Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Cynthia Oswald. I'm a surface pattern designer and a branding specialist for creatives. It took me 15 years of soul searching and working in different aspects of the design industry before I realized which direction I should go with my work. If you are feeling a need to blend more fine art and design, you'll feel encouraged by the possibilities reviewed during this course. I love to share knowledge and help others understand quickly what took me years of research and soul searching to find. I started my career in advertising but quickly realized it wasn't for me. I ended up finding myself at a company that worked with artists, museums, and galleries to help them promote their work through print. I switched again and followed my heart to a local organic grocery store, where I would work there two days a week in their marketing department and build my business up on the side. I was having so much fun painting botanical watercolors all-around food and the environment, which leads me to now. I've really enjoyed creating patterns because it blends everything I love design, fine art, and subject matter that interest me. I can put all of that into the work. The great news is you can too. If you're feeling a need to blend more fine art and design, you'll feel encouraged by the possibilities reviewed during this course. I love to share knowledge and help others understand quickly what took me years of research and soul searching to find. During this class, we're going to review pattern-making techniques, how to create artwork for patterns, capturing or scanning your work, editing your artwork, and creating seamless patterns in Adobe Photoshop, and finally, placing your pattern on a product mock-up. This class is for artists who desire to see their artwork on products in the real world, or who are just looking for additional streams of income. You will need an existing art practice, a camera, phone or scanner, and Adobe Photoshop in order to complete the class project. The class project involves creating artwork, editing the artwork in Photoshop, building a seamless pattern, and placing it on a mock-up. I'll guide you through each step during the lessons. Learning how to edit your artwork in Photoshop for reproduction purposes is a beneficial skill to have, whether you are looking to create patterns or simply reproduce your work in any printed format. Surface design is a way to enhance your career as an artist and support you on your artistic journey by providing additional revenue streams. By learning the methods taught in this course, you'll finally be able to take your art to the next level and feel confident sharing it with a larger audience. I look forward to seeing what you create. Let's get started and jump right into lesson number 1.
2. Class Project: Hi everyone. Your class project for today will be to create your first pattern using your original artwork. There's a number of steps that are needed in order to complete this. The first is to understand how to create artwork for a pattern design. Then next, you will actually go ahead and create the artwork. Next up we'll scan the artwork and edit it for Adobe Photoshop. Then we will go into Adobe Photoshop and prepare the artwork for pattern-making. Will piece together a pattern and add it to a mock-up that I'll provide for you. Finally, share your work with us and the world. Post them in the project gallery and share them on social media with a hashtag painting to pattern. I chose this project so you could start to feel excitement around creating artwork for pattern-making. I suggest committing to a schedule that will work for you in achieving each of the steps in between each of the videos. If you don't already have a process for scanning your work, I recommend looking into how to use your phone scanner or other device to capture the paintings. This will be quickly reviewed during the course. Also, a basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is recommended to complete this course. Let's get started by looking at the different techniques that are used to create artwork for a pattern-making. Thank you for taking this class and I look forward to seeing what you create.
3. Pattern Making Techniques: Hi everyone, for this class, what we're going to learn are a little bit more about the techniques of pattern-making in terms of how they actually repeat and what are the ways in which you can create it. I'm going to quickly walk you through different pattern-making techniques. The first is the simple block, or sometimes referred to as the basic. You can see that all the artwork is just contained in the block and it repeats horizontally and vertically. The half-drop repeat is very similar to the simple, except it offsets vertically. It can be offset by 50 percent or even more than that or less. It just depends on how you have the artwork setup and how you have the repeat setup. The half brick repeat does also a similar thing except for it is offset horizontally versus vertically. The diamond repeat is just basically motifs created in diamond shape and they're repeating as half-drop and half-brick repeats. You can see that if you look at it, and then each diamond can be unique. The ogee repeat is very similar to the diamond. The ogee is more rounded on two sides with the other two sides coming to points or flat ends you'll see that sometimes. They're repeating it again as half-drop and half-brick repeats. The toss repeat is what we're going to learn and do in the class today. Basically, you'll still use the same block, but you're overlapping the block both horizontally and vertically by repeating any of the motifs that overlap. If it overlaps in the corner, you're going to have to repeat it horizontally and vertically, if it overlaps on one side, you'll just have to make sure you either repeat it, top or bottom. The beauty of a toss repeat is that you really have full control over the composition. I think it's important to learn how to create a toss repeat, and Photoshop is one of the first ways to understand pattern design. Since this is your first pattern maybe, using your original artwork, I want you to take the pressure off and really just create something for fun, in a medium that's really easy for you to render. Whether that's sketching or watercolor, paint or ink, whatever medium you choose, just make sure that you are creating each of your motifs separately and keeping them a few inches apart, so that when you scan them and edit them in Photoshop, we can easily separate them using the pen tool. Next up, we're going to review how to scan your artwork to edit in Photoshop, to create patterns.
4. Capturing Your Work: Now that you have your motifs ready to go, you're going to take what you have and you're going to scan this in, and you're going to do this either using a scanner or you're going to capture it with a device, whether it's your smartphone, a tablet, or a DSLR camera. I'm going to walk you through that in this next class. I use an Epson WorkForce 7720 and that's because the scanner bed is oversized and it fits my preferred watercolor block size of 12 by 16. You can also use your smart phone or your camera. There's a few things I want you to be sure of if you're using a camera, first, I want you to make sure that you shoot directly or flat so there isn't a warp or distortion. You can do this by using the grid settings on your device. Second, I want you to photograph in indirect natural light. Under a porch, in a room with a lot of windows on an overcast day, all of those would be great. Finally, I want you to make sure the image is at the highest quality possible. Check your camera settings and make sure you're capturing as close as possible without losing focus. We're going to be going over scanning today. There's a couple of things I want you to do. First, I want you to double-check that your artwork is clean and there's nothing on it before you put it on the scan bed. I also want you to clean off your scanner bed and make sure that you have a nice clean surface to work from. Then I want you to grab a book or another flat object that can weigh your image down so that you can avoid softness or out-of-focus areas in the scan. You can import your device directly into Photoshop by going to "File" "Import", and then any of the devices that are on the shared network or plugged directly into the computer should show up in this area. I prefer to work directly in the Epson software, so once I have that open, I'm going to preview my work just so I can ensure that nothing is going over the edge and everything is showing up clearly. The next thing I do is just check the main settings and make sure that everything makes sense, that it's in color, that the resolution is over 300, I typically go with 600 dpi. Just so you know, 300 dpi is the standard dots per inch for printing at a high-quality. If you want your motifs to be printed larger, it's best to save at a higher resolution. You also want to make sure that your "Image Format", your "File" name in your "Folder" are all set up correctly so that you know how to find your work once you've scanned it in. I'll typically scan as a JPEG, and then when I open it in Photoshop, I'll save it as a TIFF. You could scan in as a TIFF. The next thing I do is go into the "Advanced Settings" and I make sure that if there is the ability to remove the background, I'll put that at "High" because that just helps. The next thing I do is adjust the "Brightness" and I actually decrease that because I want to make sure that I'm not losing any quality. I'd rather enhance it in Photoshop that way I'm not losing details. The "Contrast" is similar. I'm going to also make that a little bit less than right in the standard in the center. The "Gamma" is your mid-tones. I'm actually going to increase that slightly just because the way that my scanner captures my work. Play around with your settings within your scanner application and you can get a sense for what works best for you. When you bring it into Photoshop, you'll be able to tell whether you need to re-scan it. Let's just quickly review the settings. You're going to want to make sure that your DPI is greater than 300. Be sure to name your file and store it in a location you can find. Within your scanner application adjust a few of the advanced settings to ensure you aren't losing details in the imagery. You want to see if you can adjust the background, the brightness, the contrast, and the Gamma. You're going to lean on the side of less contrast, less brightness so that you can have those details in your work when you're in Photoshop. Finally, I want you to open it in Photoshop, preview and make sure everything looks good, everything is in focus and you're not losing any quality. For this class, I'd like you to scan or capture your work and preview the file in Photoshop to ensure details are intact. Next up we're going to edit each of your motifs so that we can create a pattern.
5. Color Correcting: Now that you have all of your artwork scanned in or photographed or captured, we're going to edit it in Photoshop and put each of the pieces on separate layers so that we can create a repeat pattern. This part of our class is super important because it's where we get into the nitty-gritty details that will matter in terms of quality. I just want to share this quote with you by Maya Angelou. "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has to go through to achieve that beauty." I find that so motivating and true, especially when it comes to the process of creating quality work. The first step, you're going to adjust the levels in Photoshop. There's a few things you can do in order to ensure that your whites and darks are showing up the way that they should. You can see here that I'm adjusting this little white arrow to open up the highlights. I recommend moving it just to the right of where the graph starts to go up. Next up, we're going to adjust the curves. I want you to give it a tiny S curve and see how that looks. It really depends on how your scanner or a photograph has captured the image and if you followed along with everything perfectly this far. But typically when I preview a tiny S curve, it looks really good. I would just double-check on your end and see what works for you. You may not even need it because it can over saturate the work. Step 3, I want you to clean up using the Clone Stamp tool. The default keyboard shortcut to select the Clone Stamp tool is S. You can click "Option" on the area that you want to replicate, and then you can pin over top of any other area and it's going to replicate the areas you selected. You can also adjust the size of your brush or the edges of the brush by hitting Control, if you're on a Mac. If you're on a PC, you can look up the conversion for that, it may be the same. Then once you start to get the hang of the tools, probably go back and adjust them further. I'm going to open up this Levels tool and you can see I have the white Eyedropper selected. I'm going to click on the whitest area of the piece and it's going to automatically adjust it by white balance. By now you may have already rotated your image, but if not, you can go to Image and then Image Rotation and select whichever orientation you prefer. Step 4 is to adjust the color by using the Hue and Saturation tool. I think when I did the curves, I did over saturate the image just a little bit. I'm going to open up the Hue and Saturation and adjust it just a little bit to reduce the saturation. I'll preview that and I think that looks pretty good. Before we get started using the pen tool, I want to walk you through one other option for selecting the background. You may be used to using the Magic Wand tool, but I want to point you in the direction of instead using the "Select" "Color Range" tool. By going to Select, Color Range and then using the white Eyedropper, select the lightest area of the background of your page. Larger the number you have, and the fuzziness field, the more wide variety of whites it's going to pick up. You want to make that a little smaller so that you can get it as close to just the background as possible because you're going to have to go in and clean up those areas within your artwork that it is selecting. I recommend going as low as possible and previewing it and seeing how that looks. The key is to make sure that you're getting most of the background while not getting as much artwork. You can see that I had to play around with that a little bit and I ended up getting a little bit of the artwork and I think that that is easier to edit than going the other rule which is to have to clean up the background. What I'll do then is grab the Lasso tool. By holding the Shift key, I can add any of the white parts that it didn't get in the background, or if I want to remove the selection away from my artwork, I can hold down the Option key and that's going to pull up a little negative sign, which means if I select any of the areas with the negative sign, it's going to de-select those. You want to unlock your background layer if you haven't already. The way you can do that as just double-click on it in the Layers panel, and then when the new layer pops up, just select "Okay". Then we're going to go to "Select" "Modify" "Feather", and we're going to give this the lowest pixel dimension we can, or Feather radius. We're going to go back to the Layers panel, we're going to create a new layer, then we're going to copy and paste that onto the new layer. All you have to do to make sure that you do that, actually what I did, you can see this might happen to you, I copied the background, which I don't want the background so you actually had to inverse this first. The way you do that is by hitting Command + Shift + I, and that will invert your selection. Now you should be selected on the art and you can copy paste that into the new layer. Let's turn that background layer off and take a look at the artwork. It looks pretty good. What you're going to do next is create a new blank layer. You're going to fill that layer with a color and I'm just going to select a dark green for my artwork. You could do some similar, grab the darkest part of your artwork and you're going to paste that color into that layer so you can get a sense for what's really going on here. When using them you can see that the edges, they still look pixelated, they look a little soft and you can still see some white. Now you could get away with that if you're going to put this artwork on a white layer or a light background, but it's not good practice and honestly it just isn't as clean. It makes more sense to use the pen tool and that's what we're going to go over next.
6. Cleaning up Motifs: Now is a really good time to take a breath and remind yourself why you're taking this class. I want you to connect with that big future vision before you keep going so that you can be motivated to learn the pen tool and master the pen tool. You can use the pen tool to remove the background as well. The great benefit of that is that it gives you a vector path, versus a rasterized path. The way we'll use it, it will end up being rasterized, but you'll have that if you need it, and because it starts off as a vector path, it's super clean. I would also recommend when you have time to look into the Content-Aware tracing pen, it's worth exploring. You can select the pen tool by just hitting P on your keyboard. You want to start by positioning the pen tool where you want to start and then click to define the first anchor point. For straight angles or lines click once, for curves you want to click and drag. I'm just going to say this, but you're going to have to practice it, I try to go about halfway between a curve when I'm actually pressing the pen tool down and making a point. I know that sometimes curves have stronger angles on one side and less on the other. If one side has a really long less of an angle and the other side's more severe, you're going to go closer to the severe angle side, and that's going to help you define the curve in the best way possible. So I can say that and it's still not going to really resonate until you practice with it. The way you complete the path is by working your way around the artwork until you reach the first point and then you can close the path by selecting the first anchor point. You can see that often I'll have to hit ''Undo'' like I didn't catch that one section in the artwork, so I'll just hit ''Undo'' and go back. You can also delete anchor points, but I honestly just prefer to hit ''Undo'' when I'm working and just get in the zone. This is a great time to listen to a podcast or some really great music. Then you're going to go to the Paths panel, which is right where the Layers window is and if you don't see it there, you can find it under Window, Paths. Select the path and then choose the circular dotted line in the bottom of the panel. Once selected, go to Command F6 or Select, Modify, Feather, and choose 0.8 as your feather radius, then hit ''Okay''. Then you're going to jump to the Layers panel and make sure you are on the artwork and then hit copy, paste or Command C, then Command V if you're on a Mac to create a new layer with only that piece of artwork. Make sure you have the dark background color layer on. Turn off all the layers except the background and the artwork layer to check the edges. Then you want to repeat that step for each motif. What we're going to do is, I have these three motifs on different layers and I'm going to make a couple more variations just so I have some other sizes to work from. I'm going to take this little piece of lavender and duplicate it. All I did to do that was just click on it and then hold down the option key on my keyboard and drag it. That's how you can duplicate that. I'm going to zoom in. I want to take this one and make it a little different from that. First I'm going to go to Edit, Transform and then go to Flip Horizontally. That gives it a different look. Then I'm going to hit Command T to transform it, and I'm going to do this by scale and double-click when you're happy with it. Then I want to go to Edit, Transform, Warp, and I want to just do something a little different with this one so that it feels like a different motif altogether. I'm going to give it a little bit more of a different shape. When I like it then I can just click over here and it's going to automatically save it. The one other thing I think I want to do is just get rid of the bottom part of this piece of lavender. So I'm going to hit E for the eraser tool. If you Control click on the background, you can adjust the edge. What we're going to do is adjust the size and you get a tiny bit smaller. It's already at 100 percent hardness, which is good because I don't want it to be soft on the edge. If I click once and then hold the Shift key down, I can make a straight line. So I'm going to do that. That looks pretty good. Maybe I'll erase some of the bottom of it just to make it a little different. All right, so that's my new piece of lavender. One other thing I might do is just take this bud and duplicate it off this rose. So, in order to do that, I'm just going to go like this with the Lasso tool and just all the way around and go all the way around my bud and the stem for the bud. I'm going to copy, paste so that it puts it onto a new layer. Then I'm also going to flip this horizontally. We now have a few more pieces to work from to create a more random pattern. Now that we have all of our pieces on separate layers, we can get started on creating our first repeating pattern.
7. Creating the Pattern: In this class, I'm going to teach you how to take the motifs you've created and turn them into a repeating pattern in Photoshop. Are you're ready? What we're going to do is first we're going to adjust the image size. Remember we scanned our image in at 600 DPI, so we're going to change that to 300, which is the standard printing high-quality size, and we can see then how big width and height our actual image is. You go to Command Option I, and that brings up the image size panel, and what we're going to do is adjust the resolution to 300, and we're going to uncheck resample, which will allow the width and the height to auto-adjust to the size that they'll actually be at 100 percent. Then we're going to do canvas size, which is just Command Option C, and we're going to make sure that the pixels are selected, and then we're going to adjust the pixel dimension to something that we can remember, something really easy. I'm going to go with 5,000 by 5,000, because I know that I'll be able to remember that and also that it's going to crop the canvas size, but it won't crop my image because my image is really in the center. Then I'm going to start cleaning up my layers. I had some layers in here that can be deleted, I have groups that don't need to be there. If you wanted to group your initial or group all of them, you can just select all of your layers by hitting the top one, and then holding down the Shift key and hitting the bottom one and then hitting "Command G" and that will group all your layers. Next, I'm going to name each one of my motifs so that it's really easy for me to identify because I'm going to be duplicating these, and that way I will easily remember what's what. I like to start in the center, that way I don't have to worry about the repeating pattern yet, and now I can just start to work with how my motifs are going to fit together, and what they'll actually look like. Some things that you might want to make sure you do, you'll want to make sure up in the left-hand corner of your window that you have auto-select layer, unless you want to do auto-select group, you could do that as well. If you have some motifs grouped together, and you just want to repeat those motifs, you could do it that way. The other thing you're going to want to know how to do is to transform each of your motifs pretty easily. You can click on the "Show Transform Controls" and then you can, anytime you click on a layer, it'll bring up that transform box. The only thing with this is you can't actually easily access the right-click on it, it allows you to flip horizontal or flip vertically unless you've already manipulated it. If you leave that Show Transform Controls off, and you just simply hit "Command T," you can right-click on your layer and it'll bring up all of the transform controls, including that lead horizontal and flip vertical, which I think are used quite often. You can also always go up to Edit and then transform, and then go to flip horizontal and vertical there. This pattern in particular is going to be directional, in that it will mostly be up and down. You could also create a tossed pattern that's non-directional would just mean that, you put the flowers in all different directions so that when someone uses this pattern, it doesn't have to be upright, it could be any direction, and that would work. But for me, I want to do this one directionally vertical, so that's in me to keep in mind on how you intend on using this. What I'm doing here is just trying to get my artwork in a way that feels right because this is toss, I really wanted to feel organic, and I don't want to have to duplicate everything vertically or horizontally in the same location. What I've done in the center isn't going to stay that way, I just wanted to get a feel for what could work. Then what you'll do is once you start to work on the areas of the page that are crossing over the edge, you will then have to duplicate that layer and hit "Transform" so you can pull up your x and y coordinates and move them a specific dimension, and that dimension is going to be the dimension of our canvas size, which minus 5,000 by 5,000, Yours might be something else, and if you don't remember what it is, you can always hit "Command Option C" and then write it down with what your canvas size is vertically and horizontally. It doesn't have to be the same both ways, but sometimes it can be really easy to design it that way, so that's why I do it that way. I'm going to work on this bottom left-hand corner. I'm going to duplicate it by holding the layer down that I want to replicate and I'm going to click "Option" and drag it just below the other layer so that way it duplicates it, and it's in the same exact location. Then I'm going to hit "Command T" which will put a box around my layer. But also it brings up in the top left of the window, it brings up the x and y coordinates. I want to move this up 5,000 pixels because that's going to be exactly what it should be. I'm going to go after the number inside this window, and I'm going to go negative 5,000, it's going to move it directly up vertically 5,000 pixels, and we will Option click on both of the layers and drag them into two new layers. Since it's on the corner, it also has to repeat horizontally both of them will, and hit "Command T" to transform those as well, and then you're going to go into the x-coordinate and add 5,000 pixels. Now again, that should be a perfect repeat. You can see that because of where it's falling, it's now overlapping with these other rows. Now we're getting into the dance of composition and what it means to have a tossed pattern and playing around with the layout as a whole. This is the fun part, it's a puzzle, I just want you to think through how it looks. Often I'll squint and decide whether you are okay with things overlapping or not and then just duplicate layers and place them throughout depending on to add balance and to add movement to your piece. Next, we're going to define the pattern and test. The first thing we'll do is add a background color, and I recommend unlocking your background. Then I'm going to take the eyedropper tool and pick one of the lavender colors and fill my background color with that for now. Then I'm going to go Edit and define pattern. A window will pop up and ask you to name your patterns, call it something you're going to recognize. I'm going to call these wedding florals. Then I'm going to create a new document. I'm going to make it 10 inches by 10 inches because that is just a good size for me to test the pattern on, and I'm going to make the resolution 300, and then I'm going to go over to the layers panel. I'm going to click on that circle, I'm going to select "Pattern." I'm going to select my pattern and you can see that it's at 100 percent scales, this is how big it will print it 10 by 10. While you're in here, I want you to test and see what it looks like much smaller. Then I'm going to also play around with making it a little larger and see. Then finally, I'm going to move the pattern around by holding my cursor over the pattern and just simply moving it while this pattern fill boxes up, and just double-check that everything is repeating as it should. If you go to Image and then Mode, and then go to Grayscale, you can convert all of your image to grayscale. Now, I'm assuming you'll save this as something else, so it's okay to discard the color information at this time. Once it's in grayscale, you're going to go back to image mode and then go to Duotone. Then you want to click on "Ink one", it might come in as black, it might come in as something else, and then go over to color libraries and pick the color that you want. Now you could just stick with the main colors like CMYK and pick any color you want. I like to come in and pick a Pantone color just because, it's only one color. You can actually take a look at your color book and see what works. This looks pretty good to me. I'm going to save it, and then I'll define this pattern as well. Congratulations on finishing your first repeating pattern. I am so excited for you because I know what it feels like to create your first repeat pattern, and that it basically opens up the possibilities of how you can use your artwork. I'm so excited to see what you do with it, and I look forward to sharing with you in our next class the mockup that you can use to put your pattern on starting today and share with the world.
8. Product Mockup: Now that you have your first repeating pattern ready to go, I'm sure you are so excited to start sharing it with the world. That's why I'm including a product mockup for you that you can get started by placing your unique pattern on it today and sharing it on all your social media channels and with your friends and family. This is officially the easiest part of what you've done so far. All you have to do to change the pattern here is go over to your Layers panel, double-click on this Pattern Overlay, and click on the pattern section and pull up your pattern that you just created. You're going to adjust the scale to something that looks good within this size and then you can move it around by just clicking and dragging it within the mug. You can also change the angle if you prefer it to be directionally a different way. Then to change the background color, you simply just go to Color Overlay, double-click, and you can click on the color and you can use an eyedropper tool to select something directly from your artwork, and then you could also just use the color picker. Finally, you'll want to save this for web. You can do that by hitting Command Option Shift S. Now that you've finished placing your unique pattern on the mockup, I would encourage you to share it with the world. Post them in the project gallery and share on social with the hashtag paintingtopattern.
9. Conclusion: I'm so grateful that you decided to take this class and I look forward to seeing what you create and continue to create now that you understand how to create a repeating pattern in Photoshop. I would encourage you to continue building on that idea that you created in class. If you're happy with the artwork you created, then build some other motifs that are similar. Or it could be paired up with the ones that you created in class, and start building out a mini collection of like four patterns that can go together. Or you can always start thinking about a larger collection, a larger body of work that you'd like to see together based off of something that inspires you. Come up with a plan to create a group of images that all relate to one another and then build a beautiful collection of patterns that all reflect that idea. If you're not sure where to get started, I want to recommend two classes for you. One is by Andy J. Pizza. He has a class about finding your style and it's an incredible resource for getting creative, and understanding your unique preferences. Second, I want to recommend Bonnie Christine's class on creating collections. She has a number of classes that are all amazing resources for surface designers. If you made it this far, I just want to celebrate with you for a minute. We did a lot. First, we learned different techniques for pattern-making and how to create artwork for pattern design. Then went ahead and actually created artwork for our patterns. Then we scanned and edited for Adobe Photoshop. If you can learn how to capture your work properly, you'll be so much happier with the way it reproduces in print and in any other format. Next, we prepare the artwork for pattern making. This one of the most tedious steps and I'm so happy for you if you got through it. Then finally we created the pattern and place it on a mockup. We packed a lot into this class. I just want to share this one last quote with you. Don't wait until you know who you are to get started by Austin Kleon. He wrote this book called Show Your Work. It gave me permission to just fully embrace where I was at when I wasn't sure what to do next. Thank you so much for taking this class from painting to pattern in Photoshop. I am so inspired by what you are creating and I look forward to seeing what's next for you.