Elevate Your Surface Pattern Designs: A Procreate to Adobe Illustrator Workflow

1. Class Introduction: Hey, everyone. My name is Lisa, and I am super excited to bring you this comprehensive class that'll elevate your surface pattern designs. Having worked as a licensing artist and resource creator, I'm always looking for better and quicker ways to improve my pattern designs. And one of my favorite workflows is to use my appropriate images directly in Adobe Illustrator to build unique patterns. I often combine them with vector elements that really elevates the end result. So you might be thinking, what? Raster and vector together. Yes, absolutely. Not many designers know that you can do so much with raster files directly in Adobe Illustrator, and I'll be showing you all the secrets in this class. I want to arm you with as much information as possible, which is why this class includes three fund projects that cover everything from embedding and recoloring raster files with an Adobe Illustrator. Plus, we'll be combining vector and raster elements to produce unique results. We'll then build and test our pattern in Adobe Illustrator. In addition, you'll learn how to export and save your final repeating tile ready for licensing or sale. In between all of that, I'll be sharing many tips along the way to help speed up your art making process. This class is for both beginners and season designers looking for new workflows that combine these two amazing apps. By the end of this class, you'll know how to combine vector and Rs images directly in Adobe Illustrator to create gorgeous repeating patterns. I'll see you in class. 2. Materials & Class Resources: For this class, you'll need an iPad with procreate installed. This is where we'll be drawing all our motifs. Then for the second part of the class projects, you'll need the full deskop version of Adobe Illustrator. The reason we're using the full Deskop version and not the iPad version is because we'll be using features to speed up our workflow that the iPad version doesn't have. You'll also need a reliable method to transfer your procreate files over to your computer. You can use Airdrop on a Mac or a cloud based service like Dropbox. To use Dropbox, you'll need a Dropbox account and the app installed on your iPad. Then when exporting from Procreate, you'll need to save your files to drop box on your iPad. Then once you're ready to import into Illustrator, download the files from Dropbox to your desktop computer. To follow along with me, I recommend downloading the bonus resources that come with this class. Of course, you're welcome to use your own brushes and palettes. I just wanted to make it easier for you by providing these bonus goodies. The resources include some fun winged insect stamps, a couple of my premium procreate brushes, and a template we'll be using for the second class project. I've also included the color palettes I'll be using, as well as the motifs for project three, if you'd like to use the same artwork I used to build the pattern. Hop over here to download all the goodies. Once you've downloaded the resources, please go ahead and install the brushes and import the template file into procreate so that we can dive straight into creating. 3. Difference Between Raster & Vector: Before we jump into creating, let's quickly go over the key differences between raster based artwork and vector based artwork. It's important to understand these differences so you can harness their benefits successfully. To keep it simple, I've created a quick table to help us compare the differences between the two apps we'll be using today. So Procreate is a Raster based app, while Adobe illustrator is vector based. When it comes to how the app renders the images, Raster format use tiny pixels to form the images while vector graphics render artwork using mathematical points or formula. This means that Raster images are resolution dependent while vector graphics are not. In the real world application, that means you can't enlarge pixel based images without starting to lose quality at some point. Conversely, vectors can be enlarged infinitely without losing quality. So, which format is best for creating art? There's no right or wrong format. As with all art mediums, they all have pros and cons. The trick is to use their strength to your advantage. What we lose in the one medium, we gain in the other. For example, Raster based artwork has the advantage of looking hand drawn and less digital. It allows you as the artist to incorporate lovely texture into your work, giving your artwork a real painterly look. However, as explained earlier, it is resolution dependent, which means you can't increase the scale of the artwork without losing quality. But we can mitigate that by creating artwork as large as possible to avoid running into quality problems down the line. Vector, on the other hand, gives you the freedom to scale your artwork infinitely, which is great for large applications. However, vector artwork can often look computer generated and flat. But when it comes to patent designing, in my opinion, adobe illustrator is by far the best app for the job. With both the patent tool and image trace function, creating and testing seamless patterns is super easy once you get the hang of those tools. Okay. So is there a way we can combine these and get the best of both worlds? Yes, absolutely. In this class, I'm going to show you how we can harness the advantages of procreate and illustrator to not only create lovely designs, but speed up your workflow in the process. Okay. 4. Project 1: Creating Motifs in Procreate: For our first project, we'll be creating acute moth design. And what I've done is supplied some stamps for you to use as a starting point. But the first thing we want to do is create our document. And because we'll be using some elements in our patent design that are still raster elements, we want to create that document as large as possible. Your iPad might struggle with the size that I'm going to go for in this class. So what I recommend doing is going as absolutely large as you can. We'll be using approximately about five or six layers in this document. So think about that when you're creating your file. But I reckon if you keep your file layers down quite a bit. In other words, you don't use too many layers, you should be able to use quite a large document. So for this class, I'm going to use a document. I'm going to create a new canvas that is 7,500 pixels by 7,500. I'm making sure that it's 300 DPI. So I have 14 layers to play around with. You might have something that says six or maybe eight. But as I mentioned, try and go as really large as you possibly can so that we can retain that resolution when we finally use those raster elements within our patent design. So I'm going to go ahead and press create. And I've already imported the brush set that comes with the class. The first thing I want to do is start having some fun creating cute little moths, and we'll be using this as our base. And basically, we're going to be decorating these moths. I've also included two brushes from this one comes from my messy paint box, and Lisa's pencil pretty much is in all my brush sets that I create, and that's my go two pencil that I use in most of my projects. The first thing I want to do is stamp out some of my moth shapes. I'm going to choose the first one and just stamp one. I'm essentially going to use all kind like a moth in each corner, these four quarters of this canvas. The first thing I want to do is just enlarge that and just roughly place it top left. Then on a new layer, I'm going to move on to the second one. And do the same thing. I'm just stamping once. Then once I'm happy with placement, I'm going to flatten that because we want to retain as many layers as possible. I'm going to merge down and then create a new layer for the next stamp. These are going to be our guides and merge, create a new layer for the last one, I think it looks pretty good and merge down. Okay. So now that I have my basic framework, I'm going to start adding color to this. So just mentioning a little bit about color. The nice thing about Adobe Illustrator, and not many people know that you can actually change the color of raster images within Adobe illustrat and I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. So I'm not going to worry too much about which color I use at this stage for what element. But what I am going to focus on is making sure that I am essentially using a new layer for each sort of area of color. That way we can when we are image tracing or we're using elements within our pattern design, At least they are separated and they're easy to deal with. And you'll see exactly what I mean later on in class when we move on to Adobe illustrator. So for now, be aware that if you don't want colors that are going to be different in Adobe illustrator to touch, make sure that you use a new layer for that color. Okay, so I'm going to use the magical mass palette that comes with the class, and I'm just going to use kind of like a pinky color for now. So what I'm going to focus on now are the wings of my moths. And these I will more than likely retain as raster images because I want to make sure that I can see all that lovely smudgy textured results that this brush gives me. I want to keep that in my final design in Adobe Illustrator. So I just on a new layer, just want to test that color. Let's use this lighter cream color. So with this brush, Each time you lift your pencil and you create a new stroke, you're creating variation in the texture and also in the color. So you decide how much of the background you want to show through. And if you want to see how that's going to react on a darker background, I would recommend either turning off your background layer just on an off to see where you're at, or you can actually change that background color, which I'm going to do. I'm going to gosh, I'm just going to use that blue for now, or maybe that brown. So it's not garish. And I want to maximize the texture that I'm getting with this brush, so I'm lifting my pencil a lot with each stroke, and I'm just varying the size as I work. So you'll see we're getting a really nice pain smudgy kind effect. That's exactly what I want. Because if we are going to incorporate raster images into our final pattern design, you want to harness that sort of paint look as much as possible. Okay, so I'm going to use the same layer for the next butterfly wings because later on an illustrator, we're actually going to duplicate this, and then we're going to crop it down to each little butterfly, and I'll show you exactly how to do that. So you'll be quite surprised how much you can do an illustrator with raster images. And That's the point of this. I wanted to show you what you can do in Illustrator with Raster images instead of using Photoshop or any other photo editing app. You can do a lot of the work in Illustrator, which is a real time saver. Oh. Okay, I'm happy with those wings. I'm now going to move on to my second sort of set of wings. And I want to make sure that I'm using a new layer because if you can recall, we don't want elements that are going to be two different colors touching each other. So I'm using a new layer, and I'll be using that lilac color. I'm sticking to the same brush. And as I mentioned, you can decide. How much texture you want? I really like this sort of gray paint tilly look. So I'm lifting my pencil quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Okay, I'm pretty happy with the wings. Now we're going to have some fun and add some detail and embellish our wings. So just coming over to a darker color. I'm going to do a couple of specs. And again, random This is where you can have some fun and really decide how much you want to decorate your little mouth. Of course, feel free to do something different to what I'm doing. But essentially, what we're doing is we just adding some interest to our little moths. Yeah. Yeah. Feel free to use any brushes that you like in your embellishments. But as I mentioned, I actually want to retain as much giness as possible. I'm just going to move onto the pencil because I want to do a little bit more detail. But because I know I want this to be the same color. Actually, what I want to do is just in case I don't. I'm going to keep that as a separate layer. So creating a new layer, I'm going to stick to that blue. Just going to add some detail. So I may end up using the same color for these details. But in case I don't. I want them on a separate layer so that I do know I have that choice. Okay, I just need to do a few more details on some of the bodies and on the wings. So again, creating a new layer. I just want to turn that to a lighter color so I can see what I'm doing. And sticking to that brown, sorry to the blue. I'm still on Lisa's pencil, and I know I'm on a new layer. I just want to fill that in. Yes. So at this stage, I'm thinking too much about what I'm going to vectorize and what I'm going to keep as raster. I'm definitely just focused more on creating cute details. And if you have your items on their own layer, you will definitely have the freedom to decide later. If you're finding this to be confusing, rather use a different color if you don't know what you've already filled in and what you still need to do. But I have a good idea of what I want to do, so I'm happy with the dark blue. I just wanted to be sure I didn't have this body shape on the same layer. I Okay, I think I'm pretty happy with that. And I just want to add two more little moths that are just outlines, and these going to kind of dot around in my design. So grouping these just for my own sanity. If you're running out of layers, go ahead and delete your stamp layer because you don't need that anymore, but I still seem to be okay, so I'm going to turn that off, and I'm just going to stamp out those two. And we're going to do exactly the same as what we did previously, stamping once on a new layer, enlarging and then just merging down and bring that opacity down. And then on a new layer above that, I'm going to use that dark blue. And using Lisa's pencil, I'm just going to have some fun tracing over this and embellishing as I go. Oh. Okay, I'm pretty happy with that. So I'm going to turn the other layer back on. And now we're going to export this as a PSD file. So that's a photoshop layered file, and I'm going to air drop that to my Mac. If you are not using an Apple Mac, you can use a cloud service like Dropbox to save that to your dropbox first and then bring that from dropbox into your computer that you'll be using for Adobe Illustrator. So what you want to do is you want to hit that little actions icon and you want to hit Share and then choose PSD. And then I'm just going to air drop that to my computer. And I'll see you on the other side. 5. Project 1: Importing into Adobe Illustrator : I've gone ahead and moved my file into a folder that I'll be using for this class. I've also renamed that. Now we need to import that into Adobe Illustrator. There are a few ways to do that. The first way would be if your icon is in view, for example, if you're using a mac and your icon is in view at the bottom of your screen in your dock, for example, you can just simply drag and drop the file over your Adobe Illustrator icon. Or if you're using a PC, you can right click on your mouse, or if you're using a MAC, you can hold down control on your keyboard and click on the file to bring up this pop up window. And where it says, pen worth, you're just simply going to choose Adobe Illustrator. And you should get a pop up window that looks something like this. And what you want to do is you want to make sure that you choose convert layers to objects. You do not want to be flattening it because that'll obviously flatten all your layers. You want to preserve all those layers that we had in Procreate. And then I've also chosen to import the hidden layers, just in case I left one or two layers off in procreate before I exported that, so I just want to make sure I'm importing everything. And then I'm going to go ahead and click Okay. So Illustrator will be converting your document. Into a working file. And we want to check and make sure that all those layers came in separately. And what you want to do is you want to open your layers panel. I have mine docked on the left hand side over here. If you don't have yours open, you can come over to window and find it under layers. So expanding my layers panel, you'll see all the layers came through nicely, and we're ready to start working on our motifs. But before we dive into that, I just quickly want to run over some things for you to consider when using Rs images in Adobe Illustrator. The first thing to check is the color mode of your documents. And if you're happy with that, I'm happy with working in RGB, and the procreate document we used was created as an RGB file. So I'm going to keep mine as an RGB. But if you want to work in CMYK instead, it's very simple to change that. All you want to do is come over to file and choose document color mode and just simply choose CMYK color. So that'll convert all your ster images to CMYK. The next thing I want to mention is Adobe Illustrator handles pixel slightly differently to photoshop, for example, and I don't want to get too much into the technical side of that. But what you want to remember is whatever resolution your motifs are in Adobe Illustrator, that's the resolution you're going to use when you export your final repeating tile as a J P or P and G, whichever format you are going to use. So the best way to check your resolution of your motifs is just just simply click on one of them. And while at the top, you'll see all this information that comes up at the top bar. And you'll see that the document that particular motif that I clicked on is, in fact, 300 PPI, which is pixels per inch. So when I export my document, I'm going to choose 300 DPI as my resolution. But if this, for example, was enlarged to the original size. I forgot to mention that you'll notice if I just go into our document outboard size. You'll notice that the document is not the same size that you used in Procreate. So if you can recall, our document was 7,500 pixels. Illustrator is using quite a different size because as I mentioned, it handles pixels a little bit differently. It uses the resolution to essentially decide the final image size when you import it. But again, I don't want you to fuss too much over that. I just wanted you to be aware of that discrepancy. But ultimately, when you export, there will be no difference to the quality of your artwork, it'll be exactly the same quality that you had in Procreate. So I'm going to go ahead and cancel that. And then just coming back to as I mentioned, if you click on that, you'll see we have 300 DPI. So when I export this, I'm going to choose 300 DPI to export. But for example, if this was enlarged to the original size we had in procreate, which is 7,500 pixels, You'll notice that the PPI has come down to 72 pixels. So if I went ahead and worked in this original size by enlarging these motifs, when I export, I'm going to choose 72 DPI as my resolution. So essentially, the motif resolution in Adobe Illustrator is going to determine your resolution that you'll export this final document as. But I'm going to stick to the size, which is 1,800 pixels, and with the motifs being at 300 DPI. And then finally, when working with Raster files and illustrator, if you want to incorporate them into your patterns as we are doing, you want to make sure that your raster files are embedded into Illustrator. So the best way to find out if it is, you're just simply going to click on a motif, and you're going to again come right at the top here right next to your DPI is a label that will let you know whether it's been embedded or if you still want to embed. So in this case, it has been embedded because we imported that document via the PSD. So Illustrator automatically embedded all those files. But if I to drag and drop a document or a PNG, for example, into this document, I would still need to embed that. So you want to make sure that all your motifs that you want to use in your design are, in fact, embedded. 6. Project 1: Working With Raster Images & Vectorising: In this lesson, we're going to start working on our motifs, and we're going to decide which elements we want to keep as raster format and which elements we actually going to use the Image Trace tool in Illustrator. But the first thing I want to do is go ahead and save this document. So I'm just going to go file save as and make sure that we are now creating an illustrator document. And I'm going to leave the name as I have renamed it already and then just hit save. And then we want to open our layers panel and start turning off everything. So just that we can start working on one layer at a time. And I'm going to go ahead and work on my little wings that are created, that creamy color. I think for these, I want to keep them in raster format, but I want to make sure that each wing is separate so that I can move those moths around independently. And the quickest way to do that is to duplicate all of them at the moment, we've got four, I'm going to go ahead and duplicate that four times because I want to crop it down so that I have each element separately. So I've got that selected, and I'm just simply going to command C on my keyboard and command F. That's essentially going to copy that image and then we're going to paste it in place. I'm going to do that again. I'm just going to paste it in place, which is command F, and again, command F. Now, if you have a look at our layers panel, you'll see we have four copies of that. If you think you're going to get confused, you can go ahead and turn off three of them so that you just work on one at a time. I've used the selection function in the layers panel by clicking on that area next to the round icon to select that image, which is a really handy thing to use. I very often use this as my selection instead of actually trying to find the artwork on the artboard. But you can go ahead and select it directly on your artboard like that. Make sure you have your selection tool selected. So now we're going to come over and crop our first pair of wings, which is going to be the top right hand side. I'm just going to come over to object and crop image. Then I'm just simply going to drag those corners and just crop this image down, and then hit enter on my keyboard, and you'll see Illustrator has essentially done what you would have done in photoshop and cropped that wing area down just to that one image that we want to use individually. And I'm going to go ahead and do the same for the next one. I'm going to use my layers panel to select it and then come over to object and crop image. I'm now working top right. And just bring that down. Hit Enter. Turn my next layer on, select that, come over to object crop image. And I'm now working bottom left. So you can go really snug if you want. The important thing is as you're working is to not move these because if you can recall, all our other layers sit very nicely on top of these wings, and we want to keep that so that when we do trace, everything is in the correct position. So don't move anything at this stage. And then my last pair of wings, I've selected that in my layers panel, object, crop image. And I'm going pretty tight. Answer. Now we have our four wings that are independent. I'm going to go ahead and turn those off so that I can not get too confused. Then the next layer I want to start working on is the purp lilacy color wings. Again, I think I actually want to keep this as raster format because I really like that painterly effect that it's giving. I'm going to go ahead and do the same as we did with the cream color wings, and I'm going to select that. I need to, as you can see, I need to duplicate that three times. Command C, Command F, and Command F again. If you're watching the layers panel here on my screen, you'll see it's created those additional layers. I'm going to turn those ones off and then just work on the one at a time. I've gone ahead and selected that coming over to my object crop image, and doing the top right first enter next layer, turning that on and selecting that, come over to object crop image. I just want to make sure that I'm getting that area clear out of our image. Otherwise, that will crop and stay in, if I extend it like that, that area will stay in. I want to make sure that I am quite tight so that we have a clean image and then our final set of wings object, crop image. So I hope you'll notice that you can do quite a lot of work with Rast images so far in Illustrator. So now we have a little bit of an issue, and I'm going to show you exactly how we can work around that. So that is going to crop in my image. So I'm going to go ahead and press enter. And because let's just turn off that one on the side so we can see what's going on. Okay. So our square is obviously kept in that other one, and I want to get rid of that. And the quickest way to do that is to create a new sort of shape for these wings. So we're almost cheating the crop. So I'm just going to simply draw. So I've hit on my keyboard to bring up a pencil tool. And I'm just drawing a rough shape around my wings. Okay. And now I'm going to create a clipping mask. I'm making sure that I'm selecting both the image and that new shape that I've created and coming over to object, clipping mask and make that automatically creates a new clip area and it gets rid of that extra little bit that we had in our image. I'm going to go ahead and turn on those other pair of wings because that's all fine for now. You'll see in our layers panel that new clip group has been created. I'm just going to move that down with the others just so that I keep everything in order. If I expand that, you'll see we have our original image. And then this is the clip shape that I created. I really encourage you to get used to using your layers panel to give you a lot of information and also help you navigate and select areas of your artwork. It's much, much easier using your layers panel instead of trying to struggle your way through selecting from your artboard. We've done those. I'm going to go ahead and turn on those others that we did, and you'll see everything still in place, which is exactly what we want. Now I'm going to select my next group of illustrations that we did. I think for this, I'm going to image trace this. In other words, I'm going to convert this to a vector And what we need to do the same. I'm just going to use this little icon on the right hand side of my layers panel to select that layer, making sure that I'm selecting just that. And then coming over to image chase. And if your image chase isn't up, you'll find it under your windows. And I'm going to start with the silhouette as my starting point. Under the presets, you'll see there are several that you can choose from, and you'll even see in mind that I have several that I saved. But for this class, I'm going to start with silhouette first just so that you can basically start from the same position that I have. Then from here, we can tweak the settings. So definitely want to be ignoring white. I don't want to be creating a shape for the white areas. It's not going to serve us at all. Then I'm going to go ahead and expand the advanced setting. I'm just going to play around with the settings and see what I like. I probably want it to be more snug to my path because I want to retain all those little grungy areas of my drawing and possibly bring the threshold down. The threshold, the higher we are, the more illustrator is going to pick up in your illustration that you did. If I just zoom in. Let's take it back up so I can illustrate to you what I mean. You'll see it essentially is expanding that area. If we bring it down, It's going to make it less solid, if I can call it that. But of course, it does depend on the brush that you used in procreate. It's a bit of an experimentation and you'll learn how to understand how it's going to behave in illustrator. And this is purely just experience. The kind of set rules, essentially. It's something that you will learn as you go along with this method. So I'm quite happy with what I see here, so essentially just looking through all those areas, and I think I'm happy with how Illustrator is tracing that. So I'm going to go ahead and expand that. So having a look at our layers panel, and you'll see it has created a group. And what we want to do is we want to group all these elements individually because again, we want control over that when we recolor our moths and all those little areas on the wings. The easiest way to do that is to double click on your group. So that's going to bring up the isolation mode. And then I'm just simply going to use the direct selection tool and then just draw over the areas that I actually want to group separately. And then once I've drawn over that, I'm just going to group that, which is command G on my keyboard. And I'm grouping that area, that area. Those little goodies. Those little goodies. This should be one group already, but I'm just going to zoom in. And I see Illustrator has created a few extra little nodes, which is absolutely fine. I'm happy with that. And having expanded my layers panel, I can see Illustrator has created a compound path of that. So, in other words, it's just one shape, and I'm absolutely fine with that. And then I'll group those together. And you'll see as I've selected them where they actually fall in your layers panel. So obviously, we don't want them all over the place like they currently are, so we want to group that. And once you worked your way through that, you can come out of isolation mode by just hitting the top bar, and then we back to our document. I've done the grouping of this particular layer and I've image traced it, and I'm happy with that. I'm going to move on to the next one. Again, I'm using my layers panel to select that. I think in this instance, I'm going to image trace this as well. I've gone ahead and selected that my image trace panel is still open, so I'm just going to start again with silhouette. And I'm just going to zoom in to get a better picture of what it looks like. Again, we're going to make sure that we are ignoring whites. I don't want to trace the white areas at all. And I'm just going to first thing I want to do is do the threshold and just move that slider up or down, depending on what color you use. I quite like what's happening here. It's looking quite sort of sketchy. Let's take it down a dash Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. So I'm going to go ahead and expand that. And having a look at our layer, you'll see Illustrator has group that, and we want to do the same thing like we did previously, and let's make sure that each of these are grouped individually. So best way to do that is to double click. And you can use a direct select tool or just a selection tool. Groups to select areas. So I just want to see if illustrators already made that a compound path. So that's a group already. I don't have to do anything with that. I'm going to leave that. I want these two little dots to be a group. And I want to check if this is a compound path. Yes, it is. I'm going to leave that. And then this area, I want to group. That area, I want to group. These little stripy bits. This should be a compound path and it is. So that's fine. I'm going to leave that. And then this guy should be one path as well or a group, so I'm just going to group that. Okay, so we've done all of those elements, and I'm going to come out of my isolation mode by just hitting the top over here. Let's see. And then move on to our next layer. Things are getting a little confusing, so I just want to turn these off. Using my layers panel to select that. And I'm going to I think I'm going to image trace this as well. So starting with silhouettes. I'm going to bring the threshold down quite a bit. So this is definitely personal taste, and I encourage you to get a feel for, you know, what brushes produce, what kind of texture when you do the image tracing. I really like that scribbly look. So this is starting to look really nice. And I'm pretty happy with that. Making sure that I have Ignore White on and expand. And then we need to group these like we did with the others. So I'm just going to double click on that to go into isolation mode. Expand my group. Now you'll see a whole lot of different paths. So we definitely need to group those. But what I want to do with this one specifically is actually create a compound path. There's no point in me having one path and then another little path when I'm happy for this to be an actual compound path. In other words, it's one object instead of a group of different paths. So in order to do that, I'm going to make sure I've got that selected and then come over to object. Compound path and then make. So you'll see in my layers panel illustrator, instead of it being a group now, it's now one shape, which is absolutely fine for me in this particular instance. And then for these, I'm going to group that I'm going to group. And then this can be a compound path as well coming over to object, compound path and make. And then I'm going to group that I'm going to group. So here we are with a bit of a tricky selection area. So the quickest way to do that is to rather use the Lasso selection, which is on your keyboard. And then I'm just simply going to draw around the shape that I want to select. And that definitely I want a compound path, and then the same for this one. And then because those are now compound pass, I've gone ahead and selected everything, but I'm holding down my shift key and clicking on those to deselect that, which is much easier than drawing a shape over all these little bits. So those I'm going to group. And if we look at our layers panel now, we have everything in groups, and we've changed things to compound pass a can be. And I'm pretty happy with that. So I need to come out of isolation. I'm ting that top bar. And then let's have a look at our, so that was our framework which we don't need. And I think this is our last layer. And again, these I'm going to trace. So I'm just selecting that coming over to my silhouette. These are all my settings for my specific illustration. You might need to experiment to see what suits your illustration best. That looks pretty good to me, and I'm going to expand that. And then we're going to do the same and group that group that. And then let's review our work, turning all those layers back on. So everything is ready and prepared. We can now go ahead and apply color. So in the next lesson, we're going to use the swatches that are included in the class resources to start coloring our elements. I'll see you there. 7. Project 1: Applying Colour to Motifs: Now that we have everything traced and separated, I want to start recoloring my motif so that we can build our pattern. But before we do that, I just want to clean up my layers panel and get rid of all the things that we don't need. So that was our background layer, and that was the template. I'm going to go ahead and delete that. And I'm going to leave this layer because I do want a background eventually in my pattern, but I don't want anything on that from Procreate, so I've gone ahead and selected whatever's on that layer, and I'm just going to go ahead and delete that. And just double click on that to rename that. So that's going to be my background. So the next thing we need to do is group all the moths markings and little bits and bobs that belong to each moth and essentially create a group for each one. And if you recall, we actually did a little bit of work already on that by going into the isolation mode for each of those groups that we traced, and we made sure that those were grouped together. But they're still in one group as a whole in their layer, if you can see over here on my layers panel. So what we want to do is we want to group those first. So I have that selected, and then I'm just going to come over to object and Ungroup. And if I expand that layer, you'll see now we have all those individual mini groups that we can use later on to group all our moths together, or all the elements for that particular moth together. So I'm just going to go ahead and do that for each layer. So you'll see I've used my layers panel to select that group. If I expand that layer, you'll see this is all still one group, and we don't want that. So I'm going to go ahead and go object and group, and then I'm going to do the same for the next one. So we've done all our traced elements. We just have to do these two. So I'm going to go ahead and ungroup those, and I'm going to use the shortcut, which is command Shift G. And we should now have two groups, the moth on the left, and the moth on the right. And I'm just going to turn off that layer because we've done that now. And this layer we can get rid of because that had our shapes. Okay, so now we have everything group that we need to, and now we need to actually combine all those elements for each moth together. I'm just going to drag my cursor over the top left moth and all its elements. If we look in our layers panel, you'll see all the elements that it's selected, which is correct. And now we just want to group that together, which is command G. That should have formed a nice group with all our goodies together. And I'm going to do the same on top right, command G, Command G. And you might have elements that have now kind of lost their placement or their position, but we can go ahead and fix that just now. So I'm not too worried about that, last one, bottom left, Command G. And then we want to get rid of all those layers that are empty now. And you should have four moths that are being grouped with all their little gritties and markings for each one. But now we just want to fix the order of them, so I'm just going to expand the first one, making sure that I have the correct one selected. So that's the top right one. And I just want to bring those are my wings. I just want to bring that to the bottom and then do the same for the next one. So our wings basically shot to the top, which we don't want. And I hope you noticing how much power you have using your layers panel, instead of, as I said, faffing, trying to get them selected on your artboard, you can just simply use your layers panel to reorder items much easier. And I think that one is correct. That all looks good. Now we're going to apply color to all our different elements. And I'll be using the swatches that come with the class resources. I've already opened the document. So I'm just simply going to select those and Command C, which is copy and then come over to my working document. And then we're just going to paste that. I just want to bring it to the top. And then I just want to open my swatches panel, and you'll see they all came through because they are global colors, and we know that by that little sort of triangle on the bottom right, that indicates that it's a global color. So when I created these colors, I made sure that they were global, and I'm going to just quickly show you what I mean. So just double clicking on one of them. All I simply did was make sure that that little tick was on when I created it. So what that means is each time I copy and paste all these swatches into a new document, it's going to automatically bring these colors into my swatches panel. The first thing I want to adjust is the color of these wings. So the raster files, I want to just tweak the color slightly to be closer to this cream color. And this is another great feature that you can use in Adobe Illustrator, instead of having to open these raster files in photoshop, you can actually tweak the colors directly in Illustrator. So I'm making sure that I have this element selected, and I'm using my layers panel again. So I'm using this side sort of function to select this. And I've made sure that I've selected the wings, and then you'll see it's still indicated as an image, which is exactly correct. It is a raster image. So now we're going to come over to edit edit colors and adjust color balance. If your file was CMYK, this color mode should reflect CMYK, mine is obviously RGB and I'm going to leave it as is, and I'm just going to turn on my preview. And then from here, we can essentially just play around with the slider and you can really adjust the color to just about anything you want. But as I mentioned, I'm going to go for that creamy color So, this might take a little bit of practice and tweaking to understand what effect that you're going to get when you move the slider right or left. But essentially, I know I want it lighter and less pinky. I'm pretty happy with that. So I'm going to remember these percentages because I want to apply that to all the other wings that are the same color. So my values are 41116. So I'm just going to write that down. And then hit. And move on to recoloring these as well. So finding my group in my layers panel, I'm just going to expand that group and then find those wings, select those only and then come over to edit colors, adjust color balance, and then make sure my previews on so I can see what's going on. So it was 41116 it. So once you've decided on the color values, it's much quicker to change all the others. Expanding my group, finding the correct wings that I want to change. And then last one. That's the raster images changed. Now I'm going to start recoloring the vector elements that we traced. As you know, an illustrator is much quicker to recolor vector elements, so I'm not going to be too worried about the choices that I make right now, but I want to have a general idea of the color theme that I'm going for. I'm just going to play around with some elements. Because this is grouped, I'm just going to go into that group by double clicking, now I should be able to freely select each element and recolor as I go. So this little goody was right on top and it was blocking the view of those two little dots. So I just simply sent it to the back, and again, you can do that via your layers panel, or you can use object, arrange and then send to back. Again, I have an element that's blocking my little stripes. So I'm just going to simply move that to the bottom. And then change the color of those. But I want those wings right at the bottom, so I shove actually moved that there. That looks. For these elements, what I want to do is I actually want to recolor those little dots and this little spiky bit independently, so I'm just going to group those. Then I'm going to use my Lasso tool, which is Q on my keyboard. What I want to do now it's getting complicated because there are other elements in the same group. What I'm going to do is just turn those off. Then holding my shift key because I want to select these on this side, and then group that And group those together, turn those elements back on. And recolor. Okay, we're definitely getting somewhere. And then the final two are those little butterflies we traced. So turning off that group just so I can see what's going on. And I'm just probably going to choose that color for now. So I've reclored everything, and I think I'm ready to start creating my pattern. I'll see in the next lesson. 8. Project 1: Building Your Pattern: For this first project, I'm not going to be using the patent tool in Illustrator. We'll use that for the second project. So I'm going to build this a traditional way. And I'm first going to start by creating my background color. So if you can recall, I didn't delete that background, and I'm going to create shape on that background. And this is going to be a rectangle that's going to indicate my background. So I'm just going to the edge of my document. I've selected rectangle tool, and I'm just going to click once. And I know my document size is 1,800 pixels. So that's what I'm going to enter. Then just coming over to the transform panel, I'm going to make sure that it is in the correct place. Hitting my little icon, I'm just going to prenut and then y is going to be naught as well. That should put it exactly where we need it, which is on the y and x axis. Then I'm just going to change the color. I'm going to start with that blue color for now, and I'm just going to lock that because I don't want to move that around while I'm moving all my other elements around. These are all nicely grouped, if you can recall. I'm going to move them off my artboard so that we can see what's going on. I think we can actually resize them down because they might be a little bit too large. Just going to do that slightly and start building. I like starting at the top left hand corner. You might have a different preference to where you want to start building your motifs. I think what I want to do is duplicate this moth and just create a variation of it so that we have yet another moth to play around with in our design. So holding down the option key as I move that, I'm just going to duplicate that. And maybe something like that. This guy on the left hand side. Just going to create a slight variation of it. Maybe delete those. Then maybe what I might do is make these slightly smaller and fill them. I'm just going to hit K on my keyboard, which is the live paint tool. And expand that. Same with this one. Expand that, and I think I want to make them a bit smaller there but dominating. And just recolor them and bring the size down. That's just a slight variation on the one that we already have. Okay, so we're building this traditionally, which means this motif at the top is going to duplicate at the bottom here. So I'm just bearing that in mind. I'm not going to fill that area. And I'm just toggling between my rotate tool, which is R on my keyboard and the selection tool, which is V on my keyboard. And then these little guys are more like fillers. Okay, so I'm just going to duplicate those elements that are peaking beyond the artboard. So it'll be everything that's on the outside of the artboard bounds. So I'm going to select that one and this one. Then I'm going to hit a on my keyboard, and we're just going to move that. And if you can recall, the document size is 1,800, so we need to move it exactly the same size of the document, and I'm going to copy those elements. And then do the same for everything on the left hand side. Hit enter on my keyboard. And then horizontally is 1,800 pixels, but vertically is zero because we just want to go across horizontally, and then I want to make sure that I'm copying all those elements. And now we're just going to move things around just to make sure that everything is in the right position. And you'll see those little motifs are overlapping and I don't want that. Either I delete this and then recopy this over or I just simply select it along with the one that I'm moving at the top. I think that looks pretty good. Then this little g needs to be down scaled, maybe something like that. And then doing the same for this one, I'm selecting its sort of partner that's on the left and then moving them together. I think I'm pretty happy with that. Then maybe I want just an additional mini filler here and there. I'm going to select those two little blobbis in this particular moth. I'm selecting that group, double clicking to go into the isolation mode and just selecting those two elements. Then I'm going to copy, which is command C, come out of isolation and then command V. I think I want to change it to a dark blue. Check the size of it. Maybe a smaller And then just simply repeat those elements. So I'm holding down my option key as I move it around and then hitting R to bring up the rotation. So we're just looking for balance here. I'm pretty happy with that, and I'm ready to test the pattern. So in order to actually test that, we need to create a swatch that we can simply just drag into our swatches panel. But we need to tell Illustrator where the pattern begins and ends by creating a bounding box. Essentially, it's just an empty shape that has no fill or outline that tells illustrator where the actual pattern tile is, and it needs to be right at the bottom of your entire design. And the quickest way to do that is to use your background that you created. I'm going to go ahead and unlock that and then just simply select that rectangle blue that we used for our background. I'm going to make a duplicate of that, which is command C and then paste in place, which is command F. Then making sure I'm selecting the one that's right at the bottom, which is actually this one, I'm going to fill it with nothing and a no stroke. And we now have a bounding box, which is essentially going to tell illustrator where our pattern tile begins and ends. But before we do that, you may be aware that there is a slight little bug that illustrator has when it comes to creating pattern swatches. Sometimes there's a hair line, there's a tiny little key hair line that appears in your patterns when you're creating your swatches. The easiest way to get rid of that is to create a background color beyond the bounds of your pattern tile. What I mean by that is you're going to select that background color. And then just simply take it past hops. Okay. The actual bounding box. So if I select that bottom bounding box, which is our illustrated tile, you'll see our background extends beyond that. And that usually resolves those key lines that you often find in Illustrator's pattern swatches. It also helps when you're exporting this tile as a Jpeg. It's essential that you have that background color extending beyond your artboard to get rid of any little pixel discrepancies that you might have when you export this as a J peg. Now that we've created our design and our bounding box and the background, I'm just simply going to drag it all into my swatches panel and then test our pattern. The easiest way to do that is just simply run your cursor over all the elements, make sure that none of the layers are locked, and then just simply drag and drop into your swatches panel. Then we're going to test that by creating any rectangle size and then choosing our new pattern swatch as fill. I think that looks pretty good. Then we have retained all that yummy texture of our raster images from procreate, and we have a nice mixture of vector elements as well that are easy to recolor if you need to recolor this document. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to use the recolor tool, which is right at the top. So I have my rectangle selected that has the new pattern as a fill, and then I'm going to go into the recolor tool and then hit advanced options. Okay. And double click on that red. And I think what I want to do is choose what I've done is, let me just explain exactly what I've done. I've double clicked on that red and I'm going into my color swatches. This is going to bring up all the swatches in my document. I'm going to choose that brownie color. Okay. That looks quite interesting. Then maybe just experiment with the background color, swapping it with the darker one. I'm just going to select that dark color and then move it on top of that other blue. Then you've very quickly recolored your pattern without too much effort, and then I'm just going to hit. Zoom out. Just to mention what illustrated does, it creates a new pattern swatch in your swatches panel, which is quite handy. Your original one is still there and you have a secondary color swatch created for you. And then just a note I'm preparing this artwork for uploading to places like Society six or red bubble. Because you have RAster elements within this document, I would recommend exporting this as a high resolution JPEG. If you can recall our RASter elements were 300 DPI, that's the resolution you're going to be exporting this as. Coming over to your file, Export Export as. Then you're going to use the artboard. We want to basically clip it to the bounds of our artboard, and I'm going to choose JPEG We only have one art board in our document. But if you had more, you would definitely want to tell Illustrator which art board you want to export, and then hit export. RGB is the color mode that we used. We're on the largest maximum quality, which is ten, and I'm going to choose 300 DPI as my resolution because that was the resolution of my motifs. And then making sure the anti alias is set to art optimized and then hit okay. And then I want to show you what Illustrator has done, which is take it back to its original size. So our Illustrator was 1,800 pixels because that's how it brought it in from Procreate. But our original procreate document was 7,500. So by exporting this at 300 DPI, let me go to the actual JP we just exported and I'm just going to get some information on that by hitting Command on my keyboard on my mac. And you'll see the dimensions are 7,500 pixels by 7,500. Illustrator has added that one little pixel. And if we had our artboard if we had our background, exactly fitting to our artboard, that one pixel discrepancy would actually create a key line, which is why it's very important that you take your color background beyond the artboard bounds just to mitigate any of these weird little extra pixels that might sneak in when you export from Illustrator. You'll see we've now created a high resolution patent tile that you can now upload to places like, as I said, Society six or spoon flower, and you've managed to retain all that lovely hand drawn texture in your motifs. But at the same time, we've taken advantage of illustrators image trace tool and recolord our artwork as we needed to. 9. Project 2: Creating Motifs in Procreate: For our second project, we'll be having some fun using one of my patent templates that come from the Patent design tool kit. The kit includes 40 templates that saves you hours and eliminates that guesswork when placing mote for both grid and half drop repeat designs. If you'd like to find out more about the kit, I've included a quick overview of the toolkit in the class resources download folder. The template we'll be using is one of the half drop designs. I'm using it to create a cute pattern that I visualize being used for baby clothing, like a one zi or a T shirt. Although you can use this template to build your pattern from start to finish directly in Procreate. Today we're going to be combining our apps and start our design in Procreate, then finish off in Adobe Illustrator. By showing you this method, I'm hoping to introduce a new workflow to you that's not only fun, but can save you so much time. Let's dive in. I've already imported my template into procreate, so I'm just going to tap to open that. Coming over to our layers panel, you will notice there are several pre made layers already included in this document. If this was a full patent template, under the patent templates, if we expand that group, there would be several of these available. But today, we're just going to be using the simple flower. And our focus is to draw on the draw here layer. But I just quickly want to also run you through all the other layers that are included. So this would be our patent tile. This essentially is going to be the final size that our tile will be once we've cropped and designed and duplicated. So I'm just going to turn that off. There is and that one as well, and there's a measurement layer that includes crucial measurements. So for the purpose of this class, I don't want you to worry about the document size because that's for people who are using the procreate version. So you could use this design and this pattern template to create your entire pattern from beginning to end in procreate, and then you would be more interested in knowing about this measurement. But for now, we don't need to worry about that, and I just want to turn my patent tile back on and my design. The kit comes with a very comprehensive tutorial that takes you step by step on how to create your pattern in Procreate from beginning to end. But today, as I mentioned, we're going to start in Procreate and then move over to Illustrator. The thing that we need to really focus on today are these gray areas. And as I mentioned, this is a half drop. Essentially, these dotted lines are where all your motifs will repeat again. This guy is going to repeat over there, this will repeat over there and so on. These dotted line areas that you want to stay away from, and you just want to be focusing on these gray blobby bits. And the idea behind the template is to inspire you and for you to interpret these shapes anyway you like. For example, this could be a house, this could be a little bear, this could be a tree. You totally decide how you want to interpret those shapes. But the idea is that the gray areas help you place your motifs and you can safely place them knowing that they will repeat well in the correct place when you do eventually create your half drop. But again, I don't want you to focus on that. Just simply for today, we're going to be focusing on this gray area and making sure that we're not going into the dotted line area. Okay, so we're on our draw here layer, which is correct. Make sure that you are on the draw here layer. I'll just be using my pencil today, Lisa's pencil. And The design that I'm focusing on is kind of like a cute kids pattern, so the design and the drawings will be quite naive. And I'm going to dive straight into drawing. I'm not going to bother creating sketches because it's okay if I make mistakes. I'm just going to use my razor, and I want that almost childlike look to my illustrations. Starting at the top here, I'm going to use this shape to create a little bear. And I'm just varying my pressure of my pencil just to create variations in the line work, and he'll be wearing a little scarf. And as I mentioned, it's going to be simple drawings. So you can have some fun and not put too much pressure on yourself. You don't need to create perfection. Maybe some markings. And then I think I'm going to make this into, like, a little bush or a tree. And of course, feel free to interpret these shapes anyway you see fit. So I'm just being mindful to stay roughly within the shapes. So this is like a little snail. And maybe this little flower. So here is a repeating element. So I just making sure that I'm not going too close to that. Right. This is a time for you to relax and just let your creativity naturally flow. Try not to pressure yourself too much. Because that's when the magic happens. So remember, you don't have to choose your final color for your line work because we can always change it in Illustrator. I just opted for the blue that we used previously. Now, I'm just going to add little specs here and there. I think I'm going to stop there. Okay, so let's turn off our template layer and see what it looks like. I think that looks pretty cute. So I'm going to go ahead and import that now, I'll air drop that to my Mac. And we're going to do the same, which come over to our actions and then hit and we are exporting a PSD because I want everything layered, and then I'm going to choose air drop and send it to my Mac. And our next step is to import that into Illustrator. I'll see you there. 10. Project 2: Prepping Your Document in Adobe Illustrator : I followed the exact same steps that I used in project one to import my PSD file into Adobe Illustrator. I've also gone ahead and saved it and renamed it. The next thing we want to do is clean up our layers, like we did with the first project. And of course, at this stage, you can decide if you want to leave it as an RGB or a CMYK, you can make all those changes at this stage. But I'm going to leave it as is, and I just want to clean up all my layers. So the first thing I want to do is get rid of my items on my background because I don't need those. And then if you can recall, we had a patent tile image, which was the white block. So I'm going to delete that. And this layer I don't think has anything. So I'm going to delete that. So we should be left with our measurements that I'm going to leave for now just as a reminder. And we should have our template layer, which we don't need. So I'm going to go ahead and get rid of that as well. In fact, I'm going to get rid of that entire layer. And then we should be left with our line work, which I'm going to leave for now. Then unlike our first project, I actually want to bring this file size up to its original size that it was in procreate because we're going to use those measurements to use the pattern tool and create our half drop. Turning that measurement layer on and our design off just so that we can see those measurements. Our crop repeat will eventually be 4,000 pixels, and the document size is 5,000 pixels. Then I just want to review the size that Illustrator made this document. I'm just going to select this image. Or at least select that layer. And then I'm going to come over to my transform tool, and you'll see the document is 1,344 pixels. So we need it 5,600. So the best and quickest way to do that is to select all by Command A on your keyboard, make sure all your elements are in view and turned on. And then I'm just going to constrain the height and width by clicking this little icon which locks those amounts. And then I'm going to type my new figure in which is 5,600 and hit Enter, and it should do it for both automatically because we had that little lock on, and now I want to resize my artboard. Coming I've still got that selected coming over to object, artboard, and then fit to selected art. So the resolution of our linework should now be 72 DPI, and we can check that by expanding that layer and just selecting the artwork. And if we have a look at the top here, you'll see it 72 DPI. So when we export our final repeating tile, we're going to export it at 72 DPI. 11. Project 2: Adding Colour & Completing Your Pattern: Okay, now that we've resized that and we are ready to add our color. So for this project, I'm going to add all my color elements directly in illustrator by just drawing simple shapes and then recoloring them. And to keep within our color theme, I'm going to use the same colors we use for the first project. So coming over to the swatches that come with the class resources, I'm just simply going to copy and come back to my working document and then paste. Again, that should bring everything into our swatches panel. I'm just going to turn those layers off that I don't need at the moment, which is the measurement and the background. And then I'm going to create a new layer underneath my linework. So making sure on the measurements image layer, I'm just going to hit plus and that'll create a new layer above that. And then I'm just going to select a color just to use that as my fill for now, but we can recolor much later when we finish drawing all our shapes. And I make sure that I'm back on my layer that I want to add those shapes too, which is underneath my linework. And then I'm going to use the pencil tool. You're welcome to use the blob tool, whichever tool you feel comfortable using. And then before I start, I just want to check the settings of my tool. So with that pencil tool selected, I'm just going to hit enter on my keyboard and that brings up the options, and I just want to bring the accuracy down just a bit. And the rest of the settings I'm going to leave as is and begin drawing my shapes. So when using the pencil tool, you're just going to simply draw your shape and wait for that little naught icon to come up. There we go, and let go and that'll close the path. Of course, you could have done all of this in procreate and followed the same steps we did in the first project. But I wanted to show you various work flows in this class. And this is another great way how you can combine the two apps. Because I have visualize this pattern being used on kids clothing, I'm not being too worried or pedantic about staying in the lines. If you'd like to fix an area in your shape, with it still selected, you can and essentially reshape your item. A I'd like to create a little knockout there for the center of the flower. I'm just going to choose another color so I can see what I'm doing and draw my shape and then select both of those shapes so that dark blue center and my flower. And then come over to the path finder. If that's not visible, you'll find it under window. And then I'm just simply going to click minus front because that dark area is in the front and it removes that middle from the flower. Mm hmm. And then I just want to correct this little color area. So I just redrew the top line that I could remove those colored areas on that shape. Then each of the characters, I'd like to actually create a white shape or a white color around them because eventually I will have a background to this pattern. So I'd like the characters to be white. So for now, I'm just going to choose that cream color. I just want to create another knockout area in the bear. So choosing a darker color. Draw around snout Select that and the shape underneath that, come over to our pathfinder and then knock that out. And now, what I want to do is just select all those pale areas that we just created, and I want to group those because I'll just want to control that later on. So using the magic one tool, which is y on my keyboard, I'm just going to select that color, and what it does is select all those colors the same color on the artboard, and then I'm just going to group that. Oh, don't make the area that I just did, which is obviously selecting the swatches as well. So I'm just going to lock that And now I can go ahead and group that. And the shortcut is command G. So now that we have all our shapes, I'm going to now play around with some color and apply different colors to different elements. But before I do that to make my life much easier, I'm just going to lock my linework layer. And now that we have that lock, we can freely select the elements underneath it without having to fuss over our linework that sits above it. So I'm aiming for balance of color. Just trying to disperse each different color evenly across my artwork. Okay. But because these elements are vector, we can easily adjust that at a later stage. I've decided to keep the color palette very limited, so I'm only going to use those colors for this particular design. I think it adds to that whole naive look that I'm going for. And what I really like is that the crayon pencil effect really came through very nicely from a procreate. And I just want to recolor my pinkish elements. And I'm going to use white, but I don't have white in my swatches, so I just want to create a white. And then just send that to the back because I want to reveal the little cheeks that I created. And I'm just going to group those and choose that sort of pinky color. And I think I am ready to create our repeat. So turning the lock off because we need our line work available. Oh, the important step that I missed originally is I forgot to crop that. So we're going to come over to what we did in the first project, come over to object, and then crop image. And we just want to bring that down. So it's nice and snug. And now we need to select our color shapes that we created. But before we do that, let's recap the measurements that we're working with. So I'm just turning those layers off so that we can see what we're dealing with. So here we have our measurements and the cropped repeat tile is 4,000 by 4,000. But because we are working with a half drop, we actually need to halve our horizontal measurement, and I'm going to show you exactly how to do that and what I mean. So half of that would be 2000. So turning that off, turning our other layers back on. I'm going to select all. And then we're going to use the patent tool, so coming over to object, Hatton and make. And we're using the half drop. So it's a brick by column half drop. And our measurements should be $2,000 by $4,000. So I'm going to go ahead and type in 2000 ops. And by $4,000 and then we have a perfect half drop repeat without too much effort. And if we review all motifs, they're all sitting snug and none of them are overlapping because we use that template to guide us on where to place our motifs. And although we created simple drawings, we actually created quite a complex half drop repeat. So what I'm going to do now is save that, so I'm going to hit done. And Illustrator would have created a swatch for us. And let's go ahead and test that. I'm going to use a rectangle, making sure that I am on a layer that isn't locked. And let's test that Doming in. That looks pretty good. But now I actually want to create a background for that. And I also ultimately want to export this tile so that I can upload it or sell it. So just deleting that for now, On my background layer. I'm going to drag this tile out onto the artboard. So this is the result from using the pattern tool, and Illustrator has duplicated all our line work image for us. And I'm not going to fuss over that because all I want to do is create a background for now. So expanding our background layer and the group. We're looking for that bounding box that Illustrator uses to define the pattern, and there it is sitting right at the bottom. So I'm going to select that using my layers panel, and I'm going to copy. And Command F, paste in place, and then making sure that I'm still above my bounding box, I'm going to choose my background color, which is that creamy color. As discussed in the previous project, we need to take that background beyond the pattern tile. But first, I want to create an artboard that fits snugly to this new pattern. I'm going to copy this shape once again, Command C and then paste in place, command F, and then come over to object, artboards and convert to artboards. So now we have a second artboard that has our final repeat. Now I can go ahead and extend the background beyond the bounding box. But I see I use the incorrect shape to create my artboard, but that's not a problem. So this is our background, and I've selected that. I'm going to take it, oops. If you're struggling to move things, you can always lock everything else that you don't want to move, but I'm just going to carefully reshape that. And then our bounding box needs to be. Oh, it is. Okay, so our bounding box has no fill and no stroke, so it's perfect. Now, if you like, you can drag that back into your swatches panel to create a swatch with the background as well. I'm going to go ahead and do that. Selecting all of it and dragging and dropping and running out of space. Now we can test our new swatch. That looks pretty cute. If you wanted to export this, we would follow the same steps that we did in the first project. So coming over to file. Export. And we're going to make sure that we use the art board. But in this case, it's going to be the second one because that's the second art board that we created, and I'm going to choose JP port and very important, if you can recall, we changed the size of our document, and our motifs became 72. That's the resolution I need to choose now. We optimize, which is exactly what we want. The quality is at its max, and then I'm going to hit. And then we just want to check the size. So again, I'm bringing up information about that JP. And Illustrator has created a $4,000 $4,000 pixel patent tile, which is exactly the size that we started at in Procreate. And again, you'll see that extra little pixel that creeped in, but we should be absolutely fine because we created our background beyond the artboard. So for this project, we used a template that helped us create motifs and know exactly where to place them for a more complex half drop repeat. And then we finish that off in illustrator by drawing the shapes and applying color and then using the patent tool to create our half drop. 12. Project 3: Preparing Watercolour Motifs: For our final project, we're going to be using some watercolor paintings to create a pattern. You're welcome to use any one of your illustrations or watercolor paintings that you've used in the past, or you can follow along by using the JPG I've included of my illustration, which you'll find in the class resources download folder. Just to talk you through the process that I followed. I used my aquial brushes and I used one of the pre made canvases that come with the collection. Feel free to go ahead and create your own watercolor paintings of some leaves and berries. But as I mentioned, you're welcome to use the J pig that I included in the resources. If you are going to use a pre made canvas that includes paper texture like this one does, I advise that you turn off that paper layer before you export it as a JP. In this instance, I'm going to use a white background, so I'm not going to worry about removing the background of my watercolor paintings, in other words, making it on a transparent PNG background. If you'd like to do that, I do have a tutorial that you can follow and I'll include that in a link below. But for this class, I'm going to use a white background. I'm going to export this as a flat JPEG file. But the first thing I want to do is just turn off this paper texture because that's going to become a problem in illustrator if each little individual illustration has its own paper texture. We need to turn that off. I'm just going to expand the layers panel and then coming over to the paper effects. You bought canvas, if you're using somebody's canvas that you bought may look a bit different, but you want to find the paper texture layer. In this instance, it's under paper texture and I'm just going to turn that off. You'll see it's kept all the lovely effects of the watercolor canvas, but we've just removed that texture making this background plain white, which is what we want. Then once you've done that, I'm just going to export this entire document, even though I worked on different layers, I'm just going to export this entire document as a flat JP. Coming over to actions, we're going to share and then choose JP and then I'm just going to air drop that to my Mac. Now we're going to import this into Illustrator and create our pattern. I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Project 3: Building Your Pattern: In the previous lesson, I air dropped my file to my mac. So now we're going to go ahead and bring it into Adobe Illustrator. And because it's a flat J pig, we can just go ahead and import it like we would import a flat image. And I'm going to show you how I usually do that. But first thing I want to do is create a new file. So I'm going to come over to file new. And this time, I'm going to use millimeter measurements. You're welcome to stick to pixels or use inches, whatever you prefer. But I'm going to work with millimeters, and I'm actually going to go with a 300 by 300 millimeter artboard. And then I'm going to stick to RGB for my color mode, and the resolution is 300 DPI, and the rest of the settings are fine, and then just hit Create. In order to place the image, you can come over to file and then choose Place, or the quickest way to do that is to have both illustrator and your file in view and then just simply click on it, drag and drop. A Illustrator will obviously bring it in, as we've discussed in our previous lessons in its own size, and you'll see right at the top here that it's 72 DPI. I'm going to bring it down. I'm going to scale it right down. And probably something like that. And you'll see the PPI starts changing as we scale it down. And I'm going to aim for about 300, maybe something like that. Then the next important step is, as we've discussed previously, we need to embed this. Because we didn't open this as a PSD file, we need to tell Illustrator to embed this image. I'm just going to hit in bed. It might take a couple of seconds. Okay, our file is now embedded and it's at the correct size. And then I just want to come over to my layers panel. Let's have a look at what we've got here. We've got an image. And what we want to start doing now is duplicating it because we want to do what we've done previously, which is cattle motif. So what I want to do is, I'm just going to duplicate one at a time and crop one at a time. For now, I'm just going to command C command F, which is paste in place, and then just turn off the one below so I'm only working on one of the images and then come over to object crop image. And then I'm just going to slowly work my way through all of these Doming in. Like we did previously, we want to have individual motifs that we can move around. Turning back on my original one. I'm just going to turn the other one off, so don't get confused and then simply select that using my layers panel as always, and then command C command F. Turn off the bottom one. Prop image. So I'm going to go ahead and do that for all of the motifs. So here, we've come into a problem with that little extra bit peeking in. So we need to create a clipping mask like we've done in the previous lesson. I'm going to use my pencil tool so that's on my keyboard, and I'm just going to draw a shape around this ops. Hopefully, you'll be able to draw the shape a bit better than me. And then with that top shape selected, I'm holding down shift and then selecting my image underneath and then coming over to object flipping mask and make. Okay, I think I've done them all, but I'm just going to double check by turning everything on and turning on my final, well, my original sketch, and it looks like we have everything. So I don't need that original anymore. I'm going to go ahead and delete that by making sure I have that selected and then just hitting delete. Now the next important step we need to do because our background is white on all our motifs, we need to ensure that that's set to multiply and what that'll do is whenever we have an overlap, It's going to remove that white background essentially. So this is a bit of a cheat, and I love this function how it works because it really saves us from removing the white background. So I'm just going to select all. And then coming over to our transparency, if that's not up, once again, you'll find that under window. And then I'm just going to you'll see at the moment, set on normal. I'm just going to choose multiply. And if I come back to that motif, you'll see the white isn't knocking out the illustration underneath, and it essentially is overprinting onto the other one. So that's really handy if you want to bring your motifs really snug next to each other, and then you don't have that white background affecting the other motif. Okay, so now that we've prepared our illustrations, we can go ahead and start creating our pattern. So I'm going to do the same thing that I did in the first project and create this traditionally by not using the patent tool. But of course, you're welcome to go ahead and use a patent tool. I just find that sometimes when we have so many images, illustrators struggles a little bit with a patent tool. This for me is a much quicker workflow, and I'm used to creating patterns traditionally, so I'm comfortable with this method. Of course, you're welcome to use the method that you feel most comfortable with. So again, I'm going to start top left. And then I'm just going to play around with placement of motifs, and I'll see you on the other side. So each time I want to make a copy of a motif that I've already placed. I'm just holding down my option key as I drag that motif and it makes a duplicate. Okay, I'm reaching a stage where I need to start duplicating my motifs for the repeat just so that I can see what I'm left with. So I will obviously be left with this area, but I want to make sure that I'm not overlapping elements. So I'm going to start by copying the top by just dragging my cursor over the top images and then hitting enter on my keyboard. And if you can recall our measurements were 300 millimeters. So you need to make sure that you enter the measurements of your document that you created, and then we just want to copy that. And then we want to do the same for the left hand side. Do I need that one? Enter on my keyboard, so that's 300 horizontal zero vertically and then copy that. And then I can see this guy sticking just beyond the artboard, so I need to copy that and make sure that it repeats over here. I'm going to hit on my keyboard, and this time, I'm going to choose -300 because we're going, not horizontally vertically. -300 because we're going up and then copy that. Okay, now I have a better idea what I need to finish filling, and I'm just going to carry on adding my motifs. Okay, so I have an element that's overlapping at the top here, so I just need to duplicate that. And I'm just generally inspecting my design, making sure that there aren't obvious gaps. I'm also having a look to see if I have elements too many elements that are in a row that are facing the same direction because this is a tossed pattern. This is kind of a toss design. So I want to make sure that there's a nice even flow throughout the entire design. I think I'm happy with that, so I'm going to do my first test. Coming over to my layers panel. I want to create that background. So I'm just hitting the plus icon, and I want to create a rectangle that has no fill and no stroke. So I'm just going to the very top left hand corner and clicking once, and then 300 millimeters by 300 millimeters. And then coming over to the transform panel, we need to ensure that x and y is on zero. And then, of course, our fill needs to be nothing and our stroke needs to be nothing. Okay, so that needs to be dragged right at the bottom because the bounding box needs to sit underneath all our motifs. And now that we've created that bounding box, we ready to test. So I'm just going to open my swatches panel and select all and drag and drop. So we might have funny gaps now because we don't have a white background, but let's just have a look. Okay. So what I want to do so we don't confuse ourselves is actually create a white background because just zooming in, you'll see all these funny little cutouts, which looks a little disconcerting. So I'm going to go ahead and delete that swatch. I'm also going to delete this pattern swatch, so I don't add to the files data. And then we're going to create a background fill. I'm using that rectangle that we created, command F paste in place, and then fill that with white. And now test our swatch again. And we're going to fill with that new swatch. And then do some inspection. You will see these tiny little key lines. They won't print, and when you export, they definitely won't show. It's just illustrator's way of rendering those images. As you can see it kind of disappears as we zoom in, and then it might reappear, as you out. But don't worry, those won't print, and they certainly won't export like that. Okay, so I think that's looking pretty good. I'm going to create a little bit of a larger test. And I can see there's a bit of a line running across here, and I don't want that. I want to create more of an organic flow. So to fix that, I just want to try and create more of a zigzag shape or pattern, should I say, within the pattern. So I'm going to do a little bit of adjusting. Okay, let's see if I managed to fix that. So selecting all and then just dragging and dropping. Testing that again. Yeah, I think it looks a lot better. So coming over to our previous one, you'll see there was a distinctive line that runs across here, and our new design is a lot better, kind of hidden that line, but better this time. So I'm pretty happy with that. And then I wanted to show you if you wanted to vectorize your swatch, the best would be to duplicate your artboard, or you can save as, which I think I'm going to go ahead and do, otherwise, this document becomes too data heavy. So just saving a copy, And I noticed that I actually didn't save the other one yet, so I'm going to go ahead and do that. And then just open that vector one that I just created. Generally, I don't like image tracing my water colors in illustrator, I find it a little bit choppy and it doesn't really do the illustration justice. But I know that you might need to at some stage, whether you want to eventually blow this up, really, really large. It's a handy thing to do. So I would personally recommend only doing that if you absolutely have to. So if you do want to go ahead and vectorize this, I recommend doing the repeat again. So what I mean by that is deleting all your repeating elements that run along the edges, vectorize, and then repeat those elements again. And I'll show you exactly what I mean. So I'm going to go ahead and delete these that overlap. Those are essentially the ones that come up from the top here that repeat down here. I'm going to delete those and then do the same with these. And then we can safely go ahead and vectorize that. But I don't need to vectorize the background, of course. I'm only concentrating on the watercolor motifs and then do some image trace. When image tracing your motifs, you can either trace them one by one, which is a little painful, if you ask me, or we can actually create a single image from this entire group, which is going to be much quicker to trace. So with everything selected, we're going to come over to object. And then rasters. And you're going to select the color mode that is your document, make sure it is 300 DPI, and then you want to choose transparent. Make sure it's art optimized under the anti aliasing and then hit. Illustrator has now created a single image out of all those motifs, and now we can go ahead and trace everything at once, which is much quicker. The starting with 16 colors because we want to make sure that the trace is as close as possible to the original water color and just zooming in. I'm going to increase my colors and take it up to 25. And then we just want to ignore the white background. And you can decide how many colors you want to choose for the setting. I'm going to leave it at 25 and then go ahead and expand. And now we need to duplicate our repeating elements. At the moment, everything has been grouped. So you can either just repeat the entire group, but that will, of course, increase the size of your document, or you need to individually select those repeating elements. So I'm going to double click to go into isolation mode. And I noticed that I have this duplicated over here, so I just want to get rid of the one. And just hitting Q on my keyboard, I'm just going to select that and group it. Do the same for this one. Group it and this one. And then just do the same for the elements that are at the top. I'm holding down my shift key to get my plus symbol so that I can select those ones that I missed out. And then you'll see over here I accidentally selected those, so I'm holding down my option key to get the minus and basically exclude those, and then group, and group. Okay, so now we're ready to do our repeat again. So I'm just going to select those elements that are hanging out on the left hand side, hits plus on my keyboard, and we know it's 300 across and zero and copy. And then the same for the top elements, and copy. And then it was just this little guy that needs to be repeated again, hitting. So it's -300. And copy. Okay, so let's give that a test. I'm going to unlock my background. Select all drag and drop. And then we have our vector watercolor motifs. So for this lesson, we used a flat JP of watercolor illustration, making sure that we have our paper texture turned off. We imported that into Illustrator, embedded that JP and created our pattern using the traditional method. We then went on to vectorize our pattern design in case you ever needed a vector version of your watercolor pattern. 14. Recap & Upload Your Project!: Let's run through a quick recap. Create your artwork as large as possible in procreate to ensure a high resolution design in Adobe Illustrator. When using Raster files in Adobe Illustrator, make sure you embed them into your documents so you can create a patent swatch from your design. Be mindful of the resolution and artboard size. This will determine the resolution when you export your artwork. And remember, you can recolor your images directly in Adobe Illustrator, giving you the freedom to adjust the colors of your motifs. By combining raster elements with vector art, you have the opportunity to use yummy hand drawn texture to enhance your designs. I hope you found the projects fun and that they introduced new workflows, you can incorporate into your pattern making process. Happy creating. Don't forget to upload your project. I'd love to see what you create. Okay.