Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Hi, I'm Catherine. I'm a surface pattern designer and online teacher, and I'm based in Sandy Sicily in Italy. I am passionate about surface pattern design. And although I do love the way the new technologies such as the iPad and during tablets can help us with speed in the process, make it easier in a way. I do love to start my buttons the good old fashioned way with pencil and paper. So I have a explored at different way to make patterns lately. And it involves little pieces of favor blue squares where you draw. And then you end up with a pattern like this, which is what we're going to make in this class. So in this class, you will learn how to draw a button tile completely by hand, well, at least in the first stages. And then you will learn how to digitize it and then make the button the final pattern with it. And we'll show you the whole process step-by-step. So from prepaying the little squares too, actually align them and then do the drawing, swap them around. And then I will show you how to transfer it to your computer into Adobe Illustrator. And then I will show you how to create the pattern. And there'll be a little trick there also to disguise your repeat as well where you creating it. And then I will also show you how to create a after Patton from the starting tile because this would be a simple square repeat. But I will show you how to transform that into a half top as well. At the end of the class, you will have a new pattern that you can add to your portfolio, for example. Or you can also upload it into POD sites such as strong flour or red bubble and sell your products. This course is for you if you want to learn a new skill, if you want to, if you love to draw by hand for a sample and you love to start, you repeat tiles by hand. And also it would help you to explore your style a bit more. This is an intermediate course, so it would be really helpful if you have a basic knowledge already of the tools to use in Adobe Illustrator to make patterns. Because I'm not going to go into details of how to use these tools and where they are. I do have another class which is about the tools in Adobe Illustrator that are useful for Ceph is pattern design. So you can have a look at that one if you don't feel completely confident, and then otherwise, some knowledge will be a great help. So are you ready to create your face and drawn patterned tile? Well, let's get started then.
2. Class Project: Your project for this class would be to create a hand-drawn patentable and then digitize it with Adobe Illustrator and produce a complete pattern. So you can post pictures of your progress. You can post, for example, a picture of the pencil drawing. Something like, for example, was it doing it? Or you can post a picture of you finished pattern or both. Why not? And if you have any questions in the meanwhile, just asked me in the discussion section and keep an eye on it. I promise and I will answer you as best as I can. And if you push your button on Instagram, don't forget to tag me so I can see your beautiful creations. So I'm really looking forward to see what you create.
3. Materials: Hey guys, and welcome today materials lesson. So for this class, you will need some paper, of course. So I have here a big sheet of paper from an a2 pack. And what you need to do in this case, unless you have already some paper squares like this, you will need to cut this bigger paper. And this is a 180 grams paper is not, well, it's kind of cheap table really for sketching. So nothing fancy. I don't use simple printer paper because I think it's a bit too flimsy. But this is okay as long as you can sort of turn around and then you would need to stick some tape underneath so you don't really want a paper that is too flimsy, but you don't need watercolor paper or anything like that unless you want to actually color your patents on the paper. So to cut your big sheet of paper, you would need, of course, a ruler. And if you have triangular square, that will help you as well. Because then you can do a perfect square and is very important that you do a perfect square because you want your squares to line up perfectly when you are building your pattern. So you don't want this to be ofs square. Alright? So of course you'd need a pencil. Just any pencil will do. And an eraser she need to erase the lines and cutting knife. And of course a cutting mat. Just be very careful when you use these things. And then what I have here is low tack tape is Artist's tape sometimes called. And you just need these to take your squares together. And I will show you that in a later lesson. And oh, you can use some where she taped. I go lows of these. So I quite like to use where she table at the back of the squares to keep them together. But of course I think this works and it'll be better. It's just that I like colorful things. So that's another thing you need. And then of course, to scan or to transfer your design into your computer, you will need either a scanner. These are the six inch squares they use. They won't fit in a normal A4 scanner. So you can either scan than just to and to use DFS to the second two. And then you put them together with Photoshop for example. Or if you have a biggest kinda that will work great. Or like I'd like to do. I use my iPad to take a picture. So I line it up and take a picture. And I show you a little trick that I use with this. If you are taking a picture with your iPad, you want to be, you don't want to be tilting your iPad. So, so what I do to keep it perfectly aligned is I use one of these. So this is a spirit level the photographers use. In fact, he's got a little groove to put it on your camera, doping your camera. But if you're careful, you won't let it tilt. You can put in on top of your iPad, and then you can sort of square your iPad until the Spirit Level is perfectly in line with it is square. And then you take a picture. And in that case, it would be perfectly flat basically. So that's a little trick I use. And I think that so as far as the materials are concerned, so get everything ready. And then we move on to the next lesson.
4. Inspiration: Hey guys, before we dive in and start drawing, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about getting inspiration. I know many people like to use Pinterest and if that's what you like, that's perfectly fine. I do use Pinterest, quite alot. Of course. We're always talking about inspiration, never coping please. Because it's a good thing for yourself as well if you use your own, your own work instead of just copying other people. So what I like to do is to surround myself with books that are aspiring for me. And I do love nature and flowers and animals. Psycho loads of these books with the sort of subjects. And the first ones that I caught these books here, which a series of books that I felt. So when I did some lessons with christina trends, sorry about the pronunciation of your name Cristina. But she's a very talented teacher and hearing skill share as well and shared these books. They are Swedish, so they're all in Swedish. So I don't know what they say, but they have some beautiful images inside. So they'll divide it by different types of plans, sort of garden plants and wild flowers and fruits and the like. Edible plants maybe. So you can see here how beautiful these illustrations are. And the little time I build a collection of these books, they probe these a bit difficult to find. This loss of flake lower-middle beds as well. I found these in sort of Swedish website where Google Translate who's really useful, I must say, but didn't speak English as well. But lots of things are written in Swedish website. As you can see this inspiration here for insects and fish and flowers. So I love this. If you can't find these because I understand they are little difficult to get hold of their old books as well. So even if you do speak Swedish and by be even difficult, even in that case to find because there's not that many around. However, you can always search for, for example, vintage flower books, vintage botanical illustrations. And I found these books which from Amazon, they are in English and they're quite lovely. Death. I think all of those were like as in the illustrations, quite old. The books had new additions. And as you can see here, this is a huge amount of inspiration. You can just look at his flowers and this one is divided by months, so you can see which flowers are blooming in which man, I think this is in England. So of course, if you are in a different part of the world, it will be different as well. But for explanations, these are fantastic. Look condition. So lots and lots of flowers and trees and all sorts. And then there's the come to flower, flowers or a Victorian lady, which is some lovely, lovely booked as well. So his beautiful illustrations here that you can use as inspiration as well. You can see. And the last one I wanted to show you is this one here. Country daily of an Edwardian lady. So there was a total knees is Edwardian. And here again, the different months. So you can see even this like wildlife as well, who beds somewhere else. There's a butterfly. So the flowers. And it's like a, like the title says like a diary that this lady was keeping. And she puts down the observations about the garden where she sees in the countryside and in the garden. And there's loads of inspiration here as well. The beautiful butterflies ness, and of course, flowers and cheese. So I do love to have a look at these books. And what I like to do is look at the different pictures of flowers and leaves and then take my sketchbook and the way invasions, the different styles as well. Try different flowers, DO them lots and lots of times. Because the more you draw a flower in various different ways, the more you explore your style and the more you will find may be different ways to do that you like best to do the flowers and motifs that you're going to use in your, in your pattern. So yeah, these are all the books I like to use. And if you want, I can put some titles of these in the resources. These ones here, I can put the titles, but I'm not sure. They're easy to find. You can always check it and I can put a link to the website where I where I bought them because they are truly beautiful, but I'm not sure they're still, they're still available unfortunately. But as I said, you can find vintage botanical prints or something like that. You can just say to them and you can find these type of books which are also a huge inspiration for you. And I think this one as well, it's, it was from Amazon is all about seashells. Or if you want to do something apart and inspired by the see, there's lots of different seashells. And this is a chain English. So this lots of books you can use. Okay, so we can move on to the next lesson.
5. Cutting the Paper: Hey guys. So in this lesson I'm just going to show you how I normally cut my six inches square. Of course, you don't have to watch this if you feel confident and you feel, you don't need to watch this lesson, but it just going to do it. So what I normally do is I would measure the six inches. So that's for the first square and then 12 inches for the second square. And then I do the same this side. So six and then 12. And then what I do is I use the triangular square. There's a goal. I think so. And I just align it with the top of the paper. So you have a 90 degree angle here and just draw the line. And I think we are a bit lower, so I can do the first squares and then do the other ones. So do the same here in the middle. So we are six inches there. I could take another measurement of six inches here. And then I line this with the top of the paper again. Next, so draw the other line and then take another measurement here. So 612. And we're the six-year certain take another measurement here. Fix. So it can draw the line here in the middle. And we are the first two squares at the top. And then we can use again this one. Just align it with the line you're drawn before. And then it was here just to finish up your squares so that it's aligned this as well. And that's over here. And then you can just do the last of the lines and squares and then you can just cut them. I would use the cutting knife. And like I showed you before, because with the seizes you might go sort of a little bit of square. So make sure you have a cutting mat underneath and you use your ruler. It would be better to use one of those metal ones. But if you don't have it, just be careful to use your scar ruler and just cut your squares. Then. When you squares ready, then we're ready to finally start drawing. Yea. Okay, so I'll see you in the next lesson.
6. Drawing the Motifs Part 1: Hey guys, Finally, we get to the during part. Yea. So what we need to do, so we have our Foursquare's cats and ready to go. The first thing I do normally is to label these because he might be a little bit confusing afterwards to know where you started. So what I do is I put some initials in the coder. Normally I do it very lightly. I'm, I do a bit more. So dark here just to you see better. So I write T for top-right and b, r for bottom right, t n for top-left. And can't see it here. It's BL for bottom left. Okay? So you have your squares, you have them labeled. And as I said, Try it as small as possible and as late as possible because you don't want is to interfere with your design. For the sake of the demonstration, I do a bit darker. And now what I do is I, then these two. And I will take the low tack tape a little bit and take them together like this. And do the same to square them properly. Okay? And then I put them all together. Of course, if you want, you can even start drawing before cutting your squares. But I'd like to start with all the squares already separated of k. And then now that all the squares are ready to go, we can start drawing. So take you inspiration, images, your sketches, whatever it is, they you want to go for more from your imagination and then you can start drawing. So what I do normally is I try not to do during Sadat too complicated in the center here in between the squares. So I wouldn't draw a very complicated flower center here, just in the middle. So I start with branches and motifs and different things from the center, but not exactly crossing the middle. Joining lines here. So we can start with some leaves and flowers. And I think it will speed up this during process because otherwise it would be really boring for you to watch my show. If you can see this. Really try to do it a bit darker than I normally wouldn't because I mean, if you draw litre, of course it'll be easier to erase the lines if you do like something. They get to another leaf here. And of course this doesn't have to be perfect because the way I do it is I will put this into Adobe Illustrator. And I will use the block breast through to retrace this like the whole tile. So this initial sketch, those enough to be perfect. And you need to do is to keep you during sort of in the center of your squares, of your biggest square. You're the one to DO something goes off on the side. And I show you this later by its, because then we would be moving the squares. And you want whatever it is that goes from this side, you want it to repeat on this side. So you either want to or to continue rather on this side. So you want to start drawing on this side or you don't know what you're going to draw here. So keep in the middle and have fun. Click. Alright, so I have fed a few Latinos already here in the center. So the next step is to move this around. Say she wants to disguise your repeat. You can turn the squares under NAT greys. And whatever you draw next will be sort of upside down compared to what you don't so far. So let me let's remove these skills either. That's why it's best to have a paper that is not so heavy but not really flimsy either because you will do this a few times. So here's the design. And what I'll do next is to rotate this so that your little top right, top left are in the center there. And rotate these as well. So these are also in the center. So that's why I was telling you to do these light and small, as small as possible. Because for the sake of showing you these are quite big and dark hamper. It should be quite small because it would interfere with you during maybe if you do it big and dark. So what I'll do now is to put these together and to just make sure they're aligned as much as possible is never perfect I think, but we can do our best. And then put this on top. Alright? So with this method is not absolutely important. These are line by the millimeter. I mean, it's better if it does. But what I do is I will trace these motifs again in Adobe Illustrator. So it's fine if you use a method that involves image tracing. This so you will, you would ink you motifs and then you would image trace them on, on the, on the computer. Then in that case, the more accurate it is along the lines, the best. Because you would have to do quite a bit of refining work. Otherwise, if these don't align properly, there will always be a little bit of misalignment. But it's best to try and do a good job from the start. Put just a little bit of tape there. So what I'll do is I'm going to keep drawing in the center here. And then we'll move to second.
7. Drawing the Motifs Part 2: It doesn't matter. We can even look at these again, tend to get a sense of scale. And so they can then this one. And we can turn these one. So as you can see, is taking shape. And then what I'd like to do is you see there are some spaces, whitespaces here. So what you can do is to actually move this to the top left and bottom left on the right. And then you can see where yeah, whitespaces. So again, there is a wet space in the center and you can just keep going like that. So and then when you finish filling in this space, you can turn them around again and just check the everything makes sense. And if there are some spaces still left once you put this in your Illustrator file, then because of the technique amusing that I'm tracing this again with the blob brush tool. You can't actually add little things. You can maybe duplicate. What are these smaller motifs and fill in the spaces. If you are doing the image trays, I suppose you can still work ladder in the center and of the design. By yes, this is how you keep working. It just keep switching them and see whether our blank spaces to be filled. Sometimes I even take these two and put them at the bottom again and then see if there's anything that needs to be filled. As you can see, your designs continuous from one page, from one sqrt square to the other, like you did before. So I'm just going to keep going with this and assume when this is finished.
8. Drawing the Motifs Part 3: All right, so I've filled in the center and now we can check again to see if any more spaces to fill in. So let's see. Let's put them as a should go. Since the war. Alright. So looks like there will be a space on the top and the bottom. So what I wanna do is put to the bottom ones here and these ones here. And you can see again we found another space that we confuse. So let's continue with this. Okay, let's align it. And I can add a few more things here. And we're almost, I know we'll say, OK, let's finish this. Alright. So I think this might be ready. Look, looks like. So if you put it back, top ranked in the top left and bottom right and bottom left. So as you can see, we have the repeat and then if you get it up, these are slow. To move them. The pattern repeats on this side as well. And here the most m let that it will repeat here as well. So it would carry on here. The middle flower details there. Okay. So at this point as I said, you can scan it if you wanted. You could even ink it. And you can use one of these Micron pens. For example, I have a 0.01. or you could use one of these pilot pens as well. And you could ink. You, design you patton tile. And in this case, you have to be careful with your lines. And then if you want to collaborate with the bucket tool, for example, or the ship builder to, you have to make sure that all the lines are close. And you can't leave open lines. And then you can scan it and image trace it. But I will show you a different way to do this, which in a way it's easier because he might take a little bit longer because you will have to retrace this with a blog brush tool. So it will take a little bit longer, but then it gives you more flexibility I find. And you don't have to trace every single thing because the way I show you, you can do all the motifs at the top and on the left. Or there were the two sides. Just, I like to work that way and the middle ones, but then they were thieves, the four on this side. Then we can simply copy on this side. And then what is the four on the top? We can just copy it in the bottom. And if you make path and before you know what I'm talking about. Because when you make a pattern, everything that is in the top, your repeat Tyler asked to be repeated at the bottom and everything that is on one side, let's say the left side has to be repeated on the right. Okay, so enough talking. We can move to digitize these entranceway into Adobe Illustrator and then we can color it. And finally, how a pattern.
9. Digitize Your Motifs: Hey guys, welcome back. So here we have the tile. They patterned tile. And what I did was to take a picture with my iPad, the way I showed you earlier on. And then I just sent it to myself and saved on my computer and then placed on Illustrator document. So for this document, I created one that is 12 inches by 12 inches, which is exactly the sides of our original square there, the big square, because each of the smaller squares are six inches. And of course with Illustrator, once you finished, you can just make it bigger or smaller. That's the beauty of illustrator. Basically, you can do what you want with it. So I thought to start with, I will use the same measurements and then I can change it if I, if I want to. So what I normally do at this point is to make a copy of this. So we'll hold the ALT key and just try get like that. And then I will make a copy on the left side as well. And if you hold the Shift key, we keep it in line. So let's see. Okay, so in this way, we have the complete motifs at the top of our tile and on the left. So when I'm going to retrace them, I can just, for a sample, trace this flower and then just copy it on this side. And I don't have to trace this flower as well. If you see what I mean. Okay, and then what I do is I will select them all and lock them control to, to lock them. So now I can work here and these won't move. And I'm going to use a Wacom tablet for these because I will use the bloke brush too, and it's easier for me to draw with the tablet. If you don't have it, you can always use, if you have an iPad, you can use an app is depending on your computer, if you have a Mac or if you have a PC, a window, there are different apps that you can use and you can connect to your iPad, to your computer and use it as if it was during tablet. Or you can use the pen tool and then you don't need the tablets, you can just use your mouse. But I find it much easier to use the touring tablet. When I, when I do this. And of course, you can always trace your motifs instead of retracing relate this so you can EEG them and use the image trace. Alright, so I'm going to trace this and I will speed up the video because otherwise he would take ages. And and then I show you the next steps, the symptoms. All right. I just wanted to show you. So these are more or less all crossing except for this little one here there, no crossing the top. So I once these are all finished then grouped and color than everything. You can just simply select them and then transform, move. And horizontal, we want 0 and vertical, we want 12 inches. And then we just copy them. And as you can see, we don't have to a trace all the motifs at the bottom here, we can just trace these ones. And the same thing is true for this side as well. So I will finish off this tracing these. So you don't have to watch me. Even speed is it's a bit boring sometimes towards this process. So if you want, I can put a video at the end as a little bonus if you want to watch this. But for now, I will finish this and then be back when all the motifs and ready for the next step.
10. Lets make the repeat: Hey guys, welcome back. So as you can see here, I have finished tracing the motifs. And now we can give either of the original designs here. And maybe I just keep this just in case I need it as a reference. And now we need to test if this is working. So we need to do the pattern. And I'm going to do square. So press M and Clique and we have 12 by 12 inches. And I'm going to align this with a sport. So just going to use the align tools at the top here and shift control left racket to send it to the back. And actually look quite like this color. So I think you're going to leave it as it is. A need of some of these need to be grouped. Because sometimes when you use the brush through, it doesn't really always group them. I don't know why, but so OK, so we have the background books, so we need the books at the back. So control C, control B to send it at the back. And this is the no feeling, no stroke books. So make sure he has single fill and stroke. And we can try this. Sound discolored. Try good. And then let's make another square or rectangle. And let's try it. And here it is, we have our pattern. And so I think my needs some work, maybe some like filling some empty spaces, something like that. We have a pattern and it works. Now this is a simple square repeat. If you want to do a half dropped repeat, you can actually use this. And I can show you how to do it. Let me see. I'm gonna make this a bit smaller on the site. So what I would do, you do, once you make the path, then you have a saved here. So you can just drag it out and you will have it again. If you want to be double Sure you can select everything, press Alt, and then make a copy. So you still have that and you have your pattern. So it's safe. And now you can play with this. And what I do to make it a half chop, I can show you a simple trick. So I will click and drag to get both the squares. So the top square and the bugs square, the one will not fill and stroke. And we can have a look. They're both selected. The two rectangles. If you look in the layers, and what I do is I click here in the center and I drag it to 24 inches. So I try to get as close as possible to 24. Then I go to transform. And here I set it to 24 exactly. Okay, so I'm going to locate control to and I'm going to get rid of the things on this site may be at the moment. Just stays the cross, the center there. And I'm getting rid of these across the bottom. And I do that because I'm going to make the half drops. So they would I would have the book copies otherwise. So what I do is I grouped these, so control G. And then you can use a shortcut. So control k and you can set it. Let's see. I think six inches would work. So what I do is I keep in a press and hold the ALT key and use the right arrow to move it, then release old movie it again. And then the arrow. And the first part of the job. And then you do the same thing. So old and right arrow, once, the release ALT, right arrow again and the down arrow. And now you have your AF top. So we need to ungroup these. So shift control G. Shift control G, or you can right click Ungroup. Alright? So you will see that there are some things that overlap and you just have to sort of fix these little things. But first of all, I'd like to get rid of the excess motifs here because we just confusing this one. I think that one, it's crossing. So if he curses the, your books, then leave them. Of course. Let me see. I think I, tau1 is crossing as long as it's good. Alright. Now, we need to make sure that whatever is on this side needs to go on the other side. And you, again, you see here it's crossing these two. So we need to sort that out. And then everything that is on the top layer needs to go on the bottom. And there will be some empty spaces, some things to adjust. So first of all, maybe we can adjust this. When is, after all, you need to move all of your repeating motifs. So press Shift and click on the other motifs. See if we can fix a like this otherwise, who will need to do something else? I think there is this little leaf here. And see, I think it's I can't find the other one. But anyway, let's move this one out of the way at the moment. I might put it here, maybe change the direction a little bit and maybe make it darker. And then you need to have a look at just your pattern. So this is the same as this. Moved them all at the same time. So they keep the half dope. Okay? And then what you can do is you cannot really do failures as well. Just to make it in a nicer. And just make sure that if you move something, you move the correspondent motif. There was the other one. So this, for example, what I do is to create the half drop for this motif is hold down the ALT key and then the right arrow that moves a one same with twice and then which is 12 inches and then down six inches. Because if you remember here, I have a set us six inches. So if you want to move it 12 inches, you do it twice. I hope this makes sense. You can always drop me a line, asked me if there is anything that doesn't make much sense. Okay, so let's try this and see what it looks like. So I need to unlock the box. So I press control Alton too. And we should be ready to taste this. So all right, let's make it bigger. And as you can see, we have, the pathogen is working is half to Patton. And of course you can fiddle with it, play with it, add things, move things around. Maybe some of the motifs are a bit too close to each other, so it needs a bit of work. But this is how you would basically transform you simple square rebates into half top without doing it by hand, because it is possible to actually do the job by hand like we did this one. And by, you'll have to set the paper squares in a different way. So I suppose this is quite easy once you have your original repeat to do. And so I hope you liked it and I hope to see your beautiful patterns very soon.
11. Timelapse: So it doesn't matter. So that's another, okay. Since these instances, instances, that's processor speeds. So that's the expression for telling us What's the temperature. Okay? Since these processes, widgets.
12. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing the class. I hope you have enjoyed it and I hope you have learned a new skill. And I hope it was clear enough. And if you have any questions, just ask and don't forget to post your pictures in the project section. And I'm really looking forward to see where you have to buy.