stories wherever it wanders. Cheers to you, your continued success, and the adventures that lie ahead. I'll see you next time.