Pattern Design Inspired by Nature : Turn your Paintings into Patterns

1. Welcome to the Class!: Hi and welcome to my class. I'm anesthesia from the thrill of strata. In this course, I will teach you how to transform your physical paintings into products. In the real-world, we will be making patterns here. Possibilities of pattern design are really endless. And I think it's very rewarding for every artists to be able to see your work on products in the real world. To me, it always seems like magic when I see my illustration printed on something and then want you to experience this magic tool. I created this class with painters and illustrators and traditional artists in mind, just like myself, with years of trial and error, I figured out the method that I personally use. We're making all of my patterns. And I also figured out the program that works best for the kind of work that I create. And that may be e create. For this class, what you will need is just a PC with installed Adobe Photoshop, and you will need a couple of finished illustrations. If you don't have any finished illustrations at all, No worries. Inside the class, I provide ready to use free PNG illustrations that you can use and play around. So if you're ready to see your illustrations on products in the real-world, Let's dive in. 2. What is a Repeat Pattern: Hi and welcome back. In this lesson, I will explain you what is a pattern, and we'll show you what is a tile square and how patterns actually work in what do we mean by patterns? So what do you see on my screen now is my final pattern, but we will be making in this course together. And actually this is a square tau, this is what we call a square tile that our pattern is composed off. And I will explain to you what I mean. So I'm just in Photoshop now and this is a blank document just to regular blank document with my pattern in it. And now I just zoomed out and said this is the document, this is my pattern square tile. To show you what is a pattern, I will grab this square and I will just put it on the side and I will duplicate it. And I will show you what happens. So to duplicate, I just press Command J and then I drag this pattern and I hold Shift to keep it aligned to my square, and then I just release it. When I see these lines, these pink lines appear. And as you can see, this square matched perfectly the other one. And they created a sort of a continuous repeat pattern. And if I do the same and I copy these two tiles again. So common J and I just grabbed and dragging them to the side again and then release them. Once I see the pink lines, see this is a pattern, so we have a seamless pattern here. As you can see if I zoom way in, you cannot really say where one square ands where the other one starts. So this is why we call patterns seamless, because our eye is kind of tricks. We don't really see, we don't really notice where was this initial square. So of course this is a quite as simple patterns, so you can see where it repeats. So you see what mushroom, you see another one, another one. And you can actually notice that all the elements repeat the same way. But yes, that's how the pattern looks. So if you delete all of these squares, you see that everything is just composed of only one squared, just only one pattern tile. And I will explain you what is the trick here? So if you notice, we have these elements that can cross the edge and they get cut off. But what is interesting here is that if we cut a part of this element, e.g. we will find this part on the opposite side, and then the same thing vertically. So our pattern, our elements, needs to be repeated horizontally and vertically to be able to create this illusion. Let me bring your attention to something. So see this mushroom here. So as I told you, when we cut it here, we need to put this piece here. And then I see there is a piece missing here and here as well. And just take a look. We have them on the opposite side. So on the upper side of the square. And the same thing happens with all the elements. So if one elements crosses just the left side and does not cross the upper or the lower side. We need to repeat it only horizontally, like we see this leaf, e.g. so we have a duplicated only here. And the same thing with this element, this leaf. We can find it here, but we do not need to repeat it vertically as well because it does not cross this line here. So e.g. what we were supposed to do with this Shantel mushroom because it crosses the horizontal axis and the vertical axis. So that's why we need to duplicate it on all of the sides. So basically that's what a pattern is. And now you know how it works. And actually Photoshop makes this super easy for us because v4, we needed to manually position all of these elements and move them and make some calculations. But with this new feature that I told you came out with CC 2021, everything became so easy. So you will see that we can make patterns in matter of minutes. Now, this is super exciting. And just one more thing I wanted to tell you about the pattern tiles is that I made a square here, but your title should not be necessarily a square. It can be a rectangle. And the most important thing is always the same that your elements should be repeated on the left side and on the right side, and the same thing vertically, this is the most important thing. So square or rectangle, it doesn't really matter. Now when you know what is a pattern and what is a pattern tile square. In the next lesson, I will show you some basic types of patterns and will explain you what is the pattern that we will be creating in this course? See in the next lesson. 3. Types of Repeat Patterns: Hi and welcome back to the class. In this lesson, I will show you four basic repeat pattern types. So these are not the only ones that exist, but I just wanted to show you these four really basic ones that you can try on your own. And I will show you what is the type of pattern that we will be making in this course? So I just zoomed in so that you can see my presentation better. And what I will show you here is the original motif that I will use to explain this concept. So just this couple of mushrooms. So let's say this is our motif that we want to repeat. The first pattern type I will show you today is a full drop repeat. So a full drop pattern is the most basic pattern repeat. So it's very simple to be able to create it. You just need to repeat your subject horizontally and vertically. So you just copied, pasted, copy and paste it. And this is the scheme that how it looks, and this is how it will look without this grid. So put these grids just to make it easier for you to understand. So this is the most basic repeat pattern we can imagine. So you just duplicate your image and you do the same thing on the lower row. So very, very easy. The next repeat pattern is a half drop repeat. So half drop repeat is quite similar to the full drop repeat, but it breaks the uniform look that the full drop repeat can sometimes give. And to be able to create a half drop repeat, you just need to copy the motif horizontally and then align the top of the second motif to the center of the first motif. So I hope this scheme helps. So as I said, just like in the full drop repeat, we have these two elements and then we don't align the next row elements to the first one, but we put it in the middle of these two bricks here. So that's how it works. And this is what it gives. It gives a more of an interesting look. And it does not look as maybe repetitive and a bit boring like here, also looks a bit less obvious. So this is kind of another way of creating a more dynamic pattern. I would say this was the second type. The third type is a mirrored pattern. So to create a mirrored pattern, you need to duplicate your motif in a row and then flip horizontally the elements from the second row so they can face the opposite direction. So this is very easy. This is exactly like a full drop pattern, but the second row, as you can see, it's flipped horizontally, so it's mirroring the first row. So very easy, and that's how it looks like. And then the fourth type of patterns, and actually the one we will be creating in this class is a task or random repeat pattern. So in this kind of patterns, the elements of the design are scattered within the repeat unit. And the unstructured nature of a toss repeat pattern actually gives a more organic and natural look. So I will show you here what I mean. So as I said in the previous lesson, we need to position the elements that way so they are repeating on the left side and the right side, on the top side and on the bottom side. This is exactly what we have here. So this mushroom, we see that this upper part is cut off and we see this part here. So to be able to create this kind of patterns, first of all, we just position the elements crossing the board of our tile square. So what you see here is actually our tile square. And then you have this empty space here that we will just need to fill with other elements so that we don't have this empty space here. And the elements that we place here, we can actually place them any anyway. So that's the final result. So as you can see, these are the two mushrooms. We find them here. And then I just put these elements in the middle. So I filled this empty space here with this mushroom, I flipped it. And these two leaves, this acorn in this one relief and this kind of tricks your eyes. So this kind of patterns are a bit less easy to notice than e.g. these ones, or these ones, or especially these ones. So this one is super obvious. And then this kind of patterns give a more intricate look and more organic look. So we will be creating a task or random pattern in this class. So I hope if you've never heard about patterns, now, you have an idea what kind of patterns we can create. And if you want to have this document, if you want to study this document a bit more, you can actually download this PDF in the class resources if you want to keep it, if you want to study the basic repeat pattern types on your own. So in case you miss something, in case you want to have this document and get back to it, just go and download the PDF that is there for you. Thanks again, and I will see you the next lesson. 4. Photoshop or Illustrator?: Hi and welcome back to the class. In this lesson, I will explain to you the main difference between Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. It might be very confusing in the beginning, which program to choose and which programs suits your needs. Photoshop is a pixel based program. We have two apparently identical images here, but there is a significant difference between these two images in, I will show you what is it. So if I zoom way in on this left image, which is a pixel-based image, so a raster image, if I zoom very, very close, you will be able to see that this image is made of pixels. So all of these tiny squares are actually individual colors. So each pixel, each square has its own color. So before I explaining all the advantages and disadvantages of pixels, I just wanted to underline this key difference. So raster image is made of pixels. So these images are typical to Photoshop and Illustrator works with vectors. So this is a complete different thing in the, I will explain you why vectors are shapes and lines. So when you see me zooming way in on this image, you can see that my image is not composed of squares, but it's made of these little shapes here. So each color now is represented by each one of these tiny individual shapes. And if you zoom way out, we don't even realize what's the difference between these two images. The advantage of vector images are that they are famous for being scalable. So no matter how big this image is printed, it will not appear blurry. The only thing is even vectors have their limits in a certain way because yes, you can zoom in and you can print this image super huge on a billboard. But you will still be able to see these little shapes. So in this case, your image will look less blurry, e.g. let me show you here. I'm zooming same distance on my left image, which is made of pixels. See, it looks a bit blurry. When I zoomed that close. Without zooming out, I'm going to the right image where I have my vector-based image. And as you can see, this image does not look blurry. But it looks a bit funny though. We don't see the blurry effect, but we can actually distinguish all these little individual shapes. And we kind of lost this realism that we initially had here. So this is something that vectors cannot overcome. That's why vectors are suitable for flat images, e.g. for flat graphics, and something that you draw on your computer. Something more basic, I would say, and less detailed and without a lot of color transitions. And now I will talk a bit more specifically why I encourage you to use Photoshop. If you're someone like me and if you create this kind of illustrations here. So for instance, if you want to create a pattern using your illustrations, you can totally do it with both of these files. So actually how I obtained this image, I just vectorized my raster image. You can do this in Illustrator. But let's understand what's the purpose in this case, I don't think it's very logic to vectorizing these kind of images. If I click on this image, you see that it became blue. This blue is actually all of the outlines of my individual shapes. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe of shapes here. This means that this kind of image will be terribly heavy. And imagine that this is just only one element from your pattern. So my experience, the result of this will be a huge file size that sometimes becomes really impossible to work with. You can do some adjustments and make these shapes a little bit less complex. And you can even reduce the number of these shapes and colors, but it will inevitably bring you to a flatter looking image. So if you want to keep this kind of level of details, there is no much you can do in Illustrator to obtain the same kind of re-listen. But having. Lighter weight file. And there is really no big sense to it, because if you scan your images at a high resolution, you actually don't need most of the times this opportunity to pay more to print your file on a billboard. I mean, if you're aiming specifically to that, maybe you should think about it. But if you want to print your image quite big, even for a wallpaper or fabric, you actually don't need to scale it infinitely. You just need to scan it at a good resolution. So e.g. 300 DPI or even better, 600 DPI minimum. This way, you can print your image at quite a large size, e.g. this original painting was about 20 cm high, but if I scan it at 600 DPI or 1,200 DPI, I can actually print this image even on a bigger size and it will still look great. The other thing you can try to, is to paint bigger. E.g. if you know already that you want your image to be huge, e.g. you want to print beautiful watercolor brush strokes on a huge size for a wallpaper. I will suggest you actually to not paint these strokes with a tiny brush, but to actually paint these brushstrokes are ready with the big brush, maybe on a quite a big sheet of paper. So this way you already have the advantage of having a big image. So if you scan it at a good resolution, you can print it even bigger. So basically that's the principle. The other thing I wanted to talk about here is about the versatility and the possibility to make changes and adjustments to your images. E.g. if you've transformed your raster image into a vector image, it's good. So it's a vector. But if you want to slightly change its color or make any tone adjustments, maybe wants to make it lighter or darker. There is nothing you can do in Illustrator. So if your image is vector, you need to work with it as it is. There is a way of recoloring simple subjects, but there is no way you will be able to recolor this kind of a complex image here. On the other hand, if you want to do something like this with a raster image in Photoshop, it's gotta be actually super easy. So I'll hop in Photoshop now and just show you how you can do it there. So e.g. if I want to make this image darker and she's very easy, I go to my Adjustments layer and I can instantly change the lightness. I can make my image image lighter. I can make my image darker. I can adjust the saturation of my illustration, e.g. so you can play around with your images. And if you want to change something, even on the very late stages, Let's say you have already done your pattern and you realize that maybe these elements does not work quite right. One with another. You can actually manually adjust elements or parts of it. So I hope now the difference between these two programs is clear to you. I don't say that it was Twitter is a bad program, but for other kinds of artworks. And I will show you which ones, e.g. here I have my forest pattern collection that I made some time ago. This dear pattern is made in Illustrator and I actually designed it directly in Illustrator with my Wacom tablet. See that these shapes are not that complex as those we have on this mushroom here. So as a result, my image does not look as realistic as this one. And this is not what I'm trying to do here. I don t want to imitate the reality here. What I want to have is a decorated look and maybe more like a stylized look. So if you're creating something more like this, something very flat, very, maybe a little bit naive. I think that Illustrator will be perfect for you. And that's why I chose Illustrator to make this pattern because it was much more logical and suitable for this kind of style. But when you want to use something very realistic, like your hand painted illustrations, photoshop will be your go-to program. I really hope that now you will have less doubts about which program to choose. If you're a bit tired of a technical side of things, don't worry, because in the next lesson, we will take care of a more creative part of our process. And we'll start making a mood board and start thinking about our color palette. I'll see you there. 5. Choosing Elements and Color Palette: Hello and welcome back to the class. In this lesson, we will finally do something more creative and we will start to think about the color palette that we want to use for our pattern. And if you have some painted elements already, I will use it the method that I usually use with my own artwork to select some elements that I think will work nicely for my pattern. And I will also show you how I choose my color palette if I just have an idea in mind and I want to paint my elements from zero. So we are in my Instagram now, if you don't follow me there yet, you can do say you can find me by tapping that tutor dot illustrator. And I post lots of process videos and pictures and other inspiring stuff regularly. So I think you will, you will like it. So what I'm doing here, I'm just taking a look at my feed here. And it gets me instantly some ideas of what kind of artworks I want to grab. And I will then find these images in my computer by my experience, just to function this way, I like to take a look at my feet because I know everything is there, all my artworks are there. And it kind of gives me a quick overview of what I think it can work well together. So I already have an idea of my pattern in mind. I know I want to make something forest inspired and autumn inspired, and I definitely want to include mushrooms there. So I will start to pre-select the images that I think will work. I will grab the mushroom. So what I do, I just do screenshots. So I'm pressing Command Shift four, my Mac. And you see there's this little cross appeared and I can drag an area and drop it in. It will instantly give me a screenshot that you now see here. If I just don't do anything, it will appear on my desktop and I will grab it then from there, I will just keep going this way. I think I like this mushroom here too, and we'll make a screenshot of this piece as well. And basically that's what I'm doing. I'm just scrolling down and looking what I think might work. I think I will take this plug Eric Command, Shift four again, and I'm making a screenshot. And that's just the way I'm doing it. Sometimes I have the same subject many times, e.g. flying Gehrig's. But I think I will just pick one or two. Like this central mushroom. I have this flag here too. Maybe we'll take a screenshot of this one as well and we'll see if we want it or not. I will grab this composition. I painted it with the pattern already in mind. Even the way I placed the elements on my sheet of paper is already working as a pattern. I will explain you later how you can also paint with patterns in mind. So if I was about to paint something from just from scratch and I knew I wanted to make a pattern. I will paint it in a certain way and I will explain you how. Next one, I think I will take this acorn. So it's also very important in your pattern to have elements of different complexity and different sizes. So e.g. I. Will not grab only very complex subjects like this one because otherwise it will be boring. So the main rule is that he should have complex subjects. And usually these are the biggest subjects, medium subjects, so medium-size, medium complexity, and then small and easier subjects like the acorn. So you should have these three types of images, and this will make your pattern richer and look more harmonious. And it will just give you the diversity necessary to obtain a visually appealing and interesting looking patterns. And yes, I want a definitely want to use these leaves. So again here, I actually painted these from my own picture. So I put the leaves in this composition. So I already composed my picture, my illustration directly with my leaves. I placed the leaves on a white sheet of paper. I took a picture of it and I painted it. I really like how these look altogether. So I think it's very natural. There's a lot of movement. Some of the leaves are crossing each other. So I think this one is really nice and perfect for patterns because we have different leaf size. So we have a big one mediums once and the small one, and they all will work nicely together. So there's movement, there's a dynamic here, and they have different colors. So we have yellow, orange, red, kind of a lighter yellow, dark one. So it will make a very interesting composition for us. So I will definitely use these. So I will make a screenshot too. And I think it might be enough for us. I will just continue making a quick tour here just to make sure I don't want to grab anything else. You can also include animals in your patterns, e.g. I think this squirrel will make a very nice fit to, but I think I want to make the fly agaric, kind of a main character of this pattern. So I think if I put the squirrel T, it will not be very clear. What is the main subject, what is the secondary subject? I think I will just keep the fly agaric as main one. I think that's it. I think we have enough images here. So now I have all of my images here. And what I will do, I will just put them in my new folder, which is called forest pattern ideas. Grab these, all, drag and drop them to my folder, and then I open the folder in, place them on a white sheet of paper. So I will open a Photoshop document. So I go there, I opened my Photoshop and now I just create a blank document. There's my pattern here already, so it doesn't matter the size. I think I will just take a normal A4 format may be horizontal ones, so I think it's good Create. Here you go. Now what I do, I just place all of my images here. So if you put a bunch of these, it will give you a preview and then you need to click on Enter to confirm that you want to place the image. So I'm just confirming many, many times. So that Photoshop now. So I really want all of these images there. So now what I do, I want to reduce them so I can see them altogether. So to do so, I just select everything, press Command T or Control T. And there is this square that appears and it allows me to just drag by holding Option and reducing the size of these images. And you need to hold option to be able to scale these proportionally. And so now I just can drag all of these images side-by-side and see what they think. I'm sliding this these and to be able to keep them in line, I just press Shift. I think I want to put one more panther cap here to see how it looks. This is the panther cap I was looking for. I will make one more screenshot. Here you go. Close my Instagram, it put it here directly. You can also do this. So now I have a pretty good overview of what I have. And I think I have some repetitive subsistence Definitely. So these four gags, I don't need all of these. So I think I will just use this one. I don't think it will work good with the small one. I think it's gonna be too repetitive. So I actually want to create the main element by combining these two fly chaotic, so a normal fly gag and then a panther cap. So I think I will use this one also because this is a smaller size, but it's still pretty detailed and I think it will make a nice match with this one. What else? I think I wanted to Shantel my stream. I think I will take this one and maybe I will use this mushroom. I'm not sure yet. I think it can be a bit too complex, but I will grab it and see if I wanted to use it or not. I will definitely use an acorn. And I will use all of this, of these elements from the composition. So we already have the mushroom here, and I especially want this pine cone, the leaf and this acorn here. I will take the leaves for sure. I don t think I will use the bleak mushroom. So again, don't try to put all the pretty stuff you have in one artwork, in one pattern because you can make many patterns using your illustrations. These are my pre-selected images and I will just go and find them on my computer. Later on, I will not make you watch this. Let's talk about the color palette here. I also wanted to talk why I chose all of these elements here. So I had a certain color palette in mind. I wanted to have quite a lot of warm colors, like the ones we see on these leaves and on the cap of my mushrooms. And I wanted to have a few cooler elements like this green leaf, e.g. and maybe this pine cone here that is a bit less saturated than the other ones. So that's what I had in mind. I had a warm color palette and contrast. So this is something you should look for. I think all of these will make a nice fit. So now I will show you one more method I use sometimes to find inspiration and just to come up with a color palette. So I already have a certain color palette on my Instagram. So I use it a lot of wood, I use a lot of warm colors. So I already have this in mind. And when I go to Pinterest, because that's where I like to find my inspiration. So this is my Pinterest. I have lots of inspiring stuff here on my Pinterest. So check me out. And what I usually like to do is just to tap e.g. autumn color. Palette. And it already gives me some ideas. This is mine. Wow, I love this one. This is a pretty image. So you see it already gave me some examples of the color pallets you can use. So here, for instance, you already the colors that the pre-selected colors. And then, yeah, this all looks really nice. So you can choose something more of a muted color palette like this one, which is very pretty to something warm like this, or even something like this. This is more the principle that I'm using. So you have cooler colors like these greens, and you have warmer colors like these rust colours or orange colors. It looks very nice together. So there's really a whole lot of things that you can choose from. What else you can do. You can actually grab a picture and make a color palette from a picture. So e.g. I. Will take my own picture. I just put it on my desktop. I go and I put my image in Photoshop document that we just created. So what you can do, you can go and actually see what colors are used for this image. I will use a eyedropper tool. So it works like a color picker. So you see this circle appeared. I can just click once. And here, see there is a color period. So it means that I use this color here. So you can click around, you can see the colors that you like. So e.g. I. Like this yellowish color. What I will do, I will grab my brush tool, create a new layer, and paint with this new color to have it here, and to be able to make my color palette. So I will take the eyedropper tool again. I like this dark brown as well. So I will put this dark brown color on my palette too. Again, I'm just painting with my brush back to eyedropper. Think I like this kind of a red brown as well. It looks very nice too. Then we have a few greens here. So I think greens are important to have contrast to green and maybe yellow. I like this saturated yellow here. So I already have five colors. And why we're making this exercise. So if I need to paint all of my elements from zero and I just want to get inspired and I want to have the idea already in mind of what I want to create. It's just so much easier. I've already having a certain color palette that you want to stick to you. Because if you just start to paint random elements without an idea in mind, you can easily paint a bunch, even very pretty stuff, but that will not look well together. So that's why we already think about the pattern we want to make and about the color palette we want to use for our pattern. And I think this is just way more efficient than just randomly start to paint. If you already have a lot of paintings, you can definitely go and choose from there, or you can choose the ones you want to use. Let's say, I know I want to use central, but I don't have other elements. I know. Okay, I have the yellow already. Have the yellow and I will paint something darker. So maybe I'm bullied mushroom using this dark color and maybe an acorn. So I'm making a color palette really helps you to guide you when you painting, when you prepare your elements. So it doesn't mean you need to use only these colors to paint your composition. You can definitely use other colors to. This exercise really helps me to start the painting process with a clear idea in mind and a clear plan. What I know, I want to make an atom pattern with different elements will have different complexity. So complex elements, easier elements and very easy elements. And I want to make them have a different size. And this is the color palette that I want to use. When you have all these elements in mind, it's just gets very easy to paint exactly what you want and make it all look together well in nicely. I think it was helpful and that now you will have a better idea of how to approach making patterns. And in the next lesson, I will show you how I paint my elements with patterns in mind. So I will not paint very complex elements here because we don't have time for that in this course. But I will show you the main principles and I think this will be very helpful if you want to paint your images from scratch. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. How to Paint Elements for Patterns: Hi and welcome back. In this class we will do a bit of painting. Like creative stuff begin, I will just make a quick overview of my art supplies here. So for today, we will be using a normal watercolor sketch book. So this is a 300 gram paper. I'm using a watercolor set by edgeR, just 24 colors. I'm using a few brushes, that medium one and a small one. These are synthetic brushes. I'm using a pencil, just a normal pencil. I like working or and that's it in I have my ceramic palette here, a jar filled with water. So that's all we need. So today I will show you how to paint with patterns in mind. So what I mean by this, if I was just about to paint something for myself without wanting to make any pattern, I will probably put it right in the center. I will make maybe a straight subject and I will just go from there. But what makes an interesting pattern is dynamic. Look, dynamic composition. And it's nicer when you're elements look like they all were made one for another. And there's a particular way of painting that will help you to achieve this effect easily. First thing first, I want to make a list of all the elements that I want to paint for my pattern. So as I said in the previous lesson, we need to have big elements and complex elements, medium elements and small elements. So don't forget this. You need to have these three types of elements. Big ones, medium ones, and small ones. So e.g. a, big element can be a flag Eric. So I will already kind of draw a schema applying medium. One can be a leaf, Let's say elif and small one can be an acorn. With this super quick scheme, we already have in mind what we want to paint. What I like to do next is to kind of make an outline of how I imagined my patterns. So kind of a vision of my patterns. So I can make a square here. And I can really just play around and imagine how I can place my elements in this square so that they look nice altogether. I'm just outlining my mushrooms here. So I will already put a couple of Lego bricks here. So you see I'm sketching very quickly and not caring all about details and all this stuff. Next, I need to make these elements can move altogether. So you see the first thing I did, I placed the flag guy is not straight on my, not straight at my sheet of paper, but I gave them an angle. So see, this is the direction where they go. So this already gave me kind of movement here in my pattern. Now I need to place other elements. So this is the biggest element here, so I will even outline it with this circle here. And let's say this element can also repeat here and maybe here, something like this, then I can think about medium elements. So let's say I want to place one medium element here, probably one here. I want to make this leaf here. And the important thing is you see, I gave this element and movement to that. I'm not painting it straight in this one. I think we go in this direction. If you want to get an organic look, try to keep this in mind to paint and give this curved finishes to your illustrations. Even to mushrooms. Actually you can paint a mushroom like this. So this mushrooms will look very, very nicely for a pattern because you are ready, gave them this kind of a curved line here. So this is very important to straight lines will make you a very regular, a very rigid pattern. And if you use more curved lines, organic lines, it will help you to build the pattern and naturally create the movement inside of your pattern. So now, when I have my big elements and medium elements like the leaves, I think I can place a few small elements like acorns, so I can really place a lot of these. So that's the other principle. You need to use a few big elements. So I just have 123 more medium elements. So I have 12345 already and I can even put more and a lot of small elements. So I will put a lot of acorns just to give them more interests to my pattern. And more mushrooms here. Now you know the principal. So this is just a rough sketch of what I want to do, but I already know what kind of pattern I want to create here when it's coming to painting, what we just did in the previous lesson, we selected the color palette. So what I like to do when I paint, I actually like to put my color palette on my piece of paper. So to do so, I will just grab my brush. I don't have to use the exact color palette I selected. There are my computer, but I can play around with my watercolors now and mix a few colors that I really liked that I think can work well with the whole idea of my pattern. So make sure you have a few light colors and make sure you have also some dark and medium colors. So this is very important too. I think I will use something very light like this and something more dark like a darker brown. So this will be one of the darkest ones. And maybe I also like to use this super dark colors, like almost black colors for the details. So I will use a thing that black tube and then crumbly, I will use some reds, oranges, and then a few greens. So it doesn't mean that I will be using all of these colors, but I'm placing on paper what I just did in my computer, what kind of ideas I had, what kind of mood board I did an interval just really helped me to start painting with these basics in mind. So now I have the general idea of all the colors that I wanted to use for my pattern here. And now what I will do, I will just make a super quick scheme. I will not paint the elements here with you, but I will just show you how you can paint your elements so you don't need to paint them this way already placed on a pattern, but you can have this scheme to be able to paint these on your paper. So let's say something like this. And then I want to leave. And I will make like an oak leaves, something like this. So I'm not really trying to make something super realistic. This exercise is just to show you how I use this color palette in practice. So how I will use it actually my illustration. So I will start from the leaf, I think it because it's the easiest subject. So I want to use all of these colors for the leaf. I will put one more leaf here. You can give it the same curve because actually you can then reflect it and rotated in your Photoshop. So it doesn't matter if your, all of your elements go in one direction. Like it doesn't really matter at this stage. I want this leaf to use these colors here, and I want this leaf to be more like using these colors. So let's try some lifting off some of the paint just to create Illusion of these veins here. This was more painted with this green color palette, and now I will paint this one with the orange color palette. If you want to learn more principles about how to paint natural subjects, were to start from how to make a drawing in all of this stuff. I highly recommend you my previous class where I teach how to paint a realistic flag, Eric. This is a one-hour course here on Skillshare. It's very easy even for beginners. So I teach you my method of painting realistic fly Gary. So since these are already looked very different, so this is more of a green leaf and this is more of an orange leaf. So this is very important because if you just paint all the leaves orange, I think it might be a bit boring to see only orange leaves. So try to buy Ryan at only the shape of your elements, but also their color and their shapes. So this is very, very important for a pattern. Here you go. This is just the idea. And now when I paint the mushroom, I want to remember that the cap should be read. So I already made the basic outline of the cab. You don't have to create something super intricate, super realistic to be able to make a nice pattern. So very quickly I just created something like this. And then I want to just add some shadow so I will mix kind of a gray color that I don't have here, but it's something like this. So just in a matter of minutes, we created something looking like a flag. Then I will play around with texture here, put some strokes and just give the idea that there is a MOD or something attached to the stem of my mushroom. Maybe we'll put some green moss there. So this is just like a speedup process of me painting the mushroom up. I'm teaching you in that class I was talking about. So this thing I'm showing now is very cool if you want to create something quickly, but if you want to create something more outstanding, something more realistic, you can go and watch that class too. I think you will love it. So see, we already have this nice difference here between all the elements that we have, the tonal difference. So we have a light element that is the stem of my mushroom. We have darker details like the one we see here on the bulbous part of my mushrooms. And here you go. And then I can paint an acorn. So these elements will be enough to already make a pattern. Or this scheme can help you to paint more complex elements with patterns in mind. So again, don't forget about the curved lines. When you draw your sketch already think about this. This is especially important for the leaves, even for an acorn, same principle. So think that they should be all connected in all kinds of turning around on your pattern and this curved line will really help you. And then one more important thing, big elements, medium, small elements. So try to keep this variety. Don't forget about this. And then the color palette, make the color palette on your sheet of paper in the beginning and it will guide you to paint your illustrations with already the idea of the pattern that you have in mind. This way you will not get lost on your way and you will make a more harmonious and good looking pattern. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. So in the next lesson, we will start to build our pattern and let the magic happen. See you there. 7. How to use Masks: In this lesson, I will show you how I prepare my elements for print and how I separate them from the background using masks. Masks can seem a bit confusing, especially if you're a beginner. But I promise it's not that complicated as it seems. If you've seen my last course here on Skillshare, where I teach you how to make a sticker. This course is actually all about separating your illustrations from the background and preparing them for print. So if you want to learn more about it, you can go and watch that course as well. And in this lesson, I will teach you another method that I find very helpful. And it's also nice pretext of teaching you how to work with masks. So just stick with me and I will show you my process from start to finish. So I have this pine cone illustration here that I want to separate from the background, and I just drag and drop it to my Photoshop. And here we go. Now, what I need to do next is I need to go to my Layers panel and I just click on Create New Layer. Then I drag this layer underneath my pine cone so that my pine cone is on top. Then I just grab my paint bucket tool and I click on my background once. And I colored my background with black. So you don't actually see it now on my screen because the pine cone layer is now on top of my background. But if you see underneath, the layer itself, got colored in black. So the next thing I will do, I will grab my magic wand tool and make sure this time you're working on the pine cone level. And I just click once on the white background. And as you can see, it got selected. And I see these little lines that kind of started to run there. What I do next, I press on the Mask icon. So don't be afraid, this weird thing just happened. So like you see on my screen, our pine cone gut kind of cut off of the white background. And this is the first step. So it's okay if you see this right now. So what do you need to do next is staying at the same level. You will press Command I or Control I on a PC, and this will invert your selection. And as you may notice, our pine cone got back and we just got red white background. And what it allows us to do is to instantly in delete the background. If you notice, we still have some of the weird bits though that we need to delete some of the parts of other illustrations that we don't want to see here. So to be able to erase this, I will actually not use the eraser tool, but I will use my paint brush here and I will show you why masks work this way. You can paint with black, war, with white. And depending on the color black or white that you're using, you can delete some of the areas or restore them. Just select the thickness of my brush. And if you see there, my black color is selected. So I just paint with my black and it kind of works like an eraser. So you see me erasing these parts of my illustrations that I don't need so very quickly. And now, if I want, I can change the size of my brush. I can change the hardness as well. You see my outline of my pine cone is a bit too strong, so I want to make the edge a bit softer. I select a smaller brush size. I just paint with my black color again. And as you can see, it kind of gives my edge a softer look. So it's much more convenient if you use a mouse here or if you use a Wacom tablet. So this way you have much more control over what you're doing. But if you're quite skilled, and I have to admit I got quite used to work just on my laptop. So I just doing it with my finger. So if you train yourself, you can totally do it as well. And now I will show you what will happen if you select white color instead of black. So to switch, you just need to click on this little arrow. And now you see that the white color is on top and black. It means white is selected. And if you see me painting now, you see that e.g. I. Will show you a quick example here. So let's say I deleted way too much that I needed and I want to restore this area that I just accidentally ruined. So what I do, I select my white and I paint again with it and look how magical it is. Parts of my pine cones start to appear again so I can actually restore the areas that I'm missing. So that's the basically the principle of working with masks, black conceals, and white reveals. So that's exactly what's happening here. I'm painting with white and you see all of the parts of my pine cone that started to appear again here. So that's how masks work. I will just go with my brush and I will adjust all the outline of this pine cone if you just use it right away without adjusting your edges, you are edges can be a bit too messy. And you see these little bits of white and irregular edges that you end up with. So we don't really want to have this kind of result. That's why I always like to make my edges perfect. So I will just let you watch me finishing on working on this pine cone illustration. So what I do now, I need to export my image as a transparent PNG. So to do so, I just unchecked my background layer. So you can see that there is no icon near my background layer. So it means that this layer is invisible now. And you can see that we have a bunch of these little gray squares as a background. And this means that actually our background is transparent now, and this is exactly what we need. So I just clicked on Save a copy. So this is another way to export your files. So you can either do export or what I like to do is saving a copy. So click on Save a Copy and select PNG in the format dialog box. And then I just name my file. I put pine cone and I click Save. I just click. Okay, So I want to save it as the large file document, and when it's ready, I will find my pine cone on my desktop. So now I just drag and drop it in my Skillshare folder. So I really hope that you will find this method useful. I personally use it quite a lot. So now when this new method, I will see you in the next lesson. 8. Best Photoshop tool for Pattern Making: Hi everyone and welcome back. In this lesson, I will show you how to make a pattern using Photoshop with your hand painted illustrations. So here we have all of the elements that I want to use for my pattern. This is the mushroom that we've painted together in one of my previous classes. And they also have some other elements here. Some of them I just showed you how I separated from the background and now you know, one more way of doing it. So basically you need to make your elements first and then we can start to work on our pattern. So let's open Photoshop. I have Photoshop CC 2021. And actually what I wanted to show you is this new feature that Photoshop has. This feature is available in CC 2021, newer versions. So if you have CC 2021, it's an amazing thing because this new method that photoshop gave us will literally save you tons of time. So let's jump in. So we need to create a new document first. So I click on File New. And here it allows me to select different sizes, but I think I will just put here a custom size. So I will put 3,000 pixels by 3,000 pixels. And the resolution, I think I will put 300 DPI and just in case I want to print this later on. And here you can choose between RGB, CMYK and others. I mainly work with RGB and CMYK. So if you want to print your pattern, you should select CMYK if you want to use it only digitally. Let's say you want to post it on your social media, then choose RGB. I will just choose RGB for this tutorial and I click Create. Now I have my white document here. So if you're new to Photoshop, I have a tutorial where I actually show you the basic Photoshop tools that I usually use in my work and in this class, which is a Skillshare class, where I teach also how to make a sticker. In this class, I show my method, photographing your work, bringing them to Photoshop and separating them from the white background. If you want to learn more about this, you can check out my previous class. We already have our elements for the pattern. So in this lesson, I will mainly explain you the tools that we will need to create this pattern. As you can see, my background is locked now, so I will just go and unlock it. That's just the way I prefer to work. So before to be able to make a seamless pattern in Photoshop, you had to. What I usually did, I used a template that I pre-built myself. And what you were supposed to do is to move your elements from left side to right side from top to bottom, and vice versa, to be able to create this repeat pattern, which was okay, but it took much more time. So this new feature allows you to make absolutely the same thing. But in a fracture of that time, this is amazing and let's discover this tool. So what we will actually do, we will access the pattern view. And to be able to do so, you just need to go to view and then you have it pattern view. So you just click once and you see this little warning message appeared here. So it says that this pattern preview works best with smart objects and it's okay, and I will explain later on what are smart objects and you don't really need to worry about this now, so you just click, Okay. So what do you see here? Is this a new layout? So all the screen Became White and I will show you what it does for us. So I have my folder here with all of my ready to use elements with all of my illustrations that I want to bring in this pattern, I just take the first elements. So let's say I will take the fly agaric, I drag it and drop it into my file and look at this. It instantly created a pattern for us. So actually what you see here is already a pattern. These mushrooms are repeating themselves infinitely. See that? How amazing is it? So basically, that's what this new feature does. So you can move the element and it will move not only the one you place there, but actually all of these duplicated elements, photoshop actually duplicate them for you and make them match perfectly. So as you can see, we have this line here. So this portion of the mushroom is repeating itself here perfectly. So before we did all of this process manually and now it just here automatically for us. So it's amazing in what he can also do. You can actually rotate the subjects. So this is my image. And if I rotated see, it rotates all of the images together. So it's great. You can also scale it to be able to be. So I just press Command T for transform, and then if I hold Option key, I can scale it. And what I mean by the smart object, as you can see, our image that we just dragged and dropped to our document is already a smart object. This icon means that your image is a smart object. And if you click on it twice, it opens in a new tab and you can actually adjust your image here. And these images will automatically be updated in this, in your original document, in this document. So this is just a quick introduction of what our Smart Objects. 9. Composition Tips: So now we have one element already in our file. So this is the beginning of our pattern, and I will just keep adding elements. So what I will do, I will take this panther cap and place it here as well. So it's getting out automatically. Duplicate it as you can see here. I just press Enter and I will change the position of my first flag, Eric. So now I can really play around with these elements and start to build, kind of build my composition. So I'm placing these mushrooms this way temporarily. So I just wanted to see how they look together and I think it's actually quite cute having these mushrooms as a couple here. So there is a big one, there's the small one and I think it looks quite nice. So I will just leave this part of the composition as it is. I will maybe scale this one down a little bit, and I will then play later on on their exact position. If you want to select both, you can just select your illustrations Command T, and now you can move them altogether. So let's say I want this group to be here and maybe I think I will scale it a bit down. And I will continue adding elements to this composition. So I think the next one I will place is this leaf. Some taking the leaf scaling down. And I will see how I want to place these. I will just roughly put them here in the beginning and then I will see what works best. So actually what you can do is if you already have an idea, you can make a sketch of how you want your pattern to look like so that you already have an idea in mind. Or you can do the same thing I'm doing here. So just playing around with your existing elements and seeing how they work altogether. So that's why for now, I will just place all of my elements on my document and I will see later if I want to use all of them or if these are too much. So I will see this one more leaf and scaling it down, rotating it. It's very nice that you already have a preview of how your pattern will look like. So see how this is. This is nice so you can actually make our red. Imagine making some of the ribbon here you see this kind of a repeating line pattern coming here. I think it's very nice. And then the next element, I think I will put a central mushroom. Let's see how this one looks with all the other elements. Now, it's really about your creativity. So you can play around, you can move your elements, you can see what works best, and you have the instant preview of how it will look like. So isn't that amazing? Let me take a look at how this looks separately one from another. I'm not sure I want to put these together yet, but we'll see, we'll see. I will just continue to add elements. An acorn. I definitely want to have an acorn. So what's important is to have different elements, have different sizes. So as you can see here, I have a big elements. So I want this mushroom to be the main element of my composition. And then it has smaller elements like these leaves, this leaf. And then I have the smallest elements like this little leaf here and the acorn. So it's important to have the elements of three different sizes. Big ones, medium ones, and small ones. And what I usually like is having one big element or maybe a few big elements, and then all the others should be smaller. This way, your pattern will be more harmonious and the viewer will instantly understand what's the main subject in your pattern and what's the secondary subject? So actually I like how these two look together. I think this part is not very clear what's going on here, but I will show you a trick on how you can actually make these two separate illustrations look united. And I will show you this a bit later. So now I will just keep adding elements. I actually have one more mushroom here. Let's see how this one works with everything else. I will rotate it. I think this one is a bit, gives us a messy look. I'm not sure I want this element to be here. It might be too much, so I will delete it for now and maybe think if I want to put it there later on. So the pine cone, I definitely want one and we'll scale it down as usual. I'm holding the option key to scale it proportionally, scaling and down even more. And I will place it somewhere here, I think. So as you can see, my pattern starts to look better now. So what I'm basically doing here is I'm trying to avoid these white holes here. Now I see that this spot here is quite empty and this spot is repeating itself as you can see, because it's a repeat pattern. So I want to fill this spot definitely, maybe I will already start doing it. So now i'm, I have more space for one more element here. But I think the overall composition looks pretty nice. Let's add more elements. I have one more acorn that I can still use. And let's see where I can place this, this acorn maybe here. I think it's a bit weird that the end of this leaf is touching the acorns. So I will rotate this leaf even more because I don't want these two elements to cross each other. So this already looks nicer to me and I will rotate this acorn as well. So I think it looks much better. And I think there's still quite a hole here. So maybe I will move these two mushrooms or maybe even make them just a bit smaller. And so as you can notice, it's just about playing around with elements and trying to find the best place for all of your elements. Actually what you can also do, you can flip them, you can flip them horizontally, you can flip them vertically. So what I mean by that, if you click on the element, you press uncommon at t, and then you click with your two fingers. If you're on Mac book or you make a right-click. And now you have this fly out menu. And you can select Flip Horizontal from the menu and you see it got flipped horizontally. Or I make Control Z. Or you can select Flip Vertical and it did this for you. That's one of the tricks that you can also use to give more variety to your subjects. But I think mine was fine as it was. So I think I will just leave it and I will see what I can change here in this pattern. So for instance, I think there is not enough space between these two elements. So I will move this leaf a bit further. And let's see what's the overall layout. So I think I like how everything looks together. So actually I think I'm pretty happy with this pattern. What I want to try is to put a background so you can actually leave the white background. Or if you want, you can choose a different background. So what I will do here, I will create a new layer and I will fill it with my new band ground. So to be able to select a color, I just clicked once on this black color, and it gave me this panel here from which I can go and pick my color. I want something badge, something very clear. So I just go and kind of play around with the slider here and choosing my color. So maybe something like this. Let's see how this one works. And I just clicked on the Paint Bucket tool and then I click once on my new layer. And as you can see, it got instantly filled with my new color. But I think this color is a bit to present. It looks a bit too yellow and I'm not sure I like how it looks, so I think I will choose something more calm. This one looks better already. Let's see how it was with white and let's see how it looks with badge. So I think I actually like how it looks with badge. So maybe I will leave this color for now. 10. Final Adjustments : Dodge and Burn Tools: And what I wanted to do now is to show you how you can unite these two mushrooms and make them look a bit more harmonious together. So I go on my flag Eric layer. So I think there's a bit of a mess here. So I want to darken a little bit the stem of my fly agaric just to make this panther cap pop a bit more. So what I do, I click on my flag Eric layer. The tools I want to show you now are Burn tool and dodge tool, and you will find these tools here. So under this hand a con. And if you click twice, you see this fly-out menu and you have the Dodge Tool, Burn tool and Sponge Tool. So these two first are the ones that we will be using. So I will try the burn tool first. And if you see I have this little cross here. So if I try to work with this tool, That's what it says, that this smart object must be rasterized before proceeding. So what does it mean is that you should do these changes at the very end. So when you're completely happy with your composition and how everything looks, you just want to make a couple of final adjustments. Otherwise, weird things can happen. So I just advise you to make these kind of changes at the very end, when you're 100% sure that you want to leave your elements where they are. So I'm happy with my composition and that's why I will hit, Okay, and now it will allow me to work on my image. This tool works kind of like a brush and what it does, it makes your illustration darker in the place where you're using it. So this part here that I painted became darker and I will do the same thing here on this element as well. As you can see, it becomes darker and this panther kept it kind of pops out a bit more. So I will paint this even more. So as you can see now, it's almost black there. And I think it visually separated these two mushrooms quite nicely. I will probably do the same thing here on the lower side as well. So basically what I wanted is to make the difference between these two mushrooms a bit more visible. And I think I will paint a bit more on this side as well. And probably here too, I'm giving the impression that there's actually a shadow or something like this that my panther cap is casting on the other mushroom. And that's what happening here. So I will continue adding a bit more of a shadow here and there. And then I will show you this other tool, which is a Dodge tool. Okay? That does the opposite. So it makes some of the elements lighter. So this is the opposite of the dodge tool. So what I will do next, I will do the same process on the panther cap as well. So I'm going to the panther cap and the same thing. I'm rasterizing this layer because I'm happy with how it looks like and I will take the burn tool. Okay. And we'll do the same thing here. You can also adjust the size. I think this wide spot is a bit confusing here, so I want to make it darker. I think it looks pretty good. And I think there's something a bit weird happening here. So we'll go back to mine, fly agaric. And I think I will paint this area here to actually, I think I will paint this one with my regular paintbrush. So I'm just taking the color, this color here, like in dark one. And then I'm taking my brush and I'm just painting this area because I think it is a little bit confusing. I think maybe these elements are a bit too dark. So I will go back to my dodge tool so you can really play around and see what works, what does not work. And decide for yourself. If you want to try this method or maybe your illustrations are ready, look nice. Bit more here. I think this looks good. And one more adjustment here. I think I will make this part of the mushroom just a little bit brighter because I think it's a bit too dark and it kind of confuses the the I I will lighten up this area here a little bit. I think even more here. So you can adjust. Even you are finished illustrations in Photoshop. If you're not happy with something, I will adjust this part of my flag or Intuit. Think this bit too dark. Here you go. I think now I'm pretty happy with how it all looks like. 11. Adding Textures: So now when we're happy with our pattern, I wanted to show you one more little trick that I like to use. So my background is looks so my background looks fine to me, but if you want to make it look a bit more interesting, you can also add a texture to it. So what I can do, I can create a new layer. Just click on this icon, which makes a new layer on top of my background layer, on top of my color, and under all the elements that we have here. So makes sure this new layer is under your elements. What I will do, I will take my brush. So I go to brushes and click on this icon here to select a brush. And I want to add some kind of a texture to my background. So I choose this brush. And what you can actually do here, you can change the spacing of the elements of your brush so you can see that it, it is changing now. So it can be very, very scattered or it can be like this. So you choose what you like and you can also change the size of your brush. You can change the direction of these individual elements. So I think it looks fine to me and I will test out this brush. So I need to select a color now. So I'm closing this panel. I want this color to be quite light, so I don't want this texture to be too visible. So what I do, I select my background, and now you have, I have my background color here. I click on it twice and it shows me exactly what color I'm using right now. What I want to do, I want to select a slightly darker color. So I just go with this color picker and I click on the darker colored somewhere underneath my existing color. And here I have a preview of my new color. And if I like it and just click Okay. And now I have this color here, so we'll be working with this color. Now what you need to do, click on the Brush tool again and just paint. As you can see here, I am getting these little spots here that create a more spontaneous look. And as you can see here, they are repeated on other sides of my patterns. So they get repeated as well, just like all the rest of my patterns. So I will just randomly place some of these spots here. And I think I want them to be just a tiny bit more visible. So I will leave these as they are, and I will choose a new color, probably a slightly darker one, maybe something like this. And I'll see if I want to change my brush settings to see maybe there is another brush I want to play around with. This one. No, maybe this one. Let's see what effect this brush gives me. No, I think I don't really like this one, but as you can see, you can play around with all of the brushes and see if you like these effects or not. So I will delete these and I will go back to my brush settings, pick something else, maybe something like this spacing. Yeah, I think it looks pretty good. And I will try. My darker color. Looks good. We'll put just a few splashes here and there. Maybe I will try actually to make it lighter. So let me try it on a new layer so I don't mess up what I just did. Because now you can toggle on and off and see if you like this new layer or if you prefer what was before. So if you make it on a new layer, this adjustment will be non-destructive. So to be able to keep this layer as it is and play around more, I added, I created a new layer on top. I will try to paint with white to see what kind of effects this gives me. And I think it looks quite pretty because I have a lot of white on my flag, Eric, and I think it gives me an interesting effect. Maybe I will play around with the size of the brush. Yeah, not bad. So I will add some of these kind of spontaneous splashes very quickly and very easily. So if you want to add something like this now you know that it can be really effortless if you want to add just a bit more texture to your patterns. Now you know how to do it. It looks pretty, I think it looks a bit more united with all of the rest of my illustration. Maybe I will add just a few more even darker splashes. I think I will pick a color actually that I like something Brown made me like this one. I will go to my brushes again. I'm spacing and I will choose a very small spacing, something like this. Let me try. This works. Maybe another brush, maybe this one. And let's see, it gives us these kind of splashes and trying to place these irregularities. It's not that obvious thing, it's not bad actually. I don't want to put too much of these. Otherwise, it can become obvious that these are not your handmade elements. But yes, I think it looks a little bit like a mud from your mushrooms. Maybe I will add just a few touches here too, just to unite these mushrooms with the rest as well. And I think I actually like how it looks in what kind of effect it gave me. I think my background is a bit more interesting this way. And the whole pattern looks a bit more harmonious. So I think I will leave this as it is. And I think now we are ready to export our pattern. 12. Exporting our Pattern: So what we need to do, we need to merge all of these layers now. So before you do so, you need to be super sure that you don't want to change anything else or what I usually do, I actually save a reserved copy for myself. I actually save the file, the original file, and I give it another name. So let's say I want to save this file as it is. And if in the future I want to get back changed something, make any adjustments, I can do so. So I just go and save a copy and I select Photoshop as format and I will name it autumn adder. And be sure it's a PSD. So you want it to be in Photoshop format, and I'll save it on my desktop. So this is my, my file. It already gave me a previous. So this is actually a tile that is repeating itself. So everything you have on top will be repeated on the bottom. This is just a reserved copy that you have. And if you want to get back to it, you can always do it. What I will do now, I will continue working with this existing file because the name of this file is different. This one remained untitled. And what I will do now, I will merge everything I have here. So to do so, I go and click twice on any level doesn't matter, and you just do Merge Visible. And now what you get, you have this one level. So instead of having many, many layers, you have just one level here. So it means you cannot move your elements anymore. You cannot make any changes. I will show you why we do this. Now we need to exit this pattern preview mode. So to do so, you can go to View and uncheck the pattern preview sign. And there you go. So this is your pattern square tile. So this is the file that will repeat itself infinitely because that's how it was made. So you see this little piece of the mushroom that is missing here. You will find it here on top. Same thing with the leaf, the missing part of the leaf. You will find it on the left side and so on. So this is actually your repeat pattern. So you can now save it. You can save it as a PNG, as a JPEG and it's going to be ready to print. If you want to use a print on-demand service, you can totally do this. What you will upload there is this file, or you can actually do one more thing here. So you can go to Edit and then you find defined pattern. So you click on Define Pattern, you give it a name. So pattern, you click, Okay. And now it created a pattern for years. So you just go to patterns and you find it there. And if you don't see the patterns window, you can always find it if you go to Window and you'll find patterns. So what does this actually do for you? I will show you if I create a brand new document, just a standard document, I click, Create. What I can do. I can easily fill any kind of document with my pattern. Now what I do, I just take my existing pattern that I just created, drag and drop it to my file and look at this. It filled my document with my pattern automatically. Isn't that great? You can feel any kind of surfaces, any kind of documents with your patterns. Now, if you want to rotate your pattern or if you want to scale it, if you want to make the scale of your pattern smaller or bigger, what you can do, you see here that there's this icon appeared here, this pattern icon. So you click on it twice and you see this dialog box open here. So you can change the angle, you can change the scale. Let's say I put it to 50, e.g. and you see my scale instantly changed. If I want to rotate it, I can do this as well. I just give it an angle, hit. Okay, and here you go. It got rotated. It's a very fun feature. Just keep in mind that this new document is not your repeat pattern tile anymore. So if you save this file and you send it for printing, it will not repeat itself. Has it was with our original tile because we rotated it because we changed the scale. This is not your pattern tile anymore. This is not the file that you can go and send for printing, but e.g. this file is very good if you want to post your artwork on Instagram, if you just give your original tile as it is and you just posted. Someone can just grab it and replicated and easily start selling products with your patterns. If you want to protect yourself a bit more, always be sure of changing the scale and maybe the angle of the patterns so that you're not giving away your repeat pattern tile. And basically that's it. Now, I will export this file. So I just go File Export, Export As I think I will export mine as JPEG, I will put a great quality. I'm not changing anything here, so my width and height remain the same, and I just click on export and give it a name. So here we go. Now I have my file that I can use and I can send it to print easily. Next, what I wanted to show you if we don't merge all of the layers that we did previously. And to be able to show you that, I will open our reserve file, the one that is unmerged, as you can see here on the right side, all the levels are still here. And if we try to toggle here and exit the pattern preview, look what happens. I click on it. And do you see that some of the elements just disappeared away from our documents. So actually Photoshop just deleted. He did not considered all the elements that he duplicated for us. So if you don't merge your elements, you will not be able to export the real patterns. So I will undo that pattern preview. So if you click on it again, they get back. But to be able to export it, as I said, you need to merge all of these layers so you just click once, like I said before and do merge visible or flattened image. We already did it. So I'm not going to repeat this because we already have our pattern square here. But it's basically just to explain you why we actually need to flatten the image. And if you want to be safe, I always suggest you to save a reserve file saved named differently. And this way you can always access it and make any changes if you want. So here we go. Now you have your amazing pattern here. And now, just imagine what kind of things you can do with this pattern. I already imagined that you can print it on fabric. So I think it's really cool. So actually you transformed something, hand painted, something that was on your paper into a pattern that can be printed on any kind of surfaces. So I think this is very, very cool. So now you know how to make your own pattern using this new method that became available for us since the CC 2021 for the shop virgin, test it out. I promised you will have so much fun. Play around with your elements, play around with backgrounds. I'm sure that you will come up with something you really like and maybe you will even wants to print it on something, e.g. on wallpaper, on fabric, just to decorate your home. And just imagine that you can give gifts to your loved ones with your own illustrations on it. I think it's amazing. Now, you should have all the tools you need to get really creative and express your love for nature in a whole new way. 13. Bonus Lesson!: As a bonus, I wanted to show you something exciting. It will be especially useful if you want to sell your patterns or if you want to present them in a portfolio, or even if you want to post them on your social media. What's a very nice way of showcasing your patterns, not only in a simple way of presenting a square or a shape filled with a pattern, but to actually showcase your pattern on a real object. And this method is using mockups. It's such a great way of showcasing your work and even for yourself to imagine how your work will actually look like on something on a cushion, e.g. in this case, in mockups are an amazing way of instantly testing your patterns. So you can purchase mock-ups. Or there are websites where you can even find them for free. And it usually comes as a PSD file. So you can see here PSD, so it's a Photoshop file. So basically when you open it in Photoshop, That's what happens on the right side. In our layer panel, we have a lot of layers and each layer controls a particular thing, e.g. this is the pillow layer. So when I click on and off, when I toggle on and off, you can see that it disappears. And then we have the bed layer in the background. So to be able to see your pattern on a subject, you need to go to the layer of this subject. So in my case, pillow. So I have a group here. So I go inside of this group and I have more layers here. So I have shade, I have light here. And this is the layer that actually allows me to change the color or the pattern of my pillow. So it's even written here, your image here. So it makes it super easy to understand how it works. Usually it's pretty intuitive. These layers are even underlined with red so that we know where we need to put our image. So to be able to change the color or the pattern on this pillow, we need to go to this layer. So as you can see, this is a smart object. And if you remember, if we click twice on the smart object and new document will appear. And this is kind of an open version of this pillow. So we can actually put our pattern in this new window and it will get automatically applied it to our cushion. Isn't that magical? So what I see here is I just told off this original layer that was here, so this is the background. What do we actually do? We need to change the background so it's super easy. All you need is to find your pattern. So I already have mine here in the pattern's panel. If you don't see patterns panel, you can go to Window and find patterns. And if you forgot how to bring your pattern here, just rewatched the lesson when I show you how to do it. Then it's as simply as it is. You just drag and drop your pattern on this background layer. You release it, and here you go. Before leaving this document, you need to save this one file. So you just make a comment S or Control S on your PC because you need to commit these changes to be able to see the changes on your original document. Once the saving process is finished, you go back to your document and look at it. Your pattern is on the cushion and it plugs just like in the reality. So isn't that amazing? So you can instantly imagine how it will look like. You can check out the scale. So for instance, I think this scale is a bit too big for my cushion and maybe I even want to change the placement, the rotation. So how can you do this? This is actually very easy. So here, as you can see in the layers panel, we have this new layer on top of your image. And this layer is responsible for this pattern. And if you click twice on this pattern icon, see what appears. There is a dialog box that allows us to change the scale, e.g. let's say I want to put 50 per cent and it instantly shows you how this pattern will look at 50%. I can maybe see what looks like 70 cell. Pretty nice. So this is how it will look like at 70%. And you can really play around, you can put 30%, 10%. This looks way too small. I think I really liked this scale here because we see the mushroom nicely. We see all of the subjects and we don't really see the repeat here. And we can also change the angle of the patterns. So e.g. let's say I put 19 and something and see everything changed here. If I put 50, let's see what happens. So you can really play around with it and see what it gives you what you liked the most. And if you put minus, let's see -40, see this little thing got in the opposite direction. So it rotates it for me. But I think I actually liked the original placement of my pattern here. So I will click. Okay, and Photoshop just committed these changes for me. So now you know how to work with mock-ups as well. And as I said, this is a very nice way of visualizing your work on subjects. And it's also a very nice way of presenting your work to others. I hope that you enjoyed this bonus lesson. And of course, I hope that this whole course will help you to bring your physical illustrations into digital space. And as a final step that you will be able to see your paintings on products, on fabric or anything else. I really hope that you enjoyed the class. Please don't forget to upload your projects to the project section of the class. I'm super curious to see your designs and your patterns doesn't matter if you use your own illustrations or if you use my files that I provided in the class, I really want to see your designs and what you've created. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.