Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: In this class,
we're going to dive into creating
geometric patterns. I'll let you in on the secret. When I first started out
as a pattern designer, I was hooked on
creating intricate, floral, puro patterns
with lots of detail. And I still love a good floral, but I also love a
bold geometric print. As you build a portfolio, there's always a place for
a good geometric print. They're great as coordinate
and blender patterns, but I think a strong
geometric print can also steal the show and be the hero of any collection
if we haven't met yet. I'm Amy Service, pattern
designer and illustrator. And of course,
skillshare teacher. If you know me from
one of my previous skillshare classes,
welcome back. Up to now, I've taught
classes on the ipad, but this class is all about Adobe Illustrator
on the desktop. We'll be using the
shape tools and Illustrator to create
our patterns today, so there's no drawing skills
needed for this class. We're going to take those basic
shapes and turn them into lovely geometric prints with lots of detail and complexity. This class is great
for beginners who are starting out on their surface
pattern design journey. But even if you have
some experience in surface pattern design, this class is a
great way to learn new tricks and explore
your creativity. I'll start with the
basics and we'll work our way up to more
complex patterns. We'll talk about how
to build a pattern and illustrator the different
repeat layouts, and how to manipulate
basic shapes to create new and
interesting forms. We will explore
how to add details to basic scallop
and OG patterns. And we'll end with
a fun bow house inspired color block pattern. If this class sounds fun
and you want to stay up to date on any discussions that
post about new classes, be sure to follow
me on Skillshare. You can also find me on
Instagram or Pinterest at my EV Designs. I'm ready to jump
right in if you are to join me in the next lesson.
So we can get started.
2. Class Project: For the class project,
you'll be creating geometric patterns in
Adobe Illustrator. We'll start with
some pattern basics, like how to build
a basic repeat, the different repeat layouts, and changing the
spacing of elements. We'll move into techniques
for manipulating basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator using
the direct Selection tool, the Shape Builder tool, and effects to create
more organic shapes. We'll take what we've
learned and add details and complexity to basic
scallop and OG patterns. We'll finish with a Bauhaus
inspired color block pattern and review the
recolor artwork tool. At the end of the
class, you'll have several geometric patterns
ready to be exported. We will start with
several basic repeats and end with a few
more complex designs. I encourage you to try all
the patterns in this class, but you can pick
your favorites to share as your final
class project. In the Project and
Resources tab, I have included the color
palettes I use in this class, along with a list of the
keyboard shortcuts I use and common pattern
layouts for reference, you can download
these files from your browser and save
them on your desktop. I'd love to see what you create. Please upload your project
at the class gallery page. You can share any part
of your process and you can always go back and update
your project at any time. To upload a project, just go to the Project and
resources section of the class page and
tap Submit Project. When the page opens,
you can upload a cover image and add a
title and description. The cover image
will automatically be cropped so you can also share additional full size
images and then click Publish. In the next lesson, we're going to start with some
pattern basics.
3. Pattern Basics: Dots: Let's start by
creating a new file. I'm going to create mine using pixels as my
unit of measurement. But you do have the
option to change this using the drop down menu. I would suggest using pixels to follow along with
me in this class, I'm going to set a 200
pixel width and height. And I'll start
with one Artboard. I'll leave the color mode as Y, K. But if I was going to be
creating work four screens, then I would want to
change this to RGB. I'm going to leave
the rest of these default settings the same, and I'll press Create. To get started, I want
to make sure that we're working from the
same workspace layout. I'll go up to the
window, then workspace, and you'll see that I have
Essentials Classic selected. If you have a different
workspace option checked, then the layout of your tools and windows will be
different from mine. It may be easier
to follow along in the class if you're using
the same workspace layout. I recommend using the
Essentials classic option. I also like to remove these standard default color swatches, because I like to add
my own color palettes. I'm going to click this folder, and then I'll press Shift on my keyboard and click
the red swatch. And tap the trash can icon, and it'll delete
all those swatches. Later on, I'll be adding some color palettes I've
already created. And I'll show you
how to do that too. For now, I'm just
going to work with these black and white swatches. Next, I want to make sure
that I save my file. I can either go up to
file and click Save. Or I can use keyboard shortcut
command S to save my file. And I had the option
to save it on my computer or to save it
to the Creative Cloud. The benefit to saving it to the Creative Cloud is
that it's available across all of my devices that are signed into my
Creative Cloud account. If I wanted to switch to my ipad and start using
Illustrator on the ipad, this file will be available
without having to export it. I'll select Save
to Creative Cloud. I'm going to give it a name. I'll name it Geometric Patterns, and then I'll hit Save. You'll notice up here the
file extension is AIC, and the designates that
it's a Creative Cloud file. If I had saved it
to my computer, it would just be
a file extension. Now the first thing I'm going to do is create a basic shape. So I can either go
over to my toolbar and you'll see this Shapes menu. If I click and hold, I have
several options for shapes. I can either select one of these or use a
keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut for
the rectangle tool is M and L for the ellipse tool. So I'm going to be
using these keyboard shortcuts a lot in this class. For now, I'm just going to
select my ellipse tool. I'll go to my Artboard, and I'll click and drag
to create an ellipse. Now if I hold shift, it will constrain the
proportions to a perfect circle. This is one way to
create a shape. I'm going to press command
Z to undo that action. And this time I
just want to click and it'll pull up this
ellipse menu box. I can actually select the exact width and
height that I want. In this case, I want to
create a 100 pixel circle. I'll tap okay to
create my circle. And you'll notice up here under the Shapes menu that you can see the width
and height of my circle. And I can actually constrain
the proportions of my shape by turning this lock
on and off with it locked. If I change my width
to 150 pixels, it will automatically change my height to stay in
proportion to my width. If I were to unlock the constraint and I
changed the height, it would only change the
height and not the width. Then I'd have this oval shape. I'm going to press command Z to undo that so I can go back
to my 100 pixel circle. The next thing I
want to do is change the fill and stroke
of my circle. I currently have a white
fill and a black stroke, and I want to remove the stroke and actually want to switch
to the black circle. So the first thing I'm going to do is use this swap button, and it'll swap my fill
and stroke colors. Then I'll click my stroke
and I'll select none. And then I'm just
going to go back and select the fill again. And now I have a black filled
circle without any stroke. I'm also going to
use the Align tools to align this to the
center of my artboard, both vertically
and horizontally. Now it's centered with
this Drop Do menu. You'll see that I have
Align to Artboard Selected. If I had multiple objects
that I wanted to align, I could use the Align to selection to align
them to one another. I'll press M on my keyboard to select the rectangle tool
and I'm going to click once, and this time I'm
going to create a 200 pixel square to match
the size of my artboard. It automatically defaults to the black fill that I
had previously selected. I'm going to go
over to my toolbar and I'll give it no fill. And of course, it has
no stroke already. This is going to be the boundary
box for my pattern tile. I'm also going to
center it vertically and horizontally
on the artboard. And if I open up
the layers panel, you'll see that I have
the new rectangle sitting in front of my circle. You can see it's at the top. So I'm going to
arrange this rectangle to be behind the circle. And I can either click and drag it down in my layers panel. Or I can use command shift left
or right bracket to send it to the
back or to the front. I'll press V on my keyboard
so that I can drag and select both my ellipse
and my background rectangle. I'll drag that across to my swatches panel and it will create a new
pattern swatch. I'll press Z on my keyboard
so that I can zoom out. And then I'm going to press the Spacebar to open
up the hand tool, and I'll just drag
this over to the side. I'll press M on my
keyboard and I'll click and drag to
create a square. And fill it with my pattern. Make sure that the fill
is on the top so that the fill contains your pattern swatch and not your stroke. And you'll see that I have
this basic repeating pattern. Now I want to scale
my pattern and I'm going to right click
and select transform. And then scale first, I want to turn off
transform objects. Because I don't want
to scale my square, I just want to scale
the pattern within it. I'll double click the scale, and then I can reduce this
by pressing the down arrow. I can also type in an
amount and hit Tab, and this will scale it to 50% If I hold shift and
tap the arrow down, it will scale it
in 10% increments. You'll see now that I have a much smaller scaled
polka dot repeat. And then I'll just tap, Okay. Another option to
scale your shape is to press on your keyboard. And then just click
from just outside the bottom corner of the shape and drag diagonally upwards. If I drag my mouth
sideways or up and down, it's going to skew
the proportions. If I hold my shift as I drag, it will constrain
the proportions. Then if I hold shift and
press the tilda key, I can resize the pattern
within the shape. That's to scale and
then hold shift and hold tilda to scale
your pattern only. I'll let go of those and
I'll press V on my keyboard. If I drag my square around, you'll see that this
particular pattern has no background fill, It just has a
transparent background. Right. Now, to create a
basic pattern swatch, you don't actually need
a background fill color. All you need is your no fill, no stroke boundary square, which tells illustrator where the boundaries of your
pattern tile are. If you want your pattern to
have a background color, you simply have to add a filled
square in the background. I'm going to press M on
my keyboard and I'll click to create a
200 pixel square. It automatically fills
with my pattern, but I'm just going
to come up here and change this to a white fill. I'll align it to the
center of my artboard. And then I'm going to hit
command left bracket once and then a second time and this will move it behind my black circle. Now my new field square
is sitting right behind my circle but
above my boundary box. My background shape
is the no fill, no stroke bounding box. And then I have my white field square and then my black circle. I'll press V on my
keyboard and I'll click and drag to select all
of these shapes together. And then I'm just going
to drag all of these over to my Swatches panel
to create a new swatch. And you'll notice
that the Swatch doesn't look very different. But now if I select my shape and I fill it with
this new pattern, you see it has a
white background. Most people are going
to want to have some filled color in the
background of their patterns, but you don't have to have it. Now, when adding a
background color, you do need to make sure that the filled square is at least the same size
as your boundary square. My white filled background
square is 200 pixels, so is my no fill, no stroke boundary box. If I were to go up to
the shape menu and I reduce the filled white
square by even 123 pixels. And then I select all my shapes and I drag to create
a new pattern swatch. You'll notice that
I have these lines in my pattern delineating
the grid of my pattern. If I zoom in, you'll see that it's just creating
a little gap where those pixels have no color and the transparency is showing
through my pattern. That's because my
background square doesn't line up perfectly
with my bounding box. I want to make sure that
my background square is at least 200 pixels. But I can also go
beyond that and make it slightly larger by adding an extra pixel or
two to the size. Now if I create a
new pattern swatch and fill my shape again
with the new pattern, the gap is no longer there. Sometimes just having
an extra pixel or two around the background
filled shape can help remove that little
phantom white line that you sometimes see when
you test your pattern. It's the no stroke bounding box that is creating the
tile of your pattern. And your filled
background square can either be the
same size or larger. It just can't be smaller. Here we have a basic polka dot
pattern and a grid layout. In the next lesson,
we're going to talk about the different
layouts for patterns, and I'll show you how to create half drops and brick repeats.
4. Pattern Basics: Layouts: In the first lesson, we created a basic polka dot pattern
in a grid repeat layout. In this lesson, we're
going to talk about other layouts for patterns
which are the brick, half drop and diamond layouts. The first thing that I'm going
to do is select my circle. And I'll go to the
shaped menu and change the size to 50 pixels. Then I'll drag this up
to the top left corner so that the center of the circle aligns to the center
of the board. Remember the background
boundary box is 200 pixels, so I'm going to
move the circle 100 pixels by pressing
shift command, which opens up the move menu. I want to start by
moving it 100 pixels to the right and zero pixels down. I'm just shifting it over half the distance of my bounding box. And I want to press
copy so that I make a copy of that circle
and retain the original. If I press command D, it will duplicate
that last action. Now the second circle is moved another hundred
pixels to the right, or 200 pixels across
from my original circle. This way it falls across
the right side of my pattern tile
at the same point as my original
circle to the left. I'll move this square
over just a little. And then I'm going to drag and select all of these together. Again, I'm going to
press Command shift M to open the move tool. This time I don't want to
move it horizontally at all, but I want to move
it 200 pixels down. This will shift everything down to the bottom of my artboard. If I press copy, it'll
make a copy of these dots. And they will fall along
the bottom edge in exactly the same spot as they
fall along the top edge. This precision will make sure I don't have anything
cut off in my repeat. Now, if I were to create a
pattern swatch at this point, it would just be creating
a new grid repeat. To create a brick repeat, I need to take these
two elements and move them halfway down to
create a new row. I'll select these dots Shift command to
open the move menu. And this time I
only want to move them 50 pixels horizontally. Instead of moving them all
the way to the bottom, I want to create a
new row and move them 100 pixels vertically down. If I press copy, I now have created a new row
that is offset horizontally, half the distance,
creating a brick layout. I'll drag all of these over to create a new pattern swatch. Then I just select my square and fill it with
this new pattern. And you'll see how this
pattern layout shifts. I want to scale this pattern, so you can see it just
a little bit better. I right click Transform Scale, and I don't want to transform
objects. Hit, okay. This brick repeat is just
offset every other row. The half drop repeat
is the exact opposite. I'm going to erase all of these extra dots and I'll come back to where I
started with my original dot. This time I'm going to
select it and shift command M. And I want to move it zero pixels
horizontally, and I want to move it
100 pixels vertically. To start, I need to make sure I have transform
objects checked. I'm going to press copy. Now I've moved it
down 100 pixels. If I press command D, it'll
duplicate that action. Now I've moved this new
circle, 100 pixels, and it's 200 pixels down
from my original circles, which is the height
of my bounding box. I'll select all of my dots along the left and press
shift command M and move them 200
pixels to the right. I don't want to move
them down at all. And again, I'll press copy. Now this set of dots
is aligned perfectly along the right edge
to line up the repeat. To create the half drop layout, I want to select
these two circles. Press shift command M, and this time I want
to move them halfway across my artboard to
create a new column. And I want to shift
them 50 pixels down. When I press copy, you'll see that it looks similar
to the brick repeat, but this time every other
column is shifted halfway down, creating the half drop repeat. I'll select all of
these elements and drag them over to make
a new pattern swatch. When I fill my square
with a new pattern, you'll see the
subtle difference in the change with the polka dot. It's subtle, but the distance between rows and
columns shift slightly. This is the brick repeat, this is the half drop. And then this is my
original grid layout. Now you may see diamond patterns listed as another type
of repeat layout. But a diamond layout is really just a combination of the
half drop and the brick. If I remove this dot and
this dot and then these two. Now I'll come back to what
is essentially a basic grid. This time I'm going
to move this top dot 100 pixels horizontally
and 100 pixels vertically, So the same distance
vertically and horizontally. And if I press copy, I now have a diamond layout. So every column and row are
offset the same distance, rather than being half the
distance of one or the other. So I'm going to create a new
pattern Swatch and notice how my diamond pattern has this symmetrical
diamond shape. The difference between
these layouts is essentially the distance
between columns and rows, but the diamond half, drop and brick are all
offset rows and columns. Now that you know the different
pattern layout types, in the next lesson we're going
to discuss how to change the spacing between elements to enhance the complexity
of your patterns.
5. Pattern Basics: Spacing: In the last two lessons, we've worked through
various repeat layouts with our polka dot pattern. So far we've been
working with an element that has plenty of negative
space surrounding it, which creates an all
over spot pattern. We can also work with elements that are spaced
tightly together, creating new shapes in
the negative spaces. In this lesson, we're
going to talk about patterns with interlocking
and overlapping shapes. So the first thing I'm
going to do is erase all of my black dots and I'm also going to erase this
white background square. But I'll leave the 200
pixel bounding box with no fill and no stroke. I'll press M on my keyboard and I'll bring up
the rectangle tool. And I'll click once
to open the menu. And I want to create
a 100 pixel rectangle and I'm going to fill
it with a black fill. I'll press V on my
keyboard and I want to use the alignment tools
to align this to the top left corner
of my artboard. My black square is half the width and half the
height of my bounding box. I'll press shift command M, and I'm going to move
this 100 pixels to the right and 100 pixels
down. I'll press Copy. And now I've created a
basic checkerboard pattern. I'm going to select
the background square that has no fill and no stroke. And I'll press
command C to copy it. And command to place the copy directly in
front of the original. And I'll give it a
white fill color. Now that's a little hard
to see what I just did. I'll open the layers panel and you'll see that
I have no fill, no stroke bounding
box in the back and I have this new white
square directly above it. And then I have my
two black squares. I'm going to select
all of these shapes and I'll drag them across
to create a pattern swatch. I'll select my square and
fill it with my new pattern. And you'll see that this is the single pattern grid where my black squares
line up with one another. It creates the
interlocking white squares in the negative space. This is a basic
interlocking check pattern. We can add some dimension to the simple check by
changing up the colors. I'll select this
top black square, Press shift command to move it. I don't want to move
it horizontally, but I do want to
move it down 100 pixels. I'll press Copy. This time I want to change these two squares to a new color. I'll double tap
on my fill color. And I'm just going to select
a medium shade of gray. I'll hit, okay, I select all of my shapes again and
create a new pattern swatch. I now have a gingham check. There's this illusion of transparency because
I have white stripes and then I have gray
stripes and where they overlap I have
black squares, it looks as gray are blending
to make the black sections. Now so far I've been
working in black and white, but I can also add a bit of
color to my gingham check. Now, I could create my colors manually as I did
with the gray color, but I can also use the blend tool to create
a gradient color. I'll press M on my keyboard
and I'll draw square. And I'm going to fill
it with a light color, maybe something round here. Tap K, and I'll press
V on my keyboard, and I'll drag a copy
to the right by pressing Option and shift
and dragging it across. I'll go back to my fill, and I want to change
this new square to a slightly darker shade of
the same color. And press. Okay, now I want to
find the color that is a perfect blend
of these two shades. I'm going to select
both of my shapes. I'm going up to the object menu. I'll select Blend. The first thing I want to do
is update the blend options. The default is to create
smooth color transitions, but I want to use the drop down menu to select specified steps. Because all I want is one new color that blends the two original
colors together. If I needed multiple shades, I could specify a larger
amount of colors that I need. But I'm going to
choose one and press. Okay. Now that I've
set my options, I need to blend my colors. So I can either go up to
Object, blend, and Make. Or I can press option
command B on my keyboard, Option command B, and it
will create one new color. I've got my light
shade, my dark shade, and then this shade is a
perfect blend of those two. The next thing I need to do
is go up to my Object menu, and I need to expand the effect. I'll press okay. Now I
have these three colors. I'll tap the new color group. And I'm just going to leave these settings and
I'll press okay. Now I have these three new
swatches in my swatches panel. I'll delete these squares. And I want to select
my dark black square. I'm going to change it
for my darkest color. I'll select my two
medium gray squares. And this time I'm going to
select the midtone color. Now I'll select my
background color, and I'm going to change
it to my lightest color. If I select all of these and
create a new pattern swatch, it will create a
colorful gingham. Check the blended
colors help create that illusion of
overlapping stripes. I can change up the spacing
of my pattern by alternating the size of my squares with
the bottom square selected. I'll go to the Shapes menu and I want to make sure my
proportions are locked. I'm going to change this to 50 pixels square and I'm going to align it to
the bottom left corner. Now to match up my shapes, I need to change
this top square. And I'll first unlock
the proportions. And I only need the
width to be 50 pixels. And I need to extend
the height to cover the 50 pixels that I lost when I reduced
the first square. I need my width to be 50
pixels and I need to add 50 to my height and make
it 150 pixels tall. If I align my shape to
the top left corner, it will line up the top and
bottom shapes perfectly. I need to do the same thing
to this bottom square, except I need to
make sure that it's 150 pixels wide and
50 pixels tall. And then I'll align it to
the bottom right corner. This will create
slightly different proportions to my pattern. I'll select these and drag them over and I'll create a new version of my
gingham check pattern. You can have some fun
playing with the size and spacing of your
pattern elements. I'm going to delete
these squares because I want to talk about patterns
with overlapping shapes. And we're going to create
a basic scallop pattern. I'll press L on my keyboard, and I'll click once, and I'm going to create a
100 pixel ellipse. I'll press okay and then
press V on my keyboard. To bring up the selection tool, I want to align the center of my circle to the top left
corner of my artboard. I'll press shift command
M and move it 100 pixels to the left
and zero pixels vertically that is aligned right next to the original circle
with no space in between. I'll press command D to
duplicate that last action. Now I have a circle on the right side of
my artboard that is 200 pixels directly
across from the original. I'll select these top two, and I'll press shift command M. And this time I
want to move them down in a brick repeat layout. I'm going to move them 50
pixels horizontally and then 50 pixels vertically,
so that they'll overlap. I'll press Copy, and I'm going to give the new
row a different color. I also need to make sure that this circle sits in front
of the circle in the back. I'll press Command shift right bracket to bring both
of these items to the front. Now I can press Shift
and drag to select the top three circles
in the back so that all five of my
circles are selected. Command shift M, and I want to move these
rows directly down. So I'll make the
horizontal position zero. And I'll change the vertical
to 100 pixels because I have two rows selected that need to move
50 pixels each. And I need to double what
I did the first time. I'll press copy now. Each row is staggered 50 pixels down and shifted 50
pixels to the side. Lastly, I need to
create a bottom row. So I'll press command D to
duplicate that last action. Because I'm working
in nice run numbers, I know that this row
is 100 pixels down, and then this next row
is 200 pixels down, which is the full
size of my artboard. The other thing I want to
do is make sure that I have my rows arranged in
the correct order to create the overlapping rows. Now because I have no space
between any of my shapes, I don't actually need my filled background square so
I can delete that. Do of course need my no fill, no stroke bounding box that will designate the boundaries
of my pattern tile? I'll select all my circles and my background bounding box, and I'll drag this over to
create a new pattern swatch. And now I have a basic
scallop pattern. I'll drag this over
just a little bit. One way you can change the
scallop is to add an outline. I'll select all these
circles and I'll press Shift to deselect my bounding box because I don't
want to change it. And I'll make the circles
all the same color. Now to delineate
between the shades, I'm going to add a stroke. I'll add a dark stroke. And I'll increase the
size a little bit, and you'll see that now my scallop shape appears
to be spaced out. I'll select everything and I'll drag them across and
create a new pattern. I need to make sure
that my fill color is selected and not my stroke. I can fill my square
with this new pattern. It creates a scallop
pattern that appears to have spacing
between the elements. The dark shade looks like
a background fill color, and the scallop shapes
are spread out. And I can increase
the spacing even more by increasing the
size of my outline. I'll shift to do select my
bounding box and I will increase the size
of my outline so that the spacing is
even more pronounced. I'll select everything, drag
it to the swatches panel, create a new pattern, and then I'll test the
pattern once more. You can play around with
varying the weight of your outline and the
spacing of your scallops. Now that we've
reviewed some basic interlocking and
overlapping patterns, in the next lesson
we're going to talk about continual repeats, such as stripes and
trellis patterns.
6. Pattern Basics: Stripes: In the last lesson, we
talked about spacing between elements with interlocking
and overlapping patterns. In this lesson, we're going to talk about continual patterns. In a continual repeat, the beginning and the end of the repeating elements
are obscured. We're going to be creating
vertical, horizontal, and diagonal strike patterns, including symmetrical and
asymmetrical trellis patterns. I'm going to start
by going over to my layers panel and deleting
out all of these circles. I'll leave the no fill,
no stroke bounding box which is still
200 pixels square. I'll press M on my keyboard
and I'll click once to create a rectangle that is 100 pixels
wide and 200 pixels high. I'll press okay and I'll
give it a fill color. Let's go ahead and use one
of our new color swatches. I'll align it to the left and
to the top of my artboard. And I'll press V on my keyboard and select my background square. And press command C
to create a copy. And command to paste in front. I'll give it a fill
color for my background. I'll select all of my shapes and create a new pattern swatch. And let's test the pattern. This is a basic
symmetrical stripe where the stripes
are equidistant. I can change the spacing
of my stripes by going to my square and changing
the width to ten pixels. I'll align it to the left side. Press command shift
M and move it 50 pixels to the right and
zero pixels vertically. And press copy. I'll press command D to duplicate
that move several times. And I'll select everything and drag it to my swatches panel. Now I have a thinner
stripe pattern. You can play around
with the spacing of your own stripe
patterns and even vary the spacing
between each stripe. If I want a horizontal stripe, I can rotate these by
pressing R on my keyboard. And I'll rotate them
and then press V on my keyboard to drag them to the center until they
snap to the sides. I'll create a new
pattern swatch. Now I have a horizontal stripe. The basic stripes
are easy to create, but what if I want to
create a diagonal stripe? I'm going to select all
of these and erase them. And I'll press M on my
keyboard and click once. This time I'm going to create a rectangle that is
five pixels wide. And I want the height to be
larger than my artboard, so I'll make it 400 pixels tall. I'll press, okay, I'll rotate this stripe and I'll press shift as I do to
constrain the angle. Because I want it to be
at a 45 degree angle. I'll let go, and now I have a perfect 45 degree
angle stripe. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'm just going
to drag this to the bottom left of my artboard. I'll press shift command
M. And I want to start by creating a copy on the
opposite side of my artboard. So I'll move it 200 pixels to the right and zero
pixels vertically. And I'll press copy. Now my diagonal
stripe is crossing the left border at exactly the same angle
as the right border. And it's crossing
the bottom border at the same angle
as the top border. Let's select everything and create a pattern
swatch to test out. Now I have a perfectly
repeating diagonal stripe. Now let's add more
stripes to this pattern. I'll select the original
and press shift command M. And I'm going to
move this 25 pixels to tighten up the spacing. I'll press Copy, and if I
press command D several times, I can duplicate this stripe at the same distance to
fill in the space. Now I need to select just
these middle stripes because I've already
copied these outer two. And I'll press shift
command M to move these 200 pixels to the
opposite side of my artboard, just as I did with
the first stripe. I'll press copy and you'll
notice that I do have one stripe that is crossing right along the top left corner. And it needs to cross along the bottom left corner
at the exact same spot. So I'll select this one
and press shift command M. And this time I want to move it, pick 200 pixels down
and press copy. I'm going to select all of these and drag them to
my swatches panel, and I have my updated
stripe pattern. Let's scale this so you can
just see it a little better. I'll scale it at 200% only transform the pattern
and hit, okay next. Let's create a diamond
trellis pattern by mirroring these
diagonal stripes. I'm going to lock this test square so that I
don't select it. Then I'll drag to select
all of my diagonal stripes. I'll press command
G to group them. Command C to copy and
command to paste in front I'll press on my keyboard to bring
up the reflect tool. Now I'll click and
drag while I'm holding the shift
key so that I lock the angle and it'll mirror my stripes precisely
to the opposite side. I'll press V on my keyboard and shift command to
ungroup this set. Now I need to delete some of these extra stripes that
don't cross my artboard. Next I need to fill in
the missing stripes up at the top left corner. I'll select these three
and press shift command M. I need to move
these to the left, which means I need to
make this negative 200 and I don't want to
move it vertically at all. Up to this point,
we've been moving shapes to the right or down, and that requires
positive numbers. To move an object to the left, you have to make the
horizontal position negative. If you want to move it up, you have to make your
vertical position negative. Just keep that in mind as
you're moving objects. With the move tool,
I'll press copy now. I have all my stripes
repeating across each border. I'll select all of
these and let's test this pattern and make
sure I didn't miss one. I'll press the Spacebar
to slide this over, and I'll unlock my square so I can fill it
with a new pattern. Again, I'm going to scale
this transform scale. And only transform the pattern. And hit, Okay. As you can see, I now have a symmetrical
diamond trellis pattern. I'll press the space bar and I'll slide this back
over to my arm board. So far we've created
diagonal stripes at 45 degree angles and a
symmetrical trellis pattern. But let's say that we want to make this trellis asymmetrical. Figuring out the ratio of
the angle of your stripe to the size of your boundary
box can be quite difficult. If you want to create an
asymmetrical pattern, the easiest thing to do is select all of the
elements of your pattern. And right click transform scale. We want to transform
the objects only. And we want to use the
non uniform section. Let's say that we want to
keep it at 100% horizontally, but we want to scale
it 150% vertically. You can see we have this
stretched out diamond shape. I'll press, okay, I'm just going to drag this
down a little bit. Now this only works if you select the
background bounding box, the background fill shape, and all of the stripes. So that everything
in your pattern is scaled at the
same proportions. I'll create a new Swatch, and I'll slide this to the side. Let's test the pattern. Now I have a perfectly repeating
asymmetrical diamond trellis. If I delete this original
group of stripes, I actually have a
diagonal stripe that isn't at a 45 degree angle. I'll create a new
pattern Swatch, and now I have a diagonal stripe that's at a different angle. That's the basics of
working with vertical, horizontal, and diagonal
stripe patterns. Now that we've reviewed how to create basic geometric patterns, in the next few lessons, we're going to learn how to turn basic shapes into
complex shapes. And we're going
to start by using the direct selection
tool in the next lesson.
7. Editing Shapes: Anchor Points: In the last few lessons, we created several basic
geometric patterns. Over the next few lessons, we're going to take basic
shapes and turn them into complex shapes using the
tools and illustrator. In this lesson, we'll start by adjusting
anchor points and corners and using the rotate and reflect tools to
create new shapes. The first thing I'm going
to do is delete out all of these objects because I
don't need them anymore. I'll press Option command to fit my board to screen
as we've seen before. If I press M on my keyboard, I can click and
drag out a square. If I hold shift, it'll constrain the proportions
to a perfect square, and I'm just going to fill
this with a new color. I can also click and
drag out a rectangle. If I press L on my keyboard, I can click and drag a circle. And if I hold shift, it'll
make that a perfect circle. If I click and drag
without holding Shift, I can create an oval shape
for additional shapes. I can click and hold
the Shape tool to open the fly out menu and
see the different options. Let's select our polygon
tool the same as before. I can click and drag
a polygon shape. If I hold shift, it will lock the angle so that
it's nice and straight. If I press the down arrow key, I can reduce the number of
sides and create a triangle. I can press the up arrow to
increase the number of sides. I can also click once to
open the polygon menu, where I can change the
radius to any number I want. The larger the radius, the larger the size
of my polygon. I can also change the number
of sides and hit Okay. If I click again, I can actually increase this to 25 pixels. And I'll press okay. And you can see that my polygon
is much larger. I'm going to press V to select
these and move them down. Next up I'm going
to press and hold the Shape Menu. And
select the Star. Once again, I can click
and drag to Create a Star. If I hold Shift, it will
keep it nice and straight. If I use the down arrow, it will create a triangle. If I press the up arrow, it will increase the number
of points as much as I want. If I click once, I'll open
the star options and I can set radius 1.2 and the
number of points of my star. First I'll decrease the
number of points to six. Next, I'll change the two radii. The larger these numbers are, the larger my star will be, the greater the difference
between the two, the steeper the points
of my star will be. Let's start by
making the star 15 pixels and then 20
pixels and six sides. Press okay. And
you can see I have this nice shallow pointed star. I'll click again, and this time I'll increase
the difference. Let's change this to 10.25 and keep the
same number of points. If I click okay, you
can see that I now have these really steep
points on my star. I'll press A to open the
direct selection tool. If I click my square, you can see all of my
anchor points of my shape. If I click and drag this
little corner tool, I can round the corners and
it rounds everything evenly. I can slide them back out
to create my corners. Again, if I only want
to change one corner, I can click one anchor
point and you'll notice that this anchor point is blue and the rest
of these are white. And you only see this
one little corner tool, If I click and drag, I can take this
all the way up to touch the other
anchor points or back down if I want to round
multiple corners, I can hold shift and select
a second anchor point. You'll see that these
two are now blue. And again, I can
round these corners. If I double click on
one of these corners, I can change it from
a rounded corner to an inverted corner, or a hamper. Let's select the inverted round. And now I want to
specify an exact radius. So let's say I want
to do 25 pixels. And I'll hit okay. And now I have this
inverted rounded corner. I can select any
shape and I can click an anchor point and
simply move it around. I can press the down arrow key to move it one pixel at a time. And if I hold shift, as I press the down arrow, it'll move it ten
pixels at a time. I can open up the
Properties menu, and I have the option to
convert my anchor points. I can change this
to a corner point, or I can change it back to
a smooth rounded point. Let's keep the corner point. Next, I can select this
rounded anchor point. And I can select one of the handles and move it
around to adjust the angle. If I hold shift, it will lock the movement to
45 degree angles. And I'll press the Space
bar just to move this down. So you can see if I press Option Command and
then click my handle. It'll break the handle so I can move it independent
of the first one. Once I settle on a
position, I'll let go. And now I have this
S shaped curve. If I click a handle
and I want to keep it aligned instead
of wobbling around, I can hold shift so
that as I drag it will keep it nice and straight in line
with the first one. Keep the symmetrical. I'll do the same thing on
the other side. I'll click and hold shift as I drag it up to
keep it aligned. At this point I would
just encourage you to play around
with these shapes, manipulate the anchor
points and the corners, and test out your own
variations to these shapes. I'll press V on my keyboard and I'm going to delete
these extra shapes. Let's talk about how to use
the rotate and reflect tools. I'll select my shape and I'll
move it around my artboard. And if I hold option as I
move it will create a copy. You'll notice that
there's those little black and white arrows and that tells me I'm making
a copy right now. I'm holding option and
I can drag it around. But if I also hold shift
as I hold down option, I can move it at 45 degree
angles up and down, side to side, and the movement is constrained to keep it in aligned
with the original. With shift option still pressed, I'm going to let
go of my mouse and now I have a copy of my shape. I'll press R on my keyboard
to open up the rotate tool. I can hold shift to rotate
it at 45 degree angles. I can change the
point of rotation. So I'll drag this down to rotate it from the
bottom anchor point. Now I can simply click and drag and rotate it
around this point. If I hold shift, I can rotate
it at 45 degree angles. And if I hover over the rotation
point and press option, you can see these little
dots that appear. I'll click and open
the Rotate menu so that I can specify the
angle of the rotation. Let's say that I want to
create petals of the flower, and I know that I want five petals evenly
spaced around a circle. If I'm not sure what
angle to enter, I can type 360 degrees for my full circle and
then divide by five. And if I click Tab, you'll see that the angle
needs to be 72 degrees. I can press okay to rotate it, or I can create a copy. And then I can
press command D to duplicate that action
until I come full circle. I'm going to press V
on my keyboard and select all of these. And
slide them over here. And I'm just going to
shrink this down to 50 pixels so that
it's out of the way. I'll press option on my keyboard and I'm going to
drag this down here. And let's open up
the reflect tool. By pressing it
looks similar with that same reflection point in the center I can drag to reflect the shape
around that point. Holding shift will reflect
it at 45 degree angles. I can also move the
reflection point to the tip as I did before. Or I can move it
off to the side of my shape so that I can
reflect it to the side. I can click and hold shift
and it will reflect it to the side directly opposite If I hold down option
before letting go, it will reflect a copy. I'll let go and I have a copy reflected to the other side. Once again, if I hold option
with this reflection point, I can click and open up
the reflect tool options. I can reflect it horizontally, vertically, and I can
change the angle. Let's say I want to
reflect it horizontally. And I want to
change the angle to something like 333 degrees. If I press copy,
it'll make a copy. If I press okay, it'll simply
just rotate that shape. The last thing I want to
show you in this lesson is how to divide
circles into wedges. I'm going to press
L on my keyboard, and I'll click and create
a 30 pixel circle. And let's say that I
just want to create a perfect pi wedge that's
one quarter of my circle. If I go to my properties panel and click these three ellipses, it'll bring down more options. And I can manually
edit the pi angles. I can change the
end to 90 degrees, and if I leave the
start angle at zero, I have a quarter pi piece. I can go back and
change this to 180, and now I have a semicircle. I can also change my start to 90 degrees and the end to 180. And the wedge is now taken
out of the top left corner. If I go 90-270 I'll get a
semicircle on the left side. If I start at 60 degrees
and end at zero, I'll get a circle
with a small wedge removed in the top right. 060 gives me the inverse. I can also use the invert tool
to switch back and forth. I'm going to press
V on my keyboard, and you'll notice that this is still showing that my shape is 30 by 30 pixels because it's still reading as my
original circle. Remember my full circle
was 30 pixels in diameter, which this can't possibly
still be 30 by 30 pixels. To correct this, I can either go over to my Shape Builder
tool on the toolbar, or I can press Shift M for
the keyboard shortcut. I'll click once inside my Shape and I'll press V. Now if
I go to the Shape menu, it shows that this size
is 1,512.99 pixels, which accurately shows the
size of this new shape. So now I know this shape is no longer a circle with an
effect applied to it, but I have this
entirely new shape. Now that we've reviewed how
to edit our basic shapes by adjusting anchor points and using the rotate
and reflect tools, let's dive further into using the Shape Builder tool to divide and combine shapes
in the next lesson.
8. Editing Shapes: Shape Builder Tool: Outside of manipulating
anchor points, you can also create
complex shapes using the shape builder tool. The first thing that I need
is overlapping shapes. I'm going to select this
shape that I created earlier. If you'll remember, these
are still individual pieces. I'll press command Z
to undo that move. And I'm going to select
all of these and press Shift to open the
Shape Builder Tool. As I hover over the Shape, you'll see this grid that indicates the new shapes
that I can create. If I click inside any of
these overlapping areas, I will divide these
pieces into new shapes. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'll click just outside
of the shape to deselect it. And now I can select this piece that is cut out
from the original. I'll press command Z
to undo that move. And if I want to select
more than one piece, I simply click and press Shift
to select multiple pieces. Then I can simply slide
these off to the side. And now I can use the new set of shapes
that I've cut out, or I can use the remaining
pieces of my original shape. I can also use the shape
builder tool to merge shapes. Again, I'm going
to select all of these and press Shift
M on my keyboard. As I hover, I can
click and drag across any areas of the selected
shapes and merge them together. I just click and drag across
sections to merge them. You can see now as I
hover over the grid that it's showing the
boundaries of these new shapes. This is a piece and this is
separate, and so is this one. Again, I'll press
V on my keyboard, and I'll click outside. And now I can move the shape that is cut out from
the rest of it, command Z to undo that. I can also create shapes from the negative
spaces in between. If I press shift M to pull up the Shape
Builder tool again, I can click inside this cut out area and create a new shape from
the negative space. If I select a new fill color, I can click and it will fill my new shape
with a new color. Again, I'll press V on my
keyboard. Click outside. Now you can see that this is a new shape and so is this one. It's important to know
that you have to have overlapping shapes
to combine them. If I were to select
these two shapes and open the shape builder tool, if I try to merge these shapes, they won't merge because
they're not connected. I have to press V
on my keyboard. I'll move this shape up so that it overlaps
the shape above it. If I select these, you'll see now that there's an overlapping area right here. Now I can press Shift M, and I'll merge these two shapes. I'll press V and click outside. And now I have one shape. If you're having trouble
using the shape tool, just make sure that
the two shapes you're trying to merge
aren't disconnected. They may appear connected because they're
close to each other, but they may not be
quite overlapping. The last way that the Shape
Builder tool can be helpful is by resetting a shape
after an effect is applied. If I press M on
my keyboard and I click to create a
50 pixel rectangle, I'm going to press V, and I'm just going to move this
over a little bit. I'll press R to open the rotate tool and
I'll rotate this while holding shift and option to create a copy at a
45 degree angle. If I press V on my keyboard, you'll now see that it says
it's 50 pixels by 50 pixels. But this original square
was 50 pixels by 50 pixels. And this is obviously
extending beyond the square, it's not giving
an accurate size. If I press Shift
M on my keyboard, and then I click once
inside my shape, and then I press V again. You can see now that
the size has been updated and it's
almost 71 pixels. I can change it to 50 pixels. Now I have a diamond
shape that is truly 50 pixels by 50 pixels. Sometimes when you alter
a shape by rotating it or converting a circle into a pie wedge like in
the last lesson, Illustrator still reads it as the original shape
with an effect added. You can use the
Shape Builder tool to reset that bounding box. When you're building
these geometric patterns, you want to have accurate
sizes for your shapes. Those are the basic
elements of using the Shape Builder tool to
divide and combine shapes. In the next lesson, we'll use the effect tool to add
texture to our shapes.
9. Editing Shapes: Effects: So far we've been dealing
with smooth, clean shapes, but we can also add effects
to them to make them look more irregular texture
inorganic using tools. In Illustrator, the first
thing I'm going to do is select all of these and delete them because we don't
need them anymore. And I'll press M
on my keyboard and click once to create
a long rectangle. I'll make it five
pixels wide and 200 pixels tall.
And click, okay. I'll press V on my keyboard
and I'll just slide this to the center with
my object selected. I'm going to go
up to distort and transform and select Roughen.
I'll slide this over. The first thing that I'm
going to change is the size. I can arrow up or down
to change the size, I just want it to be
slight, so I'll leave it at 2% I can also change
the amount of detail. If I arrow down, I'll just reduce the detail,
leave that at two. And I'll change
this to absolute. I'm going to change this from
sharp corners to smooth. Now I have a slight wave
to my rectangular shape. I'm happy with that.
I'll press okay. Once I'm happy with the effect, I need to go up to
the Object menu and select Expand Appearance. Now I have this new shape. Rather than it being a shape
with an effect applied, it's now a full shape and I can manipulate the
anchor points. This is one way to create an
irregular, organic shape. I'm going to click option and click and drive
to create a copy. And I'll add more
effects to this one. Right now I have this
irregular wavy shape, but I might want to also
add a textural effect. So I'll go back up
to the Effects menu. At the bottom here I have these Photoshop effects
in the Effects gallery. It's important to keep in mind that if I use any
of these effects, it's going to turn my
vector shapes into pixels. And then I'll need to use
the image trace tool to turn them back into vectors after
the effect is applied. Adding textures is optional, but it's good to
know how to do this. I can pick from one
of these options. I'll select brushstrokes
and Spatter. And it's going to bring
up this new menu. You can see now
that I can access these other effects
from this menu as well. And you're welcome to choose a different
option if you like, or you can follow along with
the one that I'm using. Some of these work better than others to give you
a good texture, but you'll just have to
experiment with them. Now, I'm going to
choose spatter, and I can adjust the radius
of my spatter and the smoothness until I find a good balance that
I'm happy with. I'll press okay. Now I have a spatter effect applied
to my wavy shape. It's quite pixelated compared to the original shape because it's no longer a vector object. I'm going to go up to object
and expand appearance first because this is no
longer a vector shape. If I go to my layers panel, you'll see that it's an image
and it's no longer a path. So I'm going to need
to vectorize it. And I'll open the
image shaped tool. I'm just going to click and make sure that my image is selected. Now I can see my image
trace tool options. I'm going to start by
selecting a preset. Now each one of these
work differently, and you may want to
experiment to find what works best for your
particular image. I'm going to select
high fidelity photo and Illustrator will show my
initial vector results. I can go back to the
image trace panel and make adjustments. I can change the number of
colors and I may want to select a limited color palette and change this to two colors. Because I don't
have any gradients or shading in my shape, I can reduce the
number of paths. Maybe that was too
much. I'll increase it. I want to keep a little
bit of that rough texture. I can change the method
to cut out paths. And then I'll just ignore color to remove
that white background. And you'll notice that
the other shape is not visible because my white
background has been removed. If you're following along, you
can use the same settings, or you can experiment with the image trace options until you're happy
with the results. Now every time you
use this, it's going to be a little
different and unique. Once I'm happy with my shape, I'll go back up to
my Object menu, and I'll click Expand.
I'll press okay. And now I see my anchor points, which means this is
a vector object. Again, I'll close my
image trace panel and I'm ready to make a pattern with
this new textured stripe. In a previous lesson, we created a stripe pattern with
a smooth stripe. But aligning in irregular shape
can be a little trickier. I'm first going to move
my texture shape so that the bottom is somewhere in the middle of my artboard. Now my R board is
still 200 pixels. I'll press shift command M, and I'm going to
move it zero pixels horizontally and 200 pixels
down. I'll make a copy. And you can see that where
these overlap, it looks okay. But I can also make adjustments to smooth out the
transition even more. I'll press Z on my keyboard, and I'm just going to zoom in here a little bit so you
can see this better. I'll press A and I'm going to select my top stripe so that I can manage
these anchor points. Let's say I want to connect
this here, so there's no gap. I can select my anchor
point and I move it down. Until I have this
smooth transition from one stripe to the next. Now where these meet up, it's nice and smooth and I can adjust the
other side as well. I want to make sure
I'm making changes to only the top shape because I don't want
to edit the bottom. I'm editing the one shape. I'll adjust the handles on this anchor point until I have a smoother
transition on this side. I can continue adjusting
anchor points until I'm happy with the transitions
from one stripe to the next. You may want to make
additional adjustments depending on your shape. I'll select the bottom stripe. Press V to open
selection tool and I'll delete it because I
don't need it anymore. I'll select this top stripe. I'll press Shift command
M and move it zero pixels horizontally and 200 pixels
vertically. And press Copy. Now both shapes are identical and my transitions
are nice and clean. I'll press option command
zero to zoom back out. And now I'm ready to create a continual stripe pattern
using this textured stripe. I'll move this one
off to the side. For now, I'll select
both of these shapes and press shift command M. And I'll move it 20
pixels to the right, and I don't want to move
it vertically at all. I'll press Copy and
then press command D to duplicate that action to repeat the stripe several times
across my artboard. Next I need to move
this stripe that's along this far right
edge over to the left. I'll press shift command M, and I want to move it negative 200 pixels to move
it to the left and zero pixels vertically.
I'll press copy. Next, I need to create
my bounding box. So I'll press M on my
keyboard and I'll click to create a 200 pixel bounding
box in the background. I'll press Okay
and I want to make sure that this has no
fill and no stroke. Next, I'll align it to
my artboard and I'll press command shift left bracket to send it all
the way to the back. If I open up my layers panel, you'll see that my background bounding box is at the bottom, so it's all the way in the back. I'll just press
Space Bar and use the hand to drag this
over a little bit. Next I want to create
a background color. I'll press command C and
command to paste it in front. And I'll give this
one a fill color. I'll select all
of these and drag them over to create
a pattern swatch. And then I'll press
Z on my keyboard to zoom out just a little
bit and slide this over. I'll press to create a square and fill it
with a new pattern. Now I have a continual
striped pattern with a textured,
irregular stripe. If I want to make this
repeat a little less uniform because
these all line up, I can select this
first set and then hold shift to select
every other stripe. And I'll press Shift command M. I don't want to move
them horizontally, but I just want to move them up. So I'm going to move them
negative 50 pixels vertically. And I'll hit, okay, I'll select everything
and create my pattern. Now my pattern is
more irregular. I could also move each stripe separately so that it's
at a different height, and that would really vary it up and give it a
nice organic look. Now that we know how to edit basic shapes and
give them textures, we're ready to start creating
more detailed patterns. In the next lesson,
we're going to start by adding details to the
basic scallop pattern.
10. Adding Details: Scallop Patterns: In the last several lessons, we've reviewed the basics of building a pattern
and illustrator, and we learned how
to edit basic shapes to have complexity and texture. Let's take the skills we've
learned and apply them to creating more detailed
and interesting patterns. In this lesson, we're
going to level up our scallop pattern by adding
details to the basic form. The first thing
I'm going to do is select all of these
objects and delete them. And then I'll press
option command zero to fit my
artboard to screen. Next, I want to add
some color palettes so that I have them ready
as I build my patterns. I've created a set of color
palettes as a resource for this class that you can find in the Project and Resources tab. Once you've downloaded the
PDF, you can open the file. And Illustrator and I actually have it
opened right up here. Now the easiest way to add
these color palettes to your pattern file is to go up to the menu here on
the Swatches panel. Go to the bottom and select
Save Swatch Library as AI. I'll leave the name as is. And I'm going to save it in
the default Swatches folder. And then I'll press Save. Now I need to go back up
to my geometric patterns file and go down to the
bottom of my Swatches panel. To the Swatch Library's menu. I'll select from the user defined section and find
that new color palette. It's going to open
up a new panel. I'll just expand
this a little bit, and you can see I've got all of these organized into
color palettes. I simply click on each one of these folders to add them to my Swatches
panel in this file. And I have a main set of
colors in the first palette. And then I've grouped them into several harmonious
color combinations that you're welcome to use. But you can feel free to create your own palettes as well. Now that we have our color
palettes ready to go, we can start building
our pattern. We're going to expand on the basic scallop
pattern that we learned in an earlier lesson
by adding some details. I'll start by pressing
L on my keyboard and clicking once to create
a 100 pixel ellipse. And press okay, I'll give it a new fill color
from my color palettes. I'll click to create
another circle. And I'll make this 110 pixels. And press okay, I'll fill this one with
a different color. I'll press V on my keyboard
and select both of these circles and use the Align tools to
center them at the top. If I click this drop down menu, you'll see that I have
this Align to selection. Rather than aligning
to my artboard, I'm aligning my circles
to one another. I'll click to deselect these. And then I'm just going to
select the small circle. I want to position the small
circle just inside the edge. So I'll press Shift command M and move it five pixels down. And press, okay,
I want to create a border of these little
dots all around my circle. I'll press R on my keyboard. I'll select the
rotation point and drag it to the center
of my yellow circle. There we go. And I'll press
Option and click once. And then again to bring
up the rotate menu, I'm going to rotate
these 20 degrees. Press Copy. Then before
I do anything else, I'll press command D several times until I've copied
these circles all around. I'll press V on my
keyboard and I want to create another set of
circles In set a little bit. I'll select this one,
Press Shift Command. This time I'll move it down
15 pixels and press Copy. I want to elongate this circle. I'll press A on my keyboard and select the
bottom anchor point. I'll hold down Shift and
press the arrow key once. And that's going to shift that one anchor point
down ten pixels. And now I have this
elongated petal shape. I'll press V on my keyboard
to select my shape. Again, similar to
the last circles. I want to rotate this from the center of my yellow circle. I'll press R on my
keyboard and drag this rotation point to the
center. I'll press Option. And then click once, and then again to open the Rotate menu. You can see that 20
degrees just barely rotates this one because
it's closer to the center, I want to rotate it a bit more. I'll make this 40 degrees
and press copy once again. Before I do anything
else, I'll press command D to finish
out that circle. I'll press V on my keyboard. I want to finish with a
dot right in the center. So I'll select this top one again and press Command shift M. And I'm going to move this
down 40 pixels and press Copy. Now I have this
symmetrical design that I can use for
my scallop pattern. But some of these
elements are going to get cut off by the
overlapping circles. To check the areas
that will be hidden, I'll select my background circle and press shift command M, and I'll move it 50 pixels
to the right and 50 pixels down and press Copy. Next I need one on
the other side. I need to go negative 100 pixels and zero pixels vertically.
And press Copy. If I select all of these, you can see where these
circles are going to overlap and they'll create
that scallop shape. This bottom half of circles and the bottom half of the petals are going to be hidden
by the pattern. I'll click just outside
to deselect and then I'm going to hold on shift as I select each of these, and then I can delete them. If I leave them,
they're going to disrupt my pattern flow. Now, I'm left with
only the shapes that are going to be visible. I do have this blank space
here that I want to fill in. I'll deselect and then select
this one shift command. And I don't want to
move it horizontally, but I'll move it down 40
pixels. And press copy. Let's check this. Yeah, that
fits nicely in that space, and it's not going to be
cut off by the repeat. I no longer need these
bottom two circles. I'll select all of these and group them by
pressing command G. Now I can move them
around as a group. Next I need to create my
background bounding box. So I'll press M on my
keyboard and click, and I'm going to create
a 100 pixel square. I'll give it a new fill color for now so you can
see what I'm doing. And I'm just going
to center this right about the middle of my circle. I'll press shift command left bracket to send
it to the back. And I'll select the group. And I'm going to start
building my pattern. I'll press shift command M, and I want to move it
100 pixels to the right and zero pixels down.
And press Copy. And you can see it aligns
up right next to each other perfectly to create
that initial row of scallops. Next I'll select the top left, and I'll press shift
command M. And this time I want to
move it 50 pixels to the right and 50 pixels down to create that scallop
repeat and press copy. And I need to bring
it to the front with shift command
right bracket. If I select everything, I can check to see that
this is lining up. I don't need to make
a copy on either side because it's not falling
across the edge. Next I'll select the top two, Press Shift command M. And I don't want to
move it horizontally, but I do want to move
it to the bottom 100 pixels and press
copy shift command. Right bracket will
bring it to the front. Now the bottom row
is at the front, the middle row is behind it, and then the top
row is at the back. I'll drag to select
everything and make sure it's lining up everything
that crosses an edge is copied to
the opposite side. My pattern is ready. The last thing I need
to do is go up to my layers panel and
select my background box. Remember that I filled
it with a color so you can see my square. And now I need to
make sure that it has no fill and no stroke, so that it'll create
my pattern tile. I'll select all of these and drag them up to
the swatches panel. I'll press on my
keyboard to zoom out a little bit and use the Space bar to grab the
hand tool and move this over, press M and draw a square, and then I can fill
it with my pattern. You can see that I've got this
nice symmetrical scallop. Unlike earlier,
where the circles themselves were creating
the scallop shape, this time the design I created
is making the scallop. My yellow circles create
a frame that helps space out the design and become
a solid background color. Which is why I
didn't need to add a filled square in
the background. This is one way to enhance
our scallop design. I encourage you to experiment
with your own designs. You could try a
multicolor one where you add different colors
to the dotted details. Or you could create
two different designs and alternate them to
create some variation. Just have some fun
with it. Next let's create a scallop with
concentric lines. I'll press V on my keyboard and select everything
and delete it. I'll press command
option zero and fit artboard to the
screen, Close that. I'll press L on my keyboard
and draw another ellipse. This time it's going
to be 110 pixels. I'll press, okay, I'm going to fill it with
this cream color. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'll just drag it
up here a little bit. And I want to create a
semicircle from this. I'll open the properties panel. I'll click More Options. I'll create a
semicircle by changing the pi end angle to 180 degrees. Now to make sure
it's the right size, I need to turn this into a
shape shift M and click once. And now it's showing a
height of 55 pixels, which is correct
because I cut my 110 pixels circle in half. I'll press M on my keyboard so I can create a 110 pixels square. Press. Okay, press
V on my keyboard, and I'll drag it right up below the semicircle so that it
aligns perfectly at the bottom. If I select both shapes, you'll see that that
square sits right below the semicircle and
they're aligned to the center. I'll press shift M and drag to merge these into one shape. I'll drag this up
just a little bit. Now I have this
nice arched shape. Now for this design, I
want to create a set of concentric rounded arches
that are moving inward. I'll go up to my object menu, Choose Path Offset Path. This will offset the shape
so that it aligns properly. Right now it's
offset ten pixels, it's expanding outward and
making the shape larger. What I want to do is shrink it. I want to make that
negative ten pixels. Now it's going to
create a duplicate that is shrinking inward
ten pixels at a time. And I'll press okay. It creates a new arch shape that I
can fill with a new color. If I go up to my layers panel, you'll see that I
have two shapes. Now I'm just going to repeat those steps to
create more arches. Object path, offset, path. I'll keep the same parameters,
so I'll click Okay. And then I'll give
it a new color object path, offset path. Click Okay, and fill it with a new color object
path, offset path. Click. Okay, Let's
make this one yellow. Lastly, object
offset path. Click. Okay, We'll finish it off with
that original cream color. Now my arches are offset evenly and they
remain in proportion. Next, I want these to
line up at the bottom, but I don't want to
stretch out the. If I were to select
all of these shapes and then select a
line to the bottom, you'll see that now it changes the spacing between the top. This is not the look I'm going for in this
particular instance, I'll press command
Z to undo that. Instead, I'll press A and select all of the
bottom anchor points, and I'll align those
to the bottom. Now my lines are stretched out, but my arches remain
proportional. I'm going to select all of these and press V
on my keyboard. And then I'll group
them with command G. I'll go up and
close my layers panel. Press M on my keyboard to create a 100 pixel background square. Okay, I'll fill it with a background color so you
can see what I'm doing. Press V and then I'm going to
drag this up a little bit, and I'll select my square. And I'm going to align it
so that the top corner of my square is roughly the center of the
small interior arch. The shape is falling across the bottom border
of my bounding box. But because my elements
overlap each other, the front elements will cover up the bottom and it
won't be visible. I should be good. I'll press Command shift left bracket to send my background
box to the back. And I'll select
my Arch group and press shift command M to move it 100 pixels horizontally
and zero pixels vertically. Now remember my shape
is 110 pixels wide, but my background bounding
box is 100 pixels wide. That's what I want to use now, because my arches are ten pixels larger than
my pattern tall, these overlap a little. I did this intentionally
because where they overlap, it maintains the spacing
between my arches. As you move from
one color to the next, everything
stays consistent. My cream color is going to act as a bit of a
background color. Now I'll select
the top left arch, press shift command
M and move it 50 pixels to the right
and 50 pixels down. Press copy and shift command right bracket to
bring it to the front. I'll select everything because my shape is wider than
the background box. The outer arch is
crossing these sides, but you can see that everything crossing the border
is cream colored. I don't need to make any copies as it's all going
to blend together. It's also overlapping
the top edge because of my extended arch. I do need to make
sure that this is copied to the bottom edge. I'll select the top
row, this middle row, And press shift command M. I don't want to
move it left or right, but I want to move
it 100 pixels to the bottom of my bounding
box and press Copy. It's already sitting
in the front. If I go to my layers panel, you'll see I've got my bottom in the front and then
my second row, and then the third, and then
the top row is at the back. I still have my filled
background box. I need to make sure that has
no fill and no stroke to create my pattern. I'll
select everything. I'll drag it to
create a new pattern. Once again, I'll
press Z to zoom out, press the Spacebar
to move this over, Press M on my keyboard, and then create a square. I'll just close my layers panel. I'll fill this with
my new pattern. You can see that my
pattern is nicely repeating and nothing
is getting cut off. Before we wrap up, let's
make a modification to our arches to see a
slight variation. And I'll delete all
of these extras. And take my original shape, I want to add an effect like
we did in the last lesson. I'll open the effect menu. I'll use Distort and transform. And then Roughen,
that's a little crazy. I'll tone that down a bit, maybe 1% I'll make the details. Let's see, three.
Yeah, I like that. I'll select smooth
and try absolute. I think I'll leave that
a relative and click. Okay, let's see what
that looks like. Yeah, I've got this
drippy paint effect and I like the organic
look of these lines. I'll select it and go up to
object and expand appearance. Now that effect is permanent and my vector shape
has been updated. We're ready to
build the pattern. I still up my bounding box. I'll just go through
the same steps. Shift command M
100 pixels right, zero pixels down, copy. I'll select this one.
Shift command M, 50 pixels, 50 pixels. Copy command shift right bracket to
bring it to the front. And I want to hold shift
to select all of these. Shift command M, zero
pixels, 100 pixels copy. I'll select everything and
create the new pattern swatch space bar to move this
over and test the pattern. Now I have this irregular
hand drawn look to my arches. One more variation I can
make with this pattern is to change the
spacing of my scallops. I'll delete all of
these bottom arches. I'll go to the layers panel
and select my background box. I want to make it taller. I'll make the height 150 pixels. Now I have a rectangular
pattern tile. I'm just going to
drag this down a little bit to recenter it. I still have the
100 pixel width, but now I have 150
pixels for the height. If I press shift command M, I'll still move at 50
pixels to the right, but halfway down is 75 pixels. Then I'll press copy. If I select all of these, you'll see that the top of my middle arch doesn't
cross the top edge. All I need to move
are the top two. I'll press shift command M, zero pixels horizontally,
150 pixels. And press Copy. I also need to arrange these
in the right order. Shift command right bracket to move this one to the front. And then I need to select the bottom two and shift
command right bracket. Now these are stacked in
the appropriate order. I'll select everything. Drag
it to my swatches panel, and let's test this one out. Now I have an elongated
version of the scallop. I'll right click
Transform Scale, And I'll scale it to 50% And I only want to transform the
patterns. And click Okay. This is another way
to vary our scallops. You can play with the
spacing of your rows and your columns to create
an asymmetrical scallop. Now that we've practiced adding details and variation
to the scallop pattern, in the next lesson, we're
going to have some fun adding details to the
basic OG pattern.
11. Adding Details: Ogee Patterns: In the last lesson we added some embellishments to the
basic scallop pattern. In this lesson we will create a basic G pattern and then
add some fun details to it. I'll press L on my
keyboard and I'm going to click and create
a 100 pixel ellipse. I'll press V on my keyboard, and I'm just going to move this right up to the top
of my artboard. I'll press Shift Command. And I don't want to
move it left or right, but I want to move it down
100 pixels. I'll press Copy. I'll press Shift and select
both of these circles. I'll press R on my
keyboard to rotate them, and they'll automatically start
rotating from the center. If I hold down shift, it will lock the rotation. And I'll also press
option to create a copy. I've rotated this to a
perfect 90 degree angle. I'll press V on my keyboard
and select everything, and now I've got these
overlapping circles. With the selected,
I'll press Shift M and click to cut these
overlapping sections. Press on my keyboard,
click right outside. And then select these
pieces and delete them. I'm left with these
cut out shapes. If you'll notice,
it's the same as that basic scallop shape we worked with in
the first lesson. To create the basic G shape, I want to rotate the top and
bottom shapes 180 degrees. We'll start with the top, and I'll select it and press R and start
rotating from the center, holding shift to lock it
at 180 degrees and let go. I'm going to give this
a different color so you can see it
a little better. I'll go ahead and color
the bottom one as well. Press R to rotate
it while holding shift and rotate it 180
degrees and let go. We've created the
basic OG shape, which has this S curve. You can see it's just four
interlocking scallops. I can also rotate the sides
instead of the top and bottom to create the same
shape turned 90 degrees. I'll just press command
Z to undo those steps. If I select the right side, I'll press R and rotate it. Holding shift, select
the left side, press R and rotate it. Holding shift to lock it. I can also use this version of the OG because it creates
an interlocking pattern. So they're interchangeable. I'll select both of these sides and fill them with a new color. And we'll start building
the basic OG pattern. I'll select everything and
press command G to group them. I want to drag this up to center it in the top left
corner of my artboard. I'll press Z to zoom
out a little bit. I'll move this over. I'll press Shift command
to move it 200 pixels, which is the width
of my artboard. And I'll press copy
these line up perfectly. I'll press Shift to
select them both. And press shift command
M to move it down 200 pixels and press
Copy To finish it off, I just need to move the top 1100 pixels right and
100 pixels down. And press Copy. And you can see the interlocking
shape that it creates. If I press M on my keyboard, I'll create a 200 pixels square. I'll align it to the
center of my artboard. Give it no fill and no stroke. And press shift command left bracket to send it to the back. I'll open my layers
panel and you can see that I sent that all
the way to the back. I'll click the layer group
to select everything. Press V on my keyboard and I'll drag it over to
create a new pattern. Press space bar for the
hand tool to move this over to create a rectangle and then I'll fill
it with the pattern. I'll close my layers panel. You can see that the
interlocking shapes create that S curve. And you can see the
original OG shape is created by the
interlocking pattern. It doesn't matter
which orientation you start with because it's interchangeable with
this basic shape in mind. Let's add in some
embellishments. I'll select my
square. Delete it. And I'll also select all of these shapes and
delete them as well. Save a little time.
I'm going to select the first scallop pattern I created and drag it
to the artboard. Because the basic OG shape is created with that
same scallop shape. I can use these
embellishments I've already created in
this OG pattern. I'll press command shift G
to ungroup all of these. I'll delete all the extras
because I only need one. I'm going to center it at the top and press
shift command G to ungroup these as well. I'll start by recoloring
each of the elements, just to give this pattern
a little variation. I'll select my
background circle. I'll give it a new fill
color, Maybe this one. I'll select this shape
and give it a new color. I'll hold shift to
select each of these. I'll make those light blue. I'll make the center circle a new color as
well. That's good. I'll select everything and press command G to
group them again. Next I'll press Shift command M. I don't want to
move it horizontally, but remember I want
to move at 100 pixels down and press copy. I'll press R so I can rotate this 180 degrees holding
shift so it'll lock it. I'll select both of them. Press R on my keyboard and rotate them holding
shift to make sure it's exactly 90 degrees
and then option to copy it. Now I have my designs
oriented for the next step. If I press Shift, I can
select all of these groups and I'll press Shift M and click inside the
overlapped sections. Press on my keyboard and
click outside the group. And then I'll double click
to enter isolation mode, so I can delete each section. And these are grouped together, so I have to double click
again to exit isolation mode. Same thing on the other side. Double click, select these
and delete both of them. Then double click to
exit isolation mode. Now I need to rotate the sides. I'll select the right one. Press R on my keyboard
to rotate, press V, select this group, press R and rotate it holding shift
so that it locks in place. You can see these
embellishments created an interesting pattern
inside this shape. I'll select all of these and press command
G to group them. I'll move them to
the top corner. I can start building my
pattern command shift M, move it 200 pixels, zero pixels, and press copy. Select my other group, shift M, zero pixels, 200
pixels, and press Copy. Lastly, I'll press
command M and move 100 pixels to the right and 100
pixels down and press Copy. Press M and make a 200 pixel
bounding box and press okay. I'll align it to the center
vertically and horizontally. Give it no fill and no
stroke and shift command left bracket to send
it to the back. Once again I'll open
my layers panel and you can see that I sent that all the way
to the back there. I'll drag to select everything and make the
new pattern swatch. Move this over press M to create a square and fill it
with that new pattern. There we go, I'll scale this, press V and right
click transform scale. And only scale the pattern
50% And let's close this up. I can see that I have this really interesting
OG shape that's created from the
same embellishment we used to create our scallops, the interlocking
pieces, they almost look like chain links that
twist back and forth. Now for simplicity's sake, I'm using the same design that I use for my scallop pattern. But you can really play around and explore whatever design you want with this and have a lot of fun creating some
intricate patterns. You can also create a variation where the side shapes
are different colors. I'll double click to get into isolation mode with this group. I'll select the background for this group and change the color. I think I'll select this green. I'll double click to get out, and I'll do the same
on the other side. Double click to enter
isolation mode, select the background
and change it to green. Double click to exit. Now I can create a pattern with
this color variation. I'm going to delete these. Press shift command M. I want to move it
up into the left, so negative 100
and negative 100. I need to make sure
transform objects is checked and press copy. Next, I'll copy to the
corners shift command M 2000, press copy, hold shift
to select the other one. Shift command M02. Hundred and copy. I should still have
my background square. Let's open the layers panel. Yeah, it's still there. I'll
drag to create my patterns. Watch. And I'll close my
layers panel and select my square and fill it
with this new pattern. And now I have a new variation. I encourage you to take
a little time now and explore different ways to
embellish the OG pattern. It's one of my favorite shapes. I hope you have a
lot of fun with it. When you're ready, join me
in the next lesson where we're going to start working on our final pattern of the class, a color blocking pattern.
12. Color Block Pattern: Building Shapes: So far we've embellished the
scallop and OG patterns. I hope you've had fun
exploring these on your own. The final geometric pattern
we're going to make in this class is inspired by
classic bow house designs. We'll use a grid structure
to combine various shapes, like puzzle pieces to create
interesting new forms. In this lesson, we'll
start by making variations of our shapes that we can use to build our patterns. In the next lesson,
we're going to start by making
variations of a circle. I'll press L on my keyboard and click to create a
100 pixel ellipse. I'll press V. I'll start by turning this
into a semicircle. I'll go over to my properties
panel, select more options. I'll make this 180 degrees, then I'll select my circle, and press Shift M
And click once. And now I have that semicircle. I'll just close my
properties panel. I want to keep
everything that we do to 100 pixels by 100 pixels. Let's move a copy
of this by pressing shift command M and
moving it down 50 pixels. Then I'll press Copy. Now I have two
stacked semicircles that are 100 pixels squared. When combined, I'll press Option and Shift and drag to
create a copy of this set. And now we can create
a new variation. I'll select the top one, press R and rotate it, holding shift to lock it
at 180 degrees and let go. Now I have a different
orientation that I can use. I'll select both of these. Press option and shift
and drag another copy. I'll select the top
again and press R. This time I'm going
to rotate at 90 degrees. I'll press V and select both shapes and align them to the right
and to the bottom. With the selected, I'll press Shift M and click the
center to cut it out. Then press V. Click right outside with the
cutout selected. I'll press Shift command
M and move it negative 50 pixels to the left and
negative 50 pixels to move it up and press okay, now I have a new variation
from these same semicircles. From here I can select
this top piece, press option and shift
to drag it over, I'll press Shift
Command and move it 50 pixels and 50 pixels
and make a copy. Then I'm going to
select both of these. Press R on my keyboard and
rotate from the center, so I'll hold shift
to lock it and press option to make
a copy and let go. And now I have this
rounded X shape. I'll select both of these, press option and make a copy. And then I'm just
going to select the bottom and
press R and rotate. And now I have a different
variation of the shape. Once again, I'll select
this first set press option and shift to drag a copy. And then with both
of them selected, I'll press R on my keyboard. I'm going to rotate holding shift and
option to make a copy. This creates a
simple floral shape, but it's more than 100 pixels. With the size locked, I'm going to decrease it to
100 pixels by 100 pixels. And now it's the same size
as the rest of my sets. I'll select all of these. Press option to drag a copy over and press Shift to
create some cutouts. I'll click inside each of
these larger petal shapes, then I'll press V on
my keyboard and hold Shift to select each
of these outer pieces. Hold Shift, I'll
drag it to the side. Now I have a new
version of the flower. I also have what's left behind, so I can use both pieces. If I select this one, I can resize it to 100
pixels squared as well. Now I've got two new flower
shapes from my original. This is just an example of the various shapes you can
make from a simple circle. Now let's work with squares. I'll press M on my keyboard
and make a 100 pixels square. I'll press the minus sign for the delete Anchor Point tool
and I'll delete this corner. I'll press V and you can see
I now have a right triangle. I'll press option
to make a copy. I'll go up and change the size. And with it locked,
I'll make it 50 pixels. Now it's half the size. From here, I'll press
Shift command M, and I'll move it 50 pixels
right, And press Copy. I'll select them both, press shift command M, and this time I only
want to move them up 50 pixels and press copy. I now have a set of four right
triangles, evenly spaced. I can create a lot of
variations with this set. I'll press option to make a copy and command D to duplicate
that a couple of times. For this first one, I'll
select the bottom left, press R and rotate it. Holding shift, and this
creates a new formation. I could do the same thing
by pressing R shift, rotate, and then select
the one above it. Press R, hold shift and rotate. Here's a second variation. If I select the bottom two, press R and rotate. I'll get something
slightly different. I can continue to make various combinations of these triangles, but
you get the idea. I'll start over
with a new square. This time I'll press
A on my keyboard, select this top anchor point
and round it all the way. Now I've created a
quarter pie piece. Once again I'll make
another 100 pixel square. Press A on my keyboard and
select the top corner, but double click
the corner round and select the
inverted round option. I'll make the radius 100 pixels, and Illustrator
will change it to 99.99 but I'll press okay, Now I have the inverse
of the first one. I can play with the
corners of my squares. Lastly, I'll press M on my keyboard and create
another 100 pixel square. This time I'll press
R and rotate it, locking it to 45 degrees. If I press V on my keyboard, you'll see that it
still shows its 100 pixels square shift. M click once and now it's
showing the correct size. With it locked in proportion, I'll change it to 100 pixels. Now I have 100 pixel diamond. Lastly, I'll make a copy
by pressing option and dragging over I'll press the minus symbol for the
Delete Anchor Point tool. Press V and I have a half diamond to keep
it 100 pixels square. I'll press Shift
command and move it 50 pixels right and
press copy together. These are 100 pixels square. These are several
examples of what I can create from
a basic square. Once I have my shape
combinations created, I want to select each of them and press command
G to group them. I need these to stay 100
pixels to use in my pattern. I don't want any of the
pieces to shift around even a single pixel because that will throw everything
off in my pattern. Precision is crucial for the pattern we'll be
building in the next lesson. One last thing I
want to do is modify the concentric arches we
created in the scallop lesson. I'll go up to my
swatches panel and I'll drag the pattern swatch
onto my artboard. I'll press Command shift
G to ungroup this, so I can select all of these
extras and delete them. I'll select the original Shape, and I'll press Command
Shift G to ungroup this set as well with
them all selected. Press Shift M to bring up
the Shape Builder tool. I'll separate the arches by
clicking every other one. To cut it out, I'll
press V on my keyboard. Click outside the group, and now I can select every
other and delete them. I'll select everything Again, command G to group it, and I'm just going to
give it one solid color. I have this concentric
arch that I made earlier, but it isn't size to 100 pixels, so I need to resize it to fit the parameters
of my pattern. I'll change the width to 100, making sure that it's locked
so it stays in proportion. Now it's 100 by 150 pixels. So I'll press A on my keyboard and select
the bottom Anchor Points, and press Shift Command. And I don't want to
move them horizontally, but I want to reduce the length and move them up 50 pixels. And press, okay, now my arch is 100 pixels by 100 pixels
and remains proportional. These are just a
handful of examples of the various shapes you can create for your color
blocking pattern. I encourage you to take a minute and build
out some shapes, and you can build these
exact shapes for practice. But I'd also encourage you to explore new variations
on your own. And once you've made a set
of shapes for yourself, join me in the next lesson so we can turn them into a pattern.
13. Color Block Pattern: Creating the Pattern: In the last lesson, we created
several shape variations that are all 100 pixels
wide and 100 pixels tall. I hope you've taken some time to work on your own and
explore new shapes. In this lesson, we're
going to take these 100 pixels square
shapes and lay them out in a grid to create
new combinations and interesting formations in the negative spaces between them. Now we need to start by
creating our artboard. You can use the same size as me, but you can also expand
any size you prefer, as long as it's
divisible by 100 pixels. I'll press Shift to bring
up the artboard tool, and you can also find
it here on the toolbar. I'm going to type 500 pixels, and then press V on my keyboard To get back
to the selection tool, the next thing I
need to do is create guides that will act as
visual cues for my pattern. I need to open up my rulers. I can either go up
to view rulers, show rulers, or I can use keyboard shortcut command
R to bring up my rulers. And you'll see them along
the side and the top here. The first thing I need
to do is click on my ruler and drag a
guide onto my artboard. You want to make sure that
your guides are unlocked. And you can see right now
I can't move this guide. I'll press Option
Command semicolon. And now I can select
my guide and move it. You can also go up to View guides and you can lock and
unlock guides from here. With it selected, I'll align it to the left
side of my artboard. And I want to move this
in 100 pixel increments. I'll press shift command M and move it 100
pixels to the right, and I don't need to
move it vertically. And I'll press copy. I'll press command D to
duplicate that action. Now my guides visually split up my artboard into
100 pixel columns. I'll repeat the same steps to create my horizontal guides. I'll click and drag
one from the top, align it to the
top shift command M zero and then 100
pixels. And press Copy. Then immediately press
command D to Duplicate. And I don't want to move these
guides out of alignment, so I'll lock them by pressing
option command semicolon. Now if I try to select any of
these, they're all locked. To turn my guides off, I can
press command semicolon. And the same command
semicolon turns them back on. While we will be using
them as visual cues, your shapes will also snap
to these guides as well. With our guides set up, it's time to start
building our pattern. I'll use the spacebar to
slide this over a bit because I've already
selected some shapes to use for this pattern. Over here, you can follow along with me as a
make this pattern. Or you can select
a different set of shapes to make
your own pattern. I'll select one of my shapes and drag it onto my artboard, and then I'll align it
to the top left corner. I can press R on my keyboard and rotate this from the center, making sure to hold shift to
lock it at either 9,100 or 270 degrees so that it stays aligned in that 100
pixel square grid. I'll select a new shape
and drag it over. I'll align it to the
top and to the left. And then press shift command. I want to move it to the
grid space to the right, which is 100 pixels. And I don't want to
move it vertically. I know the distance I need because it is one grid
space to the right. If I want to move it here, I would need to
move it 200 pixels. This grid helps you visualize the spacing and keep
things straight. I'll press okay this time because I don't want
to make a copy. I'll press R to rotate it. The positioning of these
two shapes next to one another creates a new
shape across my grid line. As I build my pattern, I want to explore the interplay of my shapes relative
to each other. With it still selected,
I'll press shift command M, and I want to move
it to this space and create something similar. I'll move it to the left, negative 100 pixels
and down 100 pixels, and I want to make
a copy this time. I'll press R on my keyboard
and I'll rotate it to align it relative to the first shape so that it
mirrors this other one. And I'll keep going
with these other shapes to build out a pattern. I'll think about how
the shapes play off of each other as I position
them next to one another. I'll take this one this time I'll align it to the
bottom left corner. As long as you start by
aligning it to a corner, you can select any
corner you want. I'll press Shift Command. And I want to move this
right below the last one. I'll need to move
it up two spaces or negative 200 pixels
and press Okay, When you first bring a
shape onto the artboard and align it to a corner,
you can move it and press. Okay, If you decide
to move it to a new spot and want
to make a copy, be sure you press copy so that you're leaving the
original in place. I'll speed this up.
As I continue to place my shapes into a pattern, I've got a good start to
placing my shapes in a pattern. And I see some things
that I like so far. I like how these shapes
merge and these as well, and the curve of this one is mirrored by this one over here. Here's another new
shape that's formed, and where it crosses my guides, it will break up the columns
and rows of this grid. I can also see areas
for improvement. For example, I don't like the size of this negative space. I'm going to select this
shape and modify it. I'll press R on my keyboard
and rotate it from center holding shift and I'll also press option
to make a copy of it. And I'll lock it at 180
degrees and let go. Now I've broken up the
negative space and this will draw the eye in a diagonal
line down the pattern. It still mirrors the curve, but the space isn't so
empty for this one. I'll rotate it holding
option to make a copy. This time I'll leave
it at 90 degrees. I don't want it to be
exactly the same as this one because they're
so close to each other. I'm using the same elements
but changing them up. I also like how this curve
of this shape flows into the next space and the negative space
fills out a new shape. By continuing that line, I'll break up the negative
space over here as well. I'll rotate this 180 degrees and hold option to
make a copy again. I don't want it to be
exactly the same shape. I'm going to slick both
of these and I'll press R and rotate them both
again and make copies. Now I have a new variation
that looks different, but it still continues this
shape into the grid space. I'll do the same thing
with this last piece. I'll rotate it 90 degrees, holding option and shift. And then I'll rotate it again 180 degrees holding
option and shift. This version flows
into the one above and breaks up the negative space
and crosses my grid line. It's similar to the shape
that was created over here, but it's not exactly the same. Another thing I consider
is repeating elements. For instance, I use this
shape here and here, and they're both spaced
out within my pattern, but the repeated elements help your eye move
around the pattern. I can also recombine shapes to fill a space to
change this shape. I'll double click this group, so I can select the top
half and delete it. I'll double click to exit, and then I'll double
click in this group, I'll select the
top two and press command C. And then click out Command will paste it in front so it's pasted
in the exact same position. And to move this down, I'll
press shift command M, zero pixels horizontally
and 100 pixels down. And press okay, now this
is a new combination, but it's still 100 pixels. I think I'll repeat this
new variation up here. I'll delete this
shape because there's a lot of solid
colors in that area. I'll select my new set and
press command G to group it. Shift command M,
and I'll move it to the left 100 pixels
and up 300 pixels, making sure they're
negative numbers. And press Copy. I
like the way that breaks up the solid colors and add some interesting
new combination. Once I've placed
all of my shapes into a layout that
I'm happy with, I'll add colors to
define certain areas. I'll use about three
or four colors plus a background color, and you can use as
many as you want. But I would recommend limiting your palette to
create some harmony. I'll start in the top
corner, and this is grouped. To select one of these shapes, I need to double click
to enter isolation mode. And now I can select
this one and recolor it. I think I'll select a
green for this one. I'll make this a cream color. I want to keep this
one the same color because I want it to
blend into the next one. But I can double click and select this one
and recolor it. This new color
redefines these shapes. I'll do the same thing here. I'll make this one green. I'll add a fourth
color to this one. Let's add a darker shade
of the peach color. These are the four
colors that I'll use. I'll continue to
recolor my shapes. I'll double clip this group. I'll change this to
match the one above it. I'll make this a cream color. And I think I want it to be in front shift command
right bracket to move it to the front because I want to continue the curve of
that shape above it. You can use your
colors to create new shapes and develop
the lines of your shapes. I'll change this one to the same cream color to
continue the shape above it. I'll make this one
that darker color and this one green as I
recolor my shapes, I'll also try to evenly distribute my colors
throughout the pattern. I don't want a large section of one color that's going
to draw your eye to it. I'll continue to recolor my elements and I'll speed
this up a little bit. Recolored all of these elements. And you can see I've dispersed the colors throughout
my pattern. As I was adding color, I thought about the
fact that anything on the top row is going to repeat
next to the bottom row. This darker peach
color is going to sit next to this one
along the bottom. The same way that these
two blend together, this green color unites these separate shapes
into one form. I made these all the same color so they would appear
as one shape. And I rearranged the order
of these shapes to bring the bottom left one in front so it wouldn't
break up that line. These shapes blend
into one here, similar to the top
and bottom edge. Anything along the left side is going to sit next to the
shapes on the right. So just keep that in mind
as you add in colors. Once I have my
pattern at a point, I like I can test the pattern. You can see I didn't use this last column because I didn't need it.
And that's okay. I can see that my pattern fits in this grid at 400 by 500. So I'll press M on
my keyboard and I'll click to create a background
square of that size. I'm not going to align
it to the center, I want to align it
to the left and to the top so it fits the
area of my pattern. I'll press Shift Command left bracket and
send it to the back. I'll need to give
it a new color. I'll choose a darker color because all of my other
colors are pretty light. And this will add a nice
amount of contrast. The last thing I need to do is create the background
bounding box, command C to copy
command B to paste in back then I'll give it
no stroke and no fill. If I go up to my layers panel, you can see that I
have the no fill, no stroke bounding box
that's 400 by 500. And then my filled background
square is right above it. And of course all of my shapes, I'll press V on my
keyboard and I'll turn off these guides with
command semicolon and you can see the
pattern more clearly. I'll select everything and drag it over to create
the pattern swatch. I'll zoom out just a little
bit and slide this over. And press M and create a
square. Let's test this out. I can take a look at the repeat and then make my assessment. This blends nicely. I like the shape that
these pieces create. Even though I laid
this out in a grid, some of the grid shape is
broken up by the elements that join up to make a larger shape that crosses these grid lines. There are also elements
that mirror one another. The curve of this shape is mirrored here without
being identical. Same thing with this shape, which is mirrored
in this section. I'm creating these really
interesting shapes by placing a basic set of shapes next to one another
in different pairings. I could sit here all day and play around with
different combinations. You may have chosen
different shapes to use. And I would encourage
you to experiment with other shapes and combine
them in interesting ways. Keep in mind that the
larger your grid space, the more variety you can
achieve within your pattern. The smaller your grid, the tighter your
repeat is going to be. I'll stop here, but I want you to play around with
your own grid layout. Once you're ready, join
me in the next lesson where we're going to talk about how to make a few adjustments, including hiding any
little hairlines and converting your layout
to a half drop repeat.
14. Color Block Pattern: Making Adjustments: In the last lesson, we built
our color block pattern. In this lesson, we're
going to talk about how to assess our work
and make adjustments. Including how to convert the grid layout to
a half drop layout. We'll also talk about
cleaning up and finalizing the pattern
for a seamless repeat. I've made a few adjustments to my pattern to fix
areas I didn't like. For instance, I didn't
like how these were two different colors and I wanted to break up
the cream and peach. I changed this shape to green. I also wanted to break
up the cream and green in this section and
the solid block of color. I made an adjustment to the colors and replaced
a few of the shapes. You can continue to
make adjustments as needed until you're
happy with your pattern. Another thing that we
can do to break up the grid layout is to
create a half drop repeat. I'm going to delete this, and I'll slide this
over a little bit. Press Z, and I'll zoom in
to create a half drop. We need to accommodate a second column that is
offset halfway down. I'll go to my layers
panel and select both of my background shapes and they
have a width of 400 pixels. So I need to double that to 800, making sure that I've got a
line to artboard selected. I'll align it to the left side so it aligns with
my pattern grid. Now I have the space to
create my new column. I'll lock my background
shapes for now. And then I'll drag
select everything and press command G
to group it this way, everything will move
as one unit and I don't have to worry
about missing any piece. I'll press shift command
M. And I want to move one column to the
right or 400 pixels. And then I want to move it
halfway down or 250 pixels. I'll press Copy, and I have the beginning of my half drop with the group still selected. I'll press Shift
Command M again. And I don't want to
move it horizontally, but I do want to move
it to the full height, back up to the top negative
500 pixels. And press copy. Now I've got a whole
new column that is offset halfway down
from the first column. I'll unlock both my
background shapes and then I'll just
close my layers panel. I'll select everything and
create a new pattern swatch. I'll slide this over here
and zoom out a little bit. And just create my square
to test the pattern. You can see now how this shape repeats over and then halfway
down instead of in a grid. I really like the
half drop layout. You can try this on your pattern or you can try brick repeat. For a brick repeat,
just double the height instead of the width and offset
the pattern to the right. You may find you
also want to recolor some elements once you change to a half drop or brick repeat. These are all things you can
explore in your own pattern. One thing you may notice
is a hairline slit, where two shapes meet
across a grid line, or especially on the
edges of your pattern. Now if you're having this issue, you could merge your shapes. And I'll go back over
to this pattern and I'll press Shift command
G to ungroup everything. Let's say I want to merge this shape with its
counterpart at the bottom. I'll select it and
press Shift Command. And I want to move it all the way to the bottom
and make a copy. I'll ungroup this set with shift command G so I can
select the top half. I'll hold shift and
select the ones above it. And then press shift M. And I'll drag across to
merge my shapes. I'll press V on my keyboard and you'll see that it
shifted to the back. So I'll press shift command right bracket to bring
it to the front. Now if I move this over here, you can see that it's one shape. I'll press command
Z to undo that, and I can actually delete this piece because
I don't need it. Next I want to move a
copy back up to the top. I'll press shift
command M and move it negative 500 pixels
and make a copy. Now it crosses both borders
as one seamless shape. I'll retest the pattern. If I had any hairline issues, this should ensure that
there's no more issues. You can take all
of the shapes that cross an edge or even shapes like this one that form a
new shape and merge them. Now you want to make
sure that you have finalized your pattern
before you take this step, But it will help clean
up any hair lines where two shapes meet if
you're having that issue. This is just one example of a pattern I've created
with these shapes. I'm going to show you a
few additional patterns I created so you can see some
different combinations. First, I have this pattern, it's a simpler design. I'm going to slide this over. If I drag the Swatch out, you can see the structure
of this repeat. There are three shapes,
this same starting piece, min, two semicircles, and the X shape, I just mirrored and rotated
it to create the pattern, and it makes a cool braid. I also have this pattern
which has a fractured look. It's made up of a bunch of those little tiny right
triangle combinations and diamonds that I rotated over and over in
different combinations. I decided to keep the colors limited to hide the grid repeat. I used the arches to
create this pattern. Unlike the last one, I played with rounded corners and curves. For this pattern, you can see
the structure of it here. I also made a variation of
this small 100 pixel version by extending the lines using
the direct selection tool. I moved the anchor points out another 100 pixels to
double the length. You can create some
shapes that go beyond the 100 by
100 pixels square. As long as you're in increments
of 100, it should work. Next, I have this pattern. I'll drag the Swatch
out so you can see it. This one was another
rectangular shaped pattern. You can keep your patterns
completely abstract, but as you build the pattern, you may find shapes start
resembling real things. I have these shapes that are similar to what's in
my other pattern, but they remind me of fruit. The arches meeting up
to the semicircles remind me of roots
or streams of water. Now the elements are
still quite abstract, but the inspiration of nature themes helped me
think through this pattern. Lastly, I created
this pattern which really takes inspiration
from floral Motise. I created several versions
of abstract flowers and then staggered them
in a diamond layout. Now you can see the
same shapes used here, form stems, leaves, and petals. I created three
different combinations. Again, they're still very
geometric and abstract, but they do read as flowers. In your own pattern, you can go for something purely abstract or make a geometric
botanical pattern that has recognizable forms. You're really only limited
by your creativity and I'd love to see you explore lots of different ways
to use your shapes. And this method of
building patterns. If you explore
larger grid layouts, I'd recommend you stick to
round divisible numbers. For instance, if you
wanted to work with a 1,000 pixel pattern tile that allows you to work
with elements that are 25510020250 or even
500 pixel sizes. With those options,
you can really play around with the
size of your elements. As long as the size of your
pattern tile is divisible by the size of your shapes
that you're creating, then this technique will work. Have fun exploring these
pattern adjustments, and then join me in the
next lesson to learn how to recolor and
export your work.
15. Recolor and Export: At this point, you
should have completed your color blocking
pattern along with your scallop
and OG repeats. In this lesson, we're going to discuss some final
tips including how to use the
recolor artwork tool and how to save your
file for export. One of my favorite parts of
the pattern making process is seeing my pattern in
different color ways. I love using the
recolor artwork tool to scroll quickly
through the options. I'll select my pattern filled square and click on the
recolor artwork tool, which will open up this panel. There are quite a few
options and tools you can use in the
recolor artwork panel. But I'm just going to
give you an overview of the tools I use the most. I went in depth into the recolor artwork tool options
in my last class. If you're interested
to learn more, you can check out
that class called Service Pattern Workflow, Adobe Fresco to
Adobe Illustrator. I'm going to go down to
the advanced options and it'll open up a new panel. Now these are the
tools I tend to use. The most often you'll see
the current colors in this section and you can
rearrange the color order. With this button, it randomly changes the order of
the colors in your pattern. You can swap colors manually by dragging one
color to another. And you can re order
the colors you already have or choose an entirely
new color palette. So I'm going to select
this palette and it has the same number of colors
as my current palette. It swaps out one color
for each in my list. Once again, I can
randomly reorder the colors or drag them
around to swap them manually. If I choose a color palette that has more colors than
my current palette, it will randomly select
five colors to add first. And then I can click to
re order the colors. But it also rotates through different five
color combinations. So this one has six colors and one will be left out as I
scroll through the options. I can also choose a color
palette with fewer colors, like this one with
only four colors. If I select this
one, it'll combine two colors in my color palette to recolor with a single color. It chose my dark and
light peach colors to combine and replace
with this navy color. It recolors them with different shades to match
the current values. I can also change which
colors to combine by dragging the light
peach to the cream color. Now all the shapes with these
two colors will be replaced with different values of the same color in my
new color palette. If you don't want to use
a limited color palette, you can use a color palette
with lots of colors. Like this first group,
I'll go back and make sure that I'm using
all of my colors of my original palette. And then I can randomly
scroll through various color combinations
to find something I like. You can use a preset
color palette or take a group of colors you like and see what combinations
come out of it. Once you find a color palette
you like, you simply cook. Okay. And I don't want
to save the changes. Now I have my pattern
in a new color palette. It adds a new pattern swatch
to the swatches panel, and it keeps the
original swatch as well. I can continue to use the recolor artwork tool to recolor my pattern
as much as I want. Next, I want to talk about different options for
saving your file. One thing you can do is go up to your swatches panel and use the save Swatch library as AI, just as I showed you how to save the class color palettes
in a previous lesson. This time it will include all of the pattern swatches
we made in this class, along with all the
color palettes with it saved as
a swatch library. You can open up all of
these pattern swatches and color palettes in
another file if needed. That's one option.
Another option would be to save it to
your Adobe libraries. If I go up to Window
and Open Libraries, it'll bring up the
library's menu. I'll click to Create
a new library, and I'm going to name
it Geometric Patterns. Then click Create. Now I can simply take this square
and drag it in here. Now my Patterns Watch is
saved to my libraries. I can also save other elements. I'll select this shape and I'll drag to add it
to my libraries. I could do the same with
all the other shapes that I've created in this file. With it saved to my libraries, it's accessible on
other devices where I'm signed into my
Creative Cloud account. If I want to use
this in a new file, I'd simply drag it into my
workspace to use it Again, you can collect
all of the assets related to your pattern in one place and have them
accessible to use again later. I'll close this panel
and delete this shape. You can also export your file in different formats if you want to share your project
for this class, you can export it as a Jpeg and upload it to
the project page. You may also need to save it as a PDF or other format for
printing and sharing. To export it in any
of those formats, you need to create an artboard in the size you need to export. Now so far I've been
working in pixels, but I may need to export in a different unit of
measurement like inches. I can either go up
to file Document set up or press
option command P. To bring up the
document set up menu. I'm going to use this drop down menu to change the
unit of measurements. I'll select inches
and click Okay. I'll slide this over
and I'll press Shift, and then draw out an artboard. I can go up here and reset
the size that I need. Maybe I want eight, a two by 11. I'll press V to go back
to the selection tool and I'll drag my pattern
over to my artboard. I can position it to capture the part of
the pattern I want. I can also write click
Transform Scale. And I can scale it down and
only transform the objects. Now I have a small
scale version to share. And I can also
increase the scale. And when I have it where I
want it, I'll click okay. Once we have it positioned and scaled on our artboard,
we can export it. I'll go up to File Export. As I can give it a new name. I can select a file location, and I can also select a
format like P and G or Jpeg. I'll choose Jpeg, and I
want to check use Artboard. It captures the area
within my Artboard. Only I can select all of
my art boards or range. In this instance, I want
to select Artboard two, which is the one I just set up, and I'll click Export. Next, my Jpeg options come up. Now if I'm exporting
this for print, I want to leave it as CMYK. If I was exporting this for screens like social media post, I could select RGB. I'll set the resolution. If I was saving
this for printing, I'd want to choose 300 PPI. But if I'm just exporting it for use on social media
or on the web, I may want to select 72 PPI. Instead, I want to make sure that Art Optimize is
selected as well. And I'll click Okay.
And that'll save my JP. If I want to export it as a PDF, I'll press Ship Command S, and I'll choose to save
it on my computer. This time I'll
change the format to Adobe PDF and I can rename
it if needed and click Save. I have the option to preserve Illustrator editing
capabilities. If I check this box, then my PDF can be opened
in Illustrator with all the layers rather than as
a flattened image in a PDF. So keep this in
mind when choosing this option and whether you want someone to have access to all of your pattern
elements and layers. When I'm ready, I'll
click Save PDF. There are different export
options for different uses, but for this class all
you need is a Jpeg to upload to the projects and resources section
of the class. I'd really love to see all the patterns you've
created, so please share them. I'll wrap up the class with some final thoughts
in the next lesson.
16. Final Thoughts: I hope you had fun taking
this class and you created several gorgeous
geometric patterns. Please continue to take what you've learned and explore more, because the possibilities
are endless. And don't forget, I'd love
to see what you created. So please share your project
in the class gallery. You can share your
thoughts and ask any questions you have in the discussion section of the class. I'd also love for you
to leave a review. Reviews help other
students discover the class and decide if
it's right for them. I appreciate you taking the
time to leave a review. If you enjoy this class and you want to
learn more from me, you can check out my other
classes here on Skill Share, click the Foll up button
if you want to stay up to date and be the first to know
what I'm working on next. As always, it's been
an honor to teach you and I hope I'll see
you in my next class.