Fun With Symmetry: Create a Themed Pattern in Procreate + Make Your Own Stamp Brushes

1. Intro: Hey, I'm Charlie, a greeting card designer and freelance initiator from the UK. About four years ago, I sold all my belongings for an iPad and a one-way ticket to Asia, to start my career on the right. I now run my creative business full-time from my laptop and iPad. Working on projects that I love, collaborating with dream brands, and licensing my work out to stores around the world. Along the way, I found a new passion, teaching, and since then I've made it my mission to teach you everything I know about Procreate. There are so many tools in Procreate that it can feel overwhelming. Sometimes it can be difficult to know when to use them in your own work. That's why I've put together a project that will help you use Symmetry in a whole new way. Firstly, I'll walk you through the basics of how the Symmetry tool works. I'll then guide you through making your [inaudible] brushes, so you didn't have to draw the same thing over and over again. We'll may move on to pick themes for our main project, as well as fun exercises to help you develop your style. For your class project, I want you to create themed pattern using the Symmetry tool. These illustrations can look great as shrimps, greeting cards, and on cushions. Whether you just want a fun project to work on, or need a new illustration to freshen up your portfolio, then this is the class for you. 2. Class Breakdown: For your class project, I would need to create a themed pattern using the Symmetry tool. I would need to have a creature as the main focus and then we'll be adding decorative elements around it for our pattern. Before we move on to the main project, I'll be walking you through fun exercises to get you used to using the Symmetry tool. I'll then guide you through making your own stamp brushes to use as filler elements for your pattern. I'm going to be using a few different brushes in this class. I'll be using the monoline brush, which is a brush that already comes with Procreate and you can find this brush under calligraphy here. I'll also be using the Jelly Gouache brush set by Mac Ford, who's also known as The Gladdest Thing on Instagram and she's an amazing artist. She's created this amazing brush set where you layer it up and it looks almost like real paint, it's just incredible. She has created all of these different brushes where you have some that look like chalk or texture and you can layer these up that way. She has been so kind to offer 40 percent off to all students who have involved in this class if you use the code, CHARLY40. I understand that not everyone has money to spend on brushes so I'm going to show you a few alternatives that you can use instead of the brushes I've just shown. I would recommend using the brush pen and the water pen, and this will give you very similar texture. This is a really good brush to use to block how large areas, like this and also the water pen gives you this really nice textures as well that look like paint. If you don't want to buy your own brushes, these are really good alternatives. I'll also be using the Tara oval sketch brush and I use this in all of my sketches. As you can see, it's pressure sensitive. I can lean quite hard here and then trade off here. If I'm shading or if I'm using it, I can use it very lightly as well. Again, a great alternative would be the 6B pencil, and this has a very similar texture and way of drawing as well. It's also pressure sensitive. These are great alternatives to the brushes that I've shown you. But if you do want to purchase them, I've left a link below. I've put together some resources and cheat sheets that you can find in the resources section here. Just make sure that if you're on iPad, you go on the website and not through the app. Sometimes these don't show up. If you have any issues with locating your files, I've also added a Dropbox link for you guys so you can download the files that way. You can find all of the information that you need under the About section of this class. Now we know about brushes, what you're going to find in this class, and also how to download. It's time to get started. Grab yourself a cup of tea and your iPads, and let's get started. 3. Exercise 1: How To Use The Symmetry Tool: In this exercise, I'm going to be showing you the four different ways that you can use the symmetry tool. We'll look at Vertical, Horizontal, Quadrant, and Radial. I want you to create one initiation for each of these options. You can either follow along with the illustrations that I'm creating or you can create your own. So I'm just going to the spanner here, turn on Drawing Guide and Edit Drawing Guide. We're going to head over to Symmetry here, and look our options. So we have Vertical, Horizontal, Quadrant, and Radial. Going to start with Vertical. I can play around with the Thickness of my line, the Opacity, and also the color. If I pick a dark color, I'm just going to come down with the Opacity to make sure that it isn't too distracting when I'm creating my illustration. Press done. I'm going to be using the Jelly Gouache Brush Pack by Mac Ford. You might know her as The Gladdest Thing on Instagram. She's an amazing artist and I love using her brushes. If you don't want to spend money on brushes, don't worry, there are so many different brushes in procreate already. Just make sure that you're picking a bush that has a good thickness. I'm going to use the jelly round brush, and we're going to draw a dragonfly with the vertical symmetry tool. I'll click on here and put on Drawing Assistance. So always make sure the Drawing Assist is switched on to the layer. So you have this merit effect. I'm going to start from the middle, and I'm going to bring my wing up and just fit it in this way. I love how you can get these really nice textures. Then I'm going to bring the wings down and then arch and flick up. Now I have the basic shape. I'm going to add a new Layer, put Drawing Assist on, and then with my red we'll start filling out the body. Now put a circle, come down, and then slowly bring the bottom to a point. So I'm just going to bring these wings out a little bit more just to give it more balance, go back to my red, and then with a new pencil and with a 6BPencil, I'm just going to draw the antenna. So now add some details onto the wings now. I'm just going to just play around with some funky patterns. Really quickly I was able to get this dragonfly. I'm just going to move this down [inaudible] slightly. This is the great thing about creating your illustrations on different layers, you can easily move them around. So I'm just going to bring that down slightly, making sure I got Magnetics, switched on so it doesn't move from the center. I really like that. I'm just going to, with my finger, swipe on the Layers and put them into a group, "Rename", Vertical. Then I can hide this ready for my next illustration. I'll go to the spanner, Edit Drawing Guide, and then go over to horizon. Click Done, then making sure that I have drawing assist switched on that layer, I'm going to start to draw my fish. So I'm going to start from the middle line and flick up and then zig zag down. I can just fill that to save time. Then bring the body up and down in an arch. Then you have your basic shape of your fish. What I like to do is add a new layer, but I won't turn drawing assist on, just so I can start to add some details that aren't symmetrical just to balance out the main shape. So I want to have my fin up here, quite big. Then at the bottom just a little bit smaller. Then the lips. The eye. So it's really good to use a symmetry tool for getting your basic shapes down. Then we have a more imperfect brush, you can add details to just give it a little bit more visual interests, so it's not all perfect. Again, I'm just going to repeat the process. Swipe and group, rename horizontal. Hide that layer, add a new layer, drawing assist, and then head over to the next option. Quadrant now is really interesting for creating diamond shapes and flowers. So I'll just show you now. So with my smaller bush, just so I have more control, I'm going to just turn on yellow. I'm going to create a diamond. Let's start up here in a point, and then slowly bring this to another point. Fill this in, and then you can always just kind of play around with how much you want it to come out. You'll get used to this with your line work the more you practice. But you can get some really cool shapes using the quadrant. Just going to make that smaller, and just create a star now. Do the same, and you can hold your pencil down on the screen to get this line. I'm just going to put it up there. Just fill it in. Then I'm going to repeat this process, but have these come out a bit smaller. I can bring that down there, hold the line, fill it in, and then I'll do the same on the other side. I'm just going to make that smaller and put it in this corner. Now I want to show you guys what to do with the Radial. So Radial gives you just a little bit more symmetry because instead of just having four, you have all of these lines that you can work with. For all of the options, you can move this around. So like I'm showing now because I'm demonstrating lots of different shapes on one page. I can move this around and place it anywhere on the canvas. I'm just going to press done, and I'm going to show you what you can do with the Radial. I'm going to create a circle. Doesn't have to be perfect. I really like using this for a few different reasons. Just make sure I have Drawing Assistant. I can create suns like this, which is quite a basic shape. But if I go over to Edit Drawing Guide and put rotational symmetry on, I can create a sun with a lot more visual interest. So I'm just going to bring my brush from the center of the circle and zigzag it out. You get this kind of flex. I'm just going to grab a little bit of a thicker brush. You can see that the lines are no longer mirroring what I'm doing, but they're rotating each line. You get these really cool sun-like shapes that you can use in patterns, and then I can just make that a bit bigger. You can also create really nice flowers. You can have the petals coming out like this. This is also rotational, or you can put Rotational Symmetry off and have the petals coming around like this. You want to create your petals from the center and then arch them round and meet again at that line. We can do it on this one as well and meet in the middle. This is a really quick way to get these flowers. I'm just going with my red now and I'm going to create a circle, just an imperfect circle in the middle. So I want you to create at least one illustration for each of these different options. Once you've done that, join me in the next video where I'm going to be showing you how to turn these shapes into you own stamp brushes. 4. Create Your Own Stamp Brushes: In this video, I'm going to show you how to create your own stamp brushes to use in your patterns later. I have this library of shapes that I've already created. I have this starburst and if I just tap on my canvas like this, I'm able to repeat this shape over and over again. So this means that it saves me so much time when I'm creating my patterns. I also like to use some of these shapes as decorative elements in my illustrations. So I have this illustration here and I have these awkward gaps that I want to fill with my stamp brush. So just with one tap, I am able to fill some of these gaps with my shapes. So it's just saves me so much time when I'm creating my patterns. So now you know why it's important to use stamp brushes in your patterns. Let's get started. I want you to create a canvas of 4,000 by 4,000 pixels, and it has to be square. We'll head over to this spanner here, Canvas and switch on our Drawing Guide. Edit Drawing Guide, Symmetry, Options and I'm going to go for Quadrant here. Press "Done" and now I'm going to create my shape for my stamp. So I'm using the monoline brush just so I can get these really crisp lines. I want you to create your stamp using the blackest of blacks. So I just double-tap to get this. If you go for a light-colored, maybe like a gray, then this will mean that your stamp brush will become quite see though and less opaque. So try and keep on the darkest black to avoid them. I'm now going to create my shape and I'll just drag my line down and meet on this line and like I'll fill it like this and just make sure that I can also snap my lines like this and have the meet in the middle. So once I filled my canvas, I can now go on to save it. So spanner, share and then save as a JPEG, save image. Now. I'm going to make this into a stamp. I'll head over to my brushes and I've just got shapes. I've done to here. These are all the brushes that I've already made. I have this star that I'll have as a download for you guys to get you started creating your own brushes. So once you've imported this star and you can import brushes and then you have Import here, and then you can find where you've saved it and import it that way. So once you have your star, I want you to duplicate it and then we're going to edit the second duplicate. So head over to shape, edit and import. So we'll import a photo and we'll get the photo that we saved earlier. So this needs to be inverted. So just double-tap to make sure that our shape is in white in the background is black. Double-tap again, you'll see that it will embed. So make sure it looks like this. Press "Done" and now I can see my brush like this. I can change the properties, say, I can change the size of it and I can also change the preview. Wherever it says, oriented screen, make sure that this is always switched on just so you don't find your diamond or your shape on its side. We'll press "Done" and now I can test out my brush. I can make it bigger and that looks pretty good. So I want you to spend some time creating lots of shapes with the symmetry tool and then making them into your stamp brushes. These are going to be great for filling in some of those gaps that we'll find in our pattern later. Before we move on to the next video, it's really important that your stamp brush fits the whole canvas. If you create your shape really small, like this is going to come out tiny when you go to use it and it's going to be hard to resize it. So make sure that you're using the whole canvas for your shapes. Here's an example of how I would use this flower in a pattern. I can make this pattern really, really quickly now that I have my stamp brushes. So it's really important to have a library of lots of different stamps to work with. So join me in the next video where we're going to be picking our theme and creature for our main projects. 5. Pick Your Theme and Creature: I know what it's like to struggle with creative block. I think we've all been there so I've put together this cheat sheet for you guys just to help you out. If you're struggling to know what to draw or don't really know what works with the symmetry tool, hopefully, this will help. So on the left we have themes and on the right we have a list of creatures and these all work with the symmetry tool. I want you to mix and match and see what creative pairs you can come up with. So I'm going to pick ocean and squid, so this is an example of a pair that actually work quite well together, but if you want to pick a random pair and see how creative you can get then feel free. I also did this process with another illustration and I paired a moth with forest, and this is what I came up with. So it's really fun to get creative and play around with different pairs. Once you've picked your theme and creature, I want you to create a new Canvas and start writing down a list of things that are associated with your theme. For example, I could write crab, seaweed maybe I can have a sea snake in their, shells, waves. So shells and waves could be a really good filler for my pattern and I'm going to maybe add some bubbles in there, starfish, there are so many things that I can associate with this word. So I don't really know how my final illustration is going to look at this point, so I just want you guys to get down as many words as you can and we're going to be saving this and use this in our final later on. So once I've started to get a few words down I want to sketch some ideas down as well, I'm quite a visual person so let's pair it with some blue sketches, just helps me visualize how my pattern is going to look. Snakes have a really interesting shape so I think this could look really nice in my final, so I'm just going to play around with different ways that I could display there as well, and draw some starfish, draw another fish here. As I'm sketching out some ideas I'm starting to think about how they will look in my pattern. I'm also going to just play around with a different way of drawing the crab, this can be quite fun and I don't know where this would go in my pattern but I quite like having smaller creatures as fillers as well. So as I'm drawing, I'm actually thinking about some more ideas and some more words to add to the list so maybe I could add a seahorse and flowers so these can all be used in my pattern. Once you finish your list I head up to the spanner here and save it as a JPEG, so we're going to be using this in our main project later. So I want you to spend about 10 minutes, making a list of all the words associated with your theme. So once you've done with this, join me in the next video where we're going to be looking at reference photos for our creature. 6. Finding Reference Photos: In this video, I'm going to show you how to pick reference photos for your main project. Your assignment, is to create a creature with symmetry. I have this board here and I've put together lots of photos that work well with the symmetry tool. There are three choices when it comes to picking reference photos for your main creature, you can pick a symmetrical image where the photo already has symmetry in it. If you are to add a mirror down the middle of this photo, then the reflection on that side would be identical. Or you can challenge yourself and pick an asymmetrical image. This could be a photo where you're creature is at a slight angle or more on its side. We will be sketching out our creature at a head on angle. If you want to make your life easier. I'd recommend choosing a symmetrical image to work from. If you want to try and sketch more from your imagination and figure out how to draw your creature head-on from an asymmetrical photo, then that's fine too. I want to challenge myself to this project. I've chosen an asymmetrical photo, but please pick whatever you feel comfortable with. If you struggled making a list of everything associated with your theme earlier, I have a little trick for you. If you search here for your theme, say mine's ocean followed by icons, this will pop up. This will give you layers of new ideas of things that you can include in your eying pattern. Say for example, I could include this wave maybe a palm tree just scrolling down and you have so many more to choose from. I could also look for desert if my theme was desert, icons. Again, this pops up and it can start to have a look at other things that are associated with this theme. Maybe I didn't think about adding a carmel, so I can put that on the list as well. This is just a really good trick if you're struggling to come up with ideas for your themes. I want you to pick one reference photo for your main creature. Then spend around five to ten minutes pulling together a really quick moodboard for your pattern. Join me in the next video where we're going to be sketching out a creature. 7. Exercise 2: Finding Your Style: You should have already picture a reference photo. Now we're going to download the exercise to find your style worksheet. We'll then bring a photo into the worksheet and then create a new layer on top. I want you to start to look your creature and sketch out what you see. In these boxes I want you to develop your style, play around with different ways that you can draw your creature. This is a great exercise for practicing your style, but also looking at all those little details that make up your creature. I'm using the tara's oval sketching brush for this, but you can also use the 6-B pencil as well. I can see this long triangle at the top and then this interesting shape at the top. I'm just going to draw exactly what I see for this. As I go on, I can practice playing around with simplifying the objects but I think this is just a really good way to start analyzing all the key features that make up my squid. You can see that the squid has a really big eye and long tentacles that are intertwined with each other. I'm just playing around with that at the moment. My squid is slightly at an angle so I just want to make sure that I'm thinking about the symmetry tool and how this is going to work with it. I'm going to start to sketch out my squid, but in a more symmetrical way so from a head-on angle. I'm going to simplify this shape up here and then you can see that it's separated and the body comes down. I'm just going to simplify the tentacles a little bit because I think the tentacles in the first one are just going to be slightly to distract him for what I'm going for. In this exercise, I want you to really try and think about how your animal is going to look with the symmetry tool, because this is really important for our final illustration. I'm going to play around with having the tentacles hanging down, and I've also made the tentacles slightly different on each side I think this could add some visual interest as well. I want to play around with the shape of my squids and a little bit now, so I have this bulbous head at the top. Then these flicker out tentacles that almost like a mustache. Again, this is quite symmetrical compared to my first illustration. Maybe I'll go for more cartoony eyes and a little face. It's about trying different styles, try different eyes and shapes and sizes and just really have fun with this exercise. I quite like how the third one is looking like, I'm just going to play around with the shape a little bit more so I'm going to keep that bulbous head at the top and then flick the tentacles out. Far I'm really feeling this shape, even though it's quite different to my original sketch, I quite like how you can still see that it's a squid, but it just doesn't have as many details. Will have those lines up there as well to show you the separation. I'm going to go back to the triangle body and see if I can explore this a little bit more. I'm going to go for really short tentacles and these tiny little button eyes. This is very different from my style, but this could also be used in a person later on so it's really important that we're just exploring different ways. This really opens up our imagination, it shows you how many different styles and different ways you can draw your creature. I'm going back to my fourth sketch now, and I'm just going to push it even further. I'm going to have the tentacles splayed out a little bit more, I feel this gives it a lot more balance with the long body as well. Just put the eyes in and just play around with the tentacles. Have been coming up a little bit more. Not really happy with the eyes, I'm just going to put the eyes further apart just to be closer to my reference photo. I'm picking out key elements in my reference photo, but I'm also changing art to try and add a bit more of my personality and my taste. I've decided that this is the direction I want to go so I'm just going to push it even further going to add some more movement to the tentacles and then bring the head down. Just going to delete that and just play around with the flick a bit more and have a curvy mouth like that. I'm looking at the sketch next to it and I'm just pushing it a bit further, I think this could work really nicely with the symmetry tool. I'm just going to add the eyes and I think I'm going to have the eyes just a little bit higher. Then add the tentacles a bit higher as well. I'm just refining the sketch because I've decided now that this is the one that I want to take into my final. I wouldn't have been able to get here unless I went through all that process of trying out different ways of drawing until I got to something that I was really happy with. I really recommend that you take the time to do this worksheet before moving forward, you'll just gain so much more confidence with your style. I think it's really good way of looking at one photo and trying to find different details. I think I'm just going to make the head a bit bigger and move the eyes down slightly to make it look a bit more key and I'm really happy with that. I think it's nicely balanced and I can see it working really well with the symmetry tool. Once you are happy with your illustration and you want to take this into the final, just select your illustration. We have three fingers swipe down and press copy. We're going to be taking that into our canvas in the next video. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with. 8. Sketching Your Pattern: Congratulations on making it this far throughout the class. Now, it's time to put everything we've learned together into a main project. For your main projects, I want you to create the themed pattern using the symmetry tool. I'll be using a Canvas of 6,000 pixels by 6,000 pixels. Having a Canvas this big, means that I can put my illustrations on lots of different products on society six. If you want to use this final illustration in your portfolio, make sure that you have a large Canvas to work with. Hopefully you copied your illustration from the last exercise. Now I want you to paste it into your Canvas. Don't worry if it looks quite small, just resize it and put it into the middle of your Canvas. This is going to be acting as a starting point for our final illustration. I'm just going to switch on the edit drawing guide and just make sure that I've put vertical on. If you're creature is a fish, then make sure that you have horizontal. I'm just going to vertical and I'm just going to put the color down and readjust my creature to fit perfectly on that line. I want to make sure that it's in the middle. I'm just going to resize that a bit. Let's move it down and put the opacity down as well. I'm just going to start on a new layer and I'm going to make sure that drawn assessed is switched on and start to sketch over my squid. It doesn't have to be perfect, I'm pushing this even further. This was just a really good starting point to know what my staff great was going to look like. I want to bring the tentacles out little bit more and just start playing with that. When you're creating your creature, if you feel there is any changes that you want to make to it, feel free to do that. The initial sketch isn't set in stone. I'm just going to draw the eyes a little bit bigger and add some details and just go over some of those key characteristics that I found in my style exercise. Then turn off the layer below just so I can get a better picture of my squid and I feel like the tentacles are actually a little bit to squashed. I'm just going to erase these and try and place them in a way that looks a bit more balanced. When you're creating your creature, like I said, make changes when you feel like you need to. This process is all about trial and error. Don't worry if things aren't looking right, just keep working on them. Bring the tentacles out a little bit more, following my original sketch and have these tentacles just hanging down, but just make them a bit longer because I feel like the tentacles were slightly too short in comparison to the body. This just helps balance that out a bit. Once you're happy with your creature, we can move on to add in some of the elements and pattern around him. Hopefully, you followed along with the exercise where we had to make a list of everything associated with our theme. My theme was ocean, and I saved it to my images earlier. If you click on this little arrow at the bottom, this will pop up and then I'm just going to drag my photos over to the screen and then I'm just going to click on the image that I saved earlier on. This is my list, I'm just going to make it smaller. I'm going to create a new layer from my pattern, making sure that I have drawn assessed always switched on. I'm just going to stop paying around with creating some of the elements from my list. If I select the fish and move it, you will only move it on this side. The symmetry tool only works if you're erasing or drawing. If I erase this fish, you can see that it's erasing on the upper side as well. That's something to take into account when you're creating your illustration that you can't just move things around and they'll move automatically on that side. I would recommend getting quite a thick eraser pencil so you can rub things out really quickly if you need to. I'm just going to erase my fish and erase this as well and try add my fish in around here. Quite like the idea of having two fish, and I'm feeling this is looking really symmetrical moments. I'm going to erase the fish on this side and add a different element that is very close to that size. Sometimes it's quite nice to mix it up, it just creates a lot more visual interest and things for your viewer to look at. I feel like the starfish actually could look better here and this is a very similar size, the fish is well so I'm just going to put it on this side and try and balance it out. It's all about trying to balance out your pattern as much as possible. If you see that there are spaces that need to be filled with different elements, then try out. I really like the idea of having the snake in this area, I feel like this will contrast with some of the small elements that I've created. I'm just going to play around with the shape of a snake. If you haven't looked at reference photos yet, feel free to check out some reference photos to get your sketches down. I'm just playing around with this snake shape, but I understand drawing from your imagination can be tricky sometimes. If you need reference photos to work from, feel free to have a look on Pinterest for some of your small elements. I really like the idea of the snakes guiding the viewers eyes to the main creature in the middle. This is also something that you can think about when you're creating some of your large elements is really important that you pick some larger creatures. For example, I have the snake and the starfish and fish and then you can start to fill in those small areas with more decorative elements like the wave or stars and flowers. At the moment I feel the snake is quite thick and sea snakes are a little bit thinner. I'm just going to play around with the thickness now until I'm happy with it. Because I have the starfish on this side now, I'm just going to erase these and try and fill that space with something else. I'm just having a look at my illustration and my initial sketch, just to see if there's things that I want to make better, move around or change up. Now I have my final, I'm pretty happy with it, I think it's ready to go on to color now. It's really important that you're creating balance with your pattern. Make sure that your contrasting those big elements with small elements around them. If you have any awkward spaces that you need to fill in, either move things around or just add some tiny details to help balance that out. The conversation is really important and you want to make sure that your creature is the main focus and then everything around it guides the viewer's eye to the center of your image. Join me in the next video where I'm going to be showing you how to block out colors using the jelly gouache brush. 9. Blocking Out Colours: You should have your sketch and before we move on to the final, I just want you to start blocking out some of the colors. I've picked a color palette here, I've just named it squid and I have a pink that goes with this blue really nicely. I have a white and a black because these will come in handy when we go to add details later. A green that compliments pink and blue and then a darker shade of this blue here. It's really important to play around with different shades as well, just so you're not using lots of different colors. If you struggle with color, then I do have a class all about picking your own color palettes as well but I've also put together a little cheat sheet for you guys. If you want to just follow along with the color palette I've already created, then that's not a problem. I'm now looking at my illustration and I feel like everything is just a little bit too close to the edge. I want to make sure that I have a frame and a border of about an inch. With this arrow up here and I'm going to pinch my two fingers and pull them both inwards. Ever say sorry. This is pinching on the middle line, so I still got it aligned to the symmetry. I'm just going to pull that end so slightly. Make sure you have magnetic switched on so that's how it snaps to that line. I'm quite happy with that, I think that looks a little better to me. Now, I'm going to move on to blocking out my colors. I'm going to use this as my main background. I always change the background color, so I'll just click on "Background", click the color I want and then press "Done" here just so the background color isn't using up an extra layer. I'm going to go to the opacity, bring my line drawing down and then create a new layer and put it underneath. With the pink, I'm going to start really roughly and I'm just going to use the jelly round brush for this because this is quite a thick brush. I'm going to start to block out the colors, so I'm going to put drawing assist on. Always put drawing assist on and really roughly, I'm going to start to play around with the colors for my final. I just want to make sure that I'm picking the right colors for each element and it's really important that I'm spreading all the colors around my pattern evenly. Now, I'm looking at where I could potentially add my pink, so maybe the pink could go here and maybe we leave fish. Because I've got a fish and a starfish on both sides, I'm just going to add a new layer to fill those in because they're not symmetrical and maybe I could add a pink here. We move this and see how balanced it is. I'm now noticing that maybe this pink down here is just a little bit too close to the tentacles, so you can see here. I'm just going to go back to my drawing assist and see how this looks, this could look a little bit better. I'm noticing a nice balance with the two flowers up here and also the shells down here. I just work like this to make sure that all the color is balanced throughout. Now I'm going to start working on the white and just start to look for areas where I can break up this pink. Always make sure you have drawing assistant, I always forget this. I'll have my snakes in white because obviously this white breaks up the pink of the starfish and my squid and I'm just going to put some white down here as well. I'm trying to think if that could be a little bit too much white actually. I could have the flowers and the crop white. Once I'm done with that, I can start to add some green. It doesn't matter about your layers because this is just a really quick rough to block out all of those colors. This is just really a good way for you to start finding that harmony within your pattern. I'm going to have this green as well. I'm using quite a little color for my leaves and my sea weed but you can play around with different colors as long as you're limiting it to about 4-5 different colors and then play around with shades as well. Always go back to your layer and just have a look to see where you're noticing too much color or where the color isn't broken up enough. I can see now from my blocking out that there's just way too much going on in this area here. I think there's too much white and actually just too many elements. Just with a thicker brush, I'm going to erase these flowers, I feel like I don't actually need them and I think there's a bit too much green. I could select these two green parts here, recolor and then track this X here. Click on here and then I'm going to make that white just to balance out. I'm noticing now that again, there's too much white here. I'm just going to come in and see what these are like, recolor, they look like white and then I could add a pink on those plants there. Select recolor and I'm just going to just really quickly see what that looks like. I think that works, it will look better just we have this green, white, pink and white so everything is evenly spread. I want you guys to use a thick brush and block out the colors and make sure that you don't have lots of the same color in one area because this will detract from your main creature. If you fill like there's too much busyness or there needs to be more balanced, then this is a great way for you to go and get an overview of your pattern and then you can see what you need to take away or add. We have our illustration blocked out so we know exactly where the colors are going to go. I want you to create a new layer underneath your colors and just drag the background color. Then we're going to pinch with two fingers and drag this into the corner. Now we know exactly where the colors are going to go. With this layer, I'll create another layer and bring this below like we did before and now I can start to really neatly start blocking out the colors for my final. I'll be using the jelly bloom, this is a little bit smaller than the jelly gouache brush but it still gives me this really nice texture. I will just show you here. As I layer it, you can start to see some of those colors coming through. I'll make sure that I have drawing assist switched on and I can start to follow my lines. Don't worry if you go out of the lines a little bit. We can go in with a neat brush like the model eye brush to neaten up any areas where it has come out a bit. Because this brush has a really nice texture that I don't want to lose, I'm not going to just fill it this way. I want to have this really nice texture going through but obviously, this could take me quite a while so I'm just going to duplicate this and I can then make it a little bit bigger to have it for my filling in. You can have a smaller brush for the outline and then have a thicker brush to fill some of your areas in. This will just save you a lot of time but you still get these really nice textures. So just really carefully try not to go out of the lines and obviously because you have symmetry tools which don't, this means that your coloring in is twice as fast. Then I'll remove that layer and just check to see if there's any areas where I can fill in a bit more. I like having these kind of textures coming through. It's not completely flat as it just adds a bit more depth to my illustrations. I want you to keep all the same colors on the same layer. This will just help with your layer gown and just keep you a little bit more organized. I'll look at my color thumb now and see where there is pink in my illustration. I'll do the same with the shell then the starfish. I've just noticed that the starfish has actually been married on the other side and I want my fish to be filled in. So I'm just going to select and with three fingers swipe down and cut. Then on a new layer, I'm just going to fill in the fish this way. I can either do it imperfect or I can go over to the symmetry tool, edit drawing guide options and then put horizontal on. I can move this around and actually line up my fish to create my shape that way. Then I can create my fish the same way as we did in the first exercise. I'll go back, edit drawing guide and I can move this over to the other fish, done and add my shapes here and then I'll just get those perfect shapes for my fish. We don't have very long. What is your verdict. We find the verdict guilty. I've finished blocking out all the colors for my illustration and I'm really happy with the composition and how the colors lip balms in my pattern. Now I'm ready for my favorite part of the process, adding details. Join me in the next video where we're going to start bringing our illustration to life. 10. It's All In The Details: Now time for my favorite part of the process, adding details. This is when you start to see your illustration really come to life. I want you to check your layers and make sure that you have all of your layers organized. I have my pink, green and white all grouped in different layers. This is our new taken up three layers. Then I have my sketch and I have this load layer that I don't need, so I'm just going make sure I delete that. Also the color guide, I don't need this anymore, So I'm just going to delete it. I Should be left to have around four layers. You might be left with a few more. That's not problem. I just don't want you guys to run into issues with the layer count later on. It's really important to try and keep on top of your layers and stay organized. I am going to start adding details now. I'll be using the small pricky brush by Jamie Bartlett. I've linked this in the description below for you guys in case you want to check it out. But you can also use a 6 B pencil, just anything with this texture. I'll create a new layer on top drawing assessed. With my small prickly, I'm just going to start looking at where there needs to be black. {MUSIC} I'm now going to move on to the lines on my squid. I'm going to create a new layer on top and then make this into a clipping mask. I can start to add my lines without it coming out of that shape. Then I can just go back and check to see if there's any lines that come out.{MUSIC} Now it's time to add some of our stamp brushes that we made earlier on. I'm just going to have let and see where there are gaps. I'm going to try and fill them with the shapes. once diamonds and we're going to come in on white layer, just check the size and that's a good size. I'm going to turn off drawing assist. It's not mirrored on the other side. I'm just going to start seeing where I can add my diamond.{MUSIC} It's just about finding those small gaps that you can't really fit big objects in and just filling out just so it looks more like a complete patterns I think that pink would look nice. Star there. I'll have a white star here, I'm really happy with that. I'm just going to move on to the flower that I made earlier. I'm going to turn on join assist to this one. Because I want the flower to be mirrored on this side, so I think that looks quite good. let's just have that there. Then I can just on a new layer with my monoline Bush, create the middle for my flower. I'm really happy with how this turned out. I was able to find balance within all of my elements and I was able to fill those oak gaps with the stamp brush that I made earlier. I understand that when we're working with such a large canvas, it can be really hard to keep track of our layers. Sometimes you will find that you'll have to merge layers down. I should go. So a little tip for you guys is if you are merging layers down, I just want you to make sure that none of the elements are touching. So for example, if I was to merge these two down to try and save on my layers, this would then be really difficult to recolor these white flower because it's touching the green. When you are merging, just make sure that none of the elements are touching. When she finished our illustration, you're going to want to add some signature or Instagram handle to your piece. This way, if it's shared on Instagram, people will know where to find you. You could add a signature like this or your Instagram handle manually. But this is really hard when you're creating lots of work and you want to keep that consistency. If you create your signature or handle. Using the same method we used earlier with using our stump brushes. You can create a signature like this. This is a great way to add your Instagram handle or your signature consistently and quickly on all of your illustrations. 11. Thank You: Thanks so much for joining my class today. Hopefully, you're feeling inspired to carry on ISS symmetry in your own patterns. Remember to take your time and most importantly, enjoy the process. I always love seeing what you create in my classes, be sure to place all your exercises as well as your main pattern to the projects section of the class. You can find more of my work on Instagram @Charlie Clements and if you're posting your projects there, then use the hashtag fun with symmetry, so I can easily find your work. If you want more projects to help you learn even more about procreate, you can find all my other classes over my skill SharePoint file. I have classes on finding perfect color palettes, creating stylized portraits, and how to animate your steams. I'm a big believer in learning while doing. So I hope these classes can help you take your illustrations to the next level and of course, have fun while doing it. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with. Thanks again. Bye.