Patterns in Procreate: Supercharge Your Workflow with an Image Library

1. Welcome! : In this class, you're going to learn how to create beautiful seamless patterns in Procreate using a super easy method. And the best part is that they will all be made from illustrations that you can use again and again. If you enjoy starting from scratch, that's great. But having a library of illustrations at your fingertips can truly be a game changer. Hi, I'm Sylvia Spina, my friends call me Sylvie. And with over 20 years in the visual arts, I have built a library of illustrations that I've turned into patterns featured in brands such as Zara, mango, various independent labels, and my own personal projects. But here's what I love the most. These illustrations aren't just for patterns. I use them to create wall art, murals, and even animations. In this class, you're going to learn how to organize your illustrations, turn them into beautiful patterns, and take your designs further using tools like Canva. By the way, the same worklo works with design programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. I'll show you how to explore different color ways and visualize your designs on real life products using Maps. It's so exciting to see your patterns come to life. While you can follow along in creating simple illustrations, I encourage you to bring your own artworks to this class, no matter their style or how complex they are, their gold. And if they're done physically, don't worry, a link to a tutorial on digitizing them so that you can use them too. Everyone is welcome in this class. If you're a beginner, you will find the illustrations easy to follow and you will learn the steps to make a pattern. And if you're a more experienced designer, you will love this workflow. It will give you ideas on how to reuse your work and expand your creative possibilities. This class comes with all the free resources you will need to kickstart your pattern making journey. But if you're eager to take your skills even further, I have created an amazing pattern bundle designed to support you on your journey as a surface pattern designer and set you up per success. Available as a separate digital product, it will save you tons of time, help you showcase your work more professionally, and even reach out to potential clients. I can't wait to see the amazing patterns that you will create. All you need to take this class is an iPad with procreating style. So grab your iPad and see you in class. 2. Your Project: First of all, thank you so much for joining this class. I'm very happy to have you here. Your project for this class is to create one or more patterns in Procreate using the method you will learn in this class. The key is that your pattern must be made using illustrations that you have exported as PNG files into a library. Once they're saved, these illustrations will be there for you to use whenever you like. I encourage you to bring your own illustrations to make the project uniquely yours. There's nothing quite like seeing your personal work transformed into a pattern, and there are so many things that can work for it. I will dedicate one single lesson to inspire and prompt you with ideas that can be turned into a pattern easily. Now, if you're a total beginner, short on time or here to just learn the method and workflow, feel free to follow along with me as I create a fun collection of simple creatures for my pattern. Having said this, there is something important that you should keep in mind. If you follow along and your final pattern ends up looking too similar to mine, please don't use it commercially. And if you share it on social media, please mention that it was something made as part of this class. I'm sure that once you learn the method, you will feel excited to create more patterns in your own style. Here's what I would love to see in your final project. Your original reusable illustrations. These will be the building blocks of your pattern. Share them however you want, screenshots, crop them, put them on a slide using Canva or show them individually. If you started your image library, you can take a screenshot if you like and share it with me. All good if you want to keep it private. I want to see your final pattern in two scales at 100% and at 50%. Show the pattern in various colorways. This will show that you have mastered Procrits adjustment tools, your pattern on a real life product. Use the mockups provided in this class to visualize your pattern on an actual product. It's a great way to imagine how your design would look in the real world. As a bonus for this class, I'm going to show you how to reuse your illustrations in Canva to create a placement graphic. Combining a pattern with a placement graphic is a very common practice in the surface pattern design industry. Imagine a pyjama set with a pattern on the bottom piece and a placement on a matching t shirt. So as part of your project, I would love to see how you reuse your illustrations to create a standalone placement graphic. If you don't want to use Canva, you can also do it on Procreate. I just love Canva because it has so many stunning fonts that creating graphics takes no time. Once you finish your project, share it on the project gallery of this class. And if you share it on social media, please tag me at sylvispina dot t so that I can see your process and share it with my followers as well. Now let's talk about the class resources. This class comes with all the free resources you will need to kickstart your pattern making journey. Layout template. I don't think you're going to need this, but since composing patterns can be tricky at first, I have left a directional template to help you out. With this template, you can simply place your illustrations where shown to achieve a balanced, well composed pattern from the beginning. You don't have to use it, but if your pattern doesn't feel quite right, give it a try and see if it helps. Three mockups. These mockups will help you visualize your pattern on real life products. You'll find all of these resources available for download in the project and resources section of this class. And just so you know, by downloading them, you will be accepting to be added to my newsletter. You will only hear from me when I have something to announce, such as a giveaway or valuable resources to share. After watching the class, you enjoyed it and learn something new, please review it. It would mean a lot to me as reviews help me know what I'm doing well, what I can do better in the future, and also what my students enjoy the most. Okay, now that you know what your project is, let's get on with the rest of the class. In the next lesson, I'm going to talk about inspiration and tricks to get those creative juices flowing. I can't wait to see what you create. Mm 3. Finding Inspiration Around You: Welcome to the first part of the class where we'll focus on creating illustrations and building your very own image library. As a designer or creative, having an image library is going to be an invaluable resource. After you finish this class, I encourage you to go through your hard drives through your computer and through your Procreates gallery and grab all those illustrations that you have been creating in the past and put them on your image library folder. This way, you have them ready to use whenever you want. The more you add, the more options you will have for future patterns. And if you don't have a huge collection yet, don't worry. This class will get you started, and you can keep expanding your library as you go. Finding inspiration is easier than you think. In this lesson, I'm going to share some tips to spark your creativity and a list of ideas that can easily be turned into patterns. First and foremost, if you find yourself overthinking or feeling stuck about choosing a theme, don't worry. Just follow along with the rest of the class and save the brainstorming session for later. You can always create a second, third, or even fourth or so many more patterns after learning the method. The beauty of the workflow that you will learn in this class is that any illustration you create can be turned into patterns. So once more, if you're feeling stuck on ideas, you're short on time, follow along in creating my simple and fun illustrations. Enjoy the process of learning the method, and I'm sure that your creativity will shine through the process. There are so many fun things you can draw for your patterns. If you need some inspiration, I have a trick for you. Just look around where you are right now. You're in a desk, I bet you have some pens around, maybe some plants, you can peter, and if you're like me, one or many cups of coffee and tea laying around. Those drawings can make a great pattern. Okay, here's another example. If you recently went to the beach, you can draw an umbrella, flip flops, people sitting down, a boat or two, you get me. If Christmas or halloween are coming up, you might want to try some themed illustrations, and the same goes for birthdays. Any other special occasion like a newborn in your family could be a great source of inspiration for your drawings. I would absolutely love to see the gallery of this class project full of different patterns, telling different stories, and showcasing various personalities and styles. Let me give you more ideas to get those creative juices flowing. Galaxies and zodiac signs, winter landscapes and winter animals, alpacas and cactus, halloween icons, makeup items, delicious junk food, beach items, sushi, bakery and coffee. Dogs and cats, of course, old school tattoo icons, St. Valentine's Day, Christmas, Halloween, back to school, a day in the park, a day in the forest, a day in the street, house plants and the list can go on and on. Now, with this being said, you can always follow along with me and create these fun characters. You can personalize them with your own touches like different faces or colors. Now take a few minutes to think about what inspires you and write down some ideas. You don't have to start drawing straightaway, but having a list will be super helpful once you have learned the method and you're ready to create personalized patterns with your own illustrations. When you're ready, meet me in the next lesson where we'll dive into creating some ready made templates for both your illustrations and your patterns. See you in the next lesson. 4. Creating Ready Made Templates: In this lesson, I want to show you how to create ready made templates for both your patterns and your illustrations. Having these templates on hand is incredibly practical. It ensures that you're always working with the right resolution and size, saving you a lot of headaches down the line. I've had times in the past when I've spent hours working on a illustration, and then I found out that it was too small or I didn't have enough resolution for printing it. And that was quite frustrating, to be honest. In this lesson, we're going to open a document of 20 per 20 centimeters, but you can create your template in whatever size you want. Sounds good. Let's go ahead and create some templates. To create a template, tap on the plus icon on the top right corner of your screen. Then tap on the black box with another plus icon. This opens a window where you can set your specifications of your document. I'm going to select centimeters from the bottom menu and enter 20 per 20. I find it helpful to have a measuring tape by my side. It gives me a real sense of the actual size that I'm using. For example, 40 centimeters feels too big, whilst 30 centimeters is a good size. However, 20 centimeters is definitely big enough for most of my illustrations. Next, I'll set the resolution to 300 TPI, which gives me a maximum of 116 layers, which is more than enough for me. Keep in mind that the number of layers might vary depending on the capacity and size of your iPad. For color profile, I'm going to stick with RGB because it's going to showcase my colors really bright and I can always change it for CMYK in the future. To save this template, just give it a name. I'm going to call it asset template. And tap on Create. Now, if you go back to the main gallery and tap on the plus icon and scroll down, you will find your template saved in here. If you want to bring it to the top of the stack, you just have to long hold on it and slide it up. I already have a template, so I'm going to delete this one. To get rid of a template, you have to slide it to the left to edit, and there you can change any of the specifications or you can delete it. You will see that alongside my illustration templates, I have also created three pattern templates, 32 per 32, 24 by 24 and 64 per 64 centimeters. I got used to these three sizes whilst working on the fashion industry. But depending on your location, you might be more familiar with working on inches or with pixels. Also keep in mind that there are sites like Spoonflower that require files at 150 DPI instead of 300. So if you're thinking about uploading your patterns to these sites, it's worth checking their technical specifications and creating a template specifically for them. Already, now that our template is ready, we can start creating our illustrations in the next lesson. 5. Creating Your Illustrations: Now that we have our templates ready, we can start our illustrations. But before doing so, let me give you some recommendations. This is not always necessary, but having items on different sizes is a good idea and will help you a lot when it comes to composing your pattern and placement graphics. Start by creating a few larger illustrations. These are often called the hero illustrations because they're the building blocks of your pattern helping you to set the overall structure and theme. Think of them as the stars of your design. Once you have your hero illustrations, it's a good idea to create some medium and smaller ones that will be perfect for filling any empty spaces, adding balance, or making your pattern look more dense. Use the space. When creating your illustrations, try to avoid creating more than one per layer and use all the available space. If you want to add volume using masks, you're welcome to use more than one layer per illustration. But in any case, just use space. I'm going to create a series of funny creatures that will take no time to draw, and I'm going to use this pretty fine color palette that I've put together previously. Feel free to follow along or go ahead and create more complex illustrations in your own style. They can be conversational or they can be botanical. So with my 2020 centimetry document, I'm going to select the dry ink brush from the library of brushes, which is one of my favorites. If it's your first time using procreate, though, I advise you to go for the studio pen instead. This way, you won't experience problems with the texture and color threshold, which I won't explain in this class. If you're curious to know what this means or does, you can always go and check my beginners to procreate class. I'm going to create a funny shape. This looks like a potato or potato, depending on where you are based, and I'm going to add a funny face. Now, on a separate layer, I'm going to select a different color, and I'm going to start experimenting with a different shape. If you're following along, try to vary your shapes as much as you can, as this will help you practice your composition skills when you create your pattern. The reason why I'm adding faces to these bubbles is to make the illustrations directional, and also they look much more fun. I'm now going to polish the sloutes of my illustrations and see if there's anything I can amend. Now that I have a few big items, more than four, but it's fine, I'm going to go ahead and create some smaller items. So something really simple like a star, making the edges rounded instead of pointy so that they fit the style of the monsters. I want to create a flower, so I'm going to open the symmetry tool so that it's easier to create. Okay, I think this number of large items and medium items is fine, so I'm going to stop for now. Once you're done with your illustrations, meet me in the next lesson where I'm going to show you how to export your images and start your own image library. 6. Exporting Your Illustrations & Starting a Library: Once your illustrations are ready, we're going to export them as PNG images with a transparent background, and I'm going to show you two ways of doing so. Right now, I have a document where each final element is on a separate layer. There are no masks or texture layers lying around separately, so I can just export all of my images simultaneously. To export layers as PNG files, you have to deactivate your background first. See how now my creatures appear on this checkered background, which means that there is nothing there. Then you have to make the layers that you want to export visible. In my case, all of them. Then I'm going to tap on the wrench icon scroll down to share layers and tap on share layers as PNG files. If I tap on safe and then go to my photo gallery, my images will appear in there. Now let's see a second scenario. I love to work with texture, so having each object on its own layer is very unusual for me. If I open this Christmas illustration file, you will see that my illustrations are within groups that contain loads of layers. I could just merge all these layers into one, but I don't really want to lose them in case I want to make any changes in the future. So in this case, I have to export whatever appears on the canvas as a flat image and discard all the layers. Let me show you another example. I'm going to go to the main gallery and open these berries, which are part of my class digital Illustration, a beginner's guide to mastering Procrit. As you can see, this plant is composed by loads of elements which are placed on different layers. In this case, I have to export whatever appears on the canvas as a flat image and discard all the layers. Let's see how to do this. First of all, I'm going to make the background layer invisible, and then I'm going to go to share and select the PNG file format from the top menu under the sharing options. This is going to export whatever appears on the canvas as a flat image and discard all the layers. I'm going to tap on save on my iPad. If I go to my photo gallery, you're going to see that the image has been saved. It appears with a white background at first, but if you tap on it, the background will turn black, indicating that the image has been saved with a transparent background. Let's get your library started. After exporting all of your images, they're going to start mixing with your everyday life photos and downloads. So to keep your library organized, you can create a new album dedicated to storing your illustrations, and this album will become your very own image library. To create a new album, scroll down your library, tap on new album, and name it something like a set library or something that you want. Tap on add and start moving all your illustrations to the newly created album. This way, you're going to start building an organized library of images, which is super powerful because you'll be ready to design anything in no time in the future. Now let me show you how to organize your library in procreate. When you have worked on various sets of illustrations, it might get quite confusing to know what's contained in each of the files. You can solve this by making a preview of all the elements and maintaining that layer visible at the top of your layer stack, something like this. I usually do this by duplicating the groups or illustrations within my files, flattening one of the groups, scaling the illustrations down, and then merging all the smaller illustrations into one layer that I leave visible at the top of the layer stack. This way, when I go back to my gallery, I can see exactly what elements are contained in each file, even if they're on separate invisible layers. This is very helpful if you want to revisit a design to make changes or reuse these elements in the future. By organizing your assets in this way, you can start building a well organized library of different assets within Procreate and save the final images with a transparent background in your photo gallery on your iPad or on a folder on the cloud. Alright, now that your illustrations are saved into your photo gallery, we're going to start our pattern. Okay. 7. Part Two: Designing Patterns!: Welcome to the second part of the class where we're going to start building our pattern tile using our reusable illustrations. If you're joining from another class, then a special welcome to you. I'm so glad you're here. Let's go ahead and do a quick recap for everyone. So far, we have created illustrations on a 20 per 20 centimeter document, but feel free to use a different size if that suits your style. Make sure it's large enough and that you're using all the canvas space. Once your illustrations are ready, export them with a transparent background into your iPads photo gallery and organize them into a dedicated folder. This will be the beginning of your image library. If you need help with this, check out the exporting your Illustrations lesson for some guidance. Now, in this part of the class, I'm going to guide you through the process of turning those reusable illustrations into a pattern tile. Whether your illustrations are digital or physical, like hand drawn or hand painted pieces, you can use them to create patterns. If they're physical, you're going to need to digitize them first. If you're not sure how to do it, don't worry. I've included a link to a tutorial in the class description to help you with the digitation process. Once they're ready, come back and join us here. One thing I want to emphasize is the importance of making sure that your pattern tile is always aligned perfectly without any unwanted caps or white lines. And if you do find any, go back a few steps and start again. That's perfectly fine. You've got this. I can't wait to see what you create. 8. Design Smarter: Pattern Basics to Keep in Mind: Before we jump into creating your pattern, I want to share some important concepts that will help you make thoughtful decisions when it comes to creating your designs. I'm going to talk about the size of your tile, the size of the elements that you design with, and the different layouts that you can use when composing your pattern. Patterns can seem a bit tricky to create at first. When they cover larger surfaces, they might look super complex, but the cool thing is that they're actually made from just one repeating tile. One of the fundamental steps of creating a repeating tile is to understand the basic different repeating systems and how to make them. This will educate your eye when it comes to creating more complex, seamless patterns. In this lesson, I'll show you some pattern examples and explain with a couple of slides the different repeating systems. Let's dive into sites. When you're designing in Procreate or Photoshop, for example, it's super important to think about what you want to use your pattern for and design accordingly. It's not the same designing for a wallpaper than for baby clothes. One scale is much larger than the other one, and so the tile sizes should be kept in mind from the beginning. Throughout my career, clients have requested patterns in specific formats of eight per eight, 16 per 16, 32 per 32, and 64 per 64 centimeters. These sizes are based on the circumference of the printing cylinders some factors use, but they can vary depending on where you are. Might be used to thinking on inches, for example, or even pixels, which, by the way, is totally fine. We're going to refer to them as small, medium, large, and huge. The size of your canvas not only impacts the characteristics of your design, but it can also make the design process much more efficient if you choose wisely. For example, if you're creating a simple design with just one small element, a smaller canvas makes more sense, like wise spend loads of time when the repeating system can do the heavy lifting for you. Now, if you want to include three elements, then a medium canvas would actually make more sense. Choosing a canvas size that matches the look you're aiming for will boost your efficiency. For example, I created a moon and star pattern a couple of years back and went straight for a big canvas thinking that it would look more professional. Looking back now, I would definitely have chosen a medium one instead. It would have taken half the time. Plus, when you compare both prints, you can't actually tell the difference. It's also crucial to consider the scale of the elements that you're designing with. Take this cat print, for example. Even though it uses the same canvas size, the scale can look quite different depending on how you arrange the elements. In this class, I'm going to use a large canvas of 32 or 32 centimeters, and my elements are going to be fairly big around 10 centimeters each. I want to be able to use this pattern in a wallpaper, for example, and downscale it to half or third of its size to fit stationary items or even baby clothes. Down scaling a pattern to have its size is fine, but I don't recommend scaling it up. It will become blurry and lose its quality. Okay, now let's explore some different repeat fundamentals. Block pattern repeat. This one is one of the simplest systems. It takes the original repeat block and arranges it in a grid format to cover the whole area. Half drop pattern repeat. This is often found in more casual designs. You created by stacking the repeating unit in a column and offsetting it by half in the next column. Brick pattern repeat. This one is similar to the half drop, but it is stacked horizontally instead of vertically like brickwork. This helps to break the design and gives it a more relaxed vibe. Now let's talk about direction. One way or directional patterns feature strong lines of elements running vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Two directional patterns are similar but reversible running in both directions. Multidirectional repeat can be viewed from any angle. When the elements are placed in various directions, the design doesn't have a specific orientation. This is great for fabric printing, since it can be cut and used from any point reducing fabric waste. In the pattern bundle, you're going to find a set of fantastic cheat sheets for creating one directional, two directional, and multi directional patterns in different systems. They're great for practicing these concepts, and when actually using them as a guide, they can help you save some time and make smarter choices when it comes to placing your illustrations within the pattern tile. The next lesson, we're going to bring our illustrations back into Procreate and start our pattern tile. 9. Importing & Resizing Your Images: Okay, now it's time to bring those reusable illustrations from your image library back into Procreate and get them ready to start your tile. As always, I have a few recommendations. When you resize your images, especially in Procreate, they tend to lose a little bit of their quality. If you resize them down, it's usually fine. But you resize them up and down and rotate them and all that, not so much. Remember that your original images are safely stored on your photo gallery just waiting for you to use them again. So if at any point during the designing process, you're like, Wow, this looks so blurry. Don't hesitate to import your images back into Procrit. Resize them directly into the final size and discard the blurry one. That's the beauty of designing this way. You will always have a crisp, high quality version ready to go. Here I am on my Procrit gallery, and I'm going to select the 32 per 32 template for my pattern, but you can choose any size that you want. The first thing that we're going to do is import our illustrations back into this document. You have two options to do this. One is to tap on the wrench icon, then add insert a photo and select your images. To finalize your input, you have to tap on the arrow icon again. This method only allows you to import one image at a time. Now, there's an easier way to import multiple images. You have to split your screen into two parts. To do this, I like to slide my finger up on the bottom of the screen, tap on the gallery icon and slide it into one side of the screen. If you can't see the photo gallery, icon is because you have to open the app first. Then tap on select, select all the images you want to import. And drag them onto your file. If you have any layer restriction, you don't have to import all of these images at the same time because they're all saved in your gallery and you can just import them whenever you need them. This method is great when you want to import several images at the same time and see how each of them is imported into its own layer. It's important to resize the images down and decide first how big you want your illustrations to be. It's key to have in mind that it's okay to downscale images. But if you were to enlarge these images back in prograde, they're going to lose their resolution and look really blurry. Now, how do you take this decision? It's hard to visualize how large the images are in this canvas. I have my measuring tape by my side, and in here, it's really easy to take a decision on how large I want my illustrations to be. I might want to use this pattern in homework. So for example, seven or 10 centimeters is fine for me. But how do I know how big these illustrations are on the canvas? Let me show you a trick to find out. Tap on the wrench icon. Tap on Canvas, turn on the drawing guide toggle and tap on edit drawing guide. This is going to display a grid that we're going to use as a ruler. We're going to modify the third bar which defines the grid size. See how when I move the bar, this number changes. At the moment, it's showing the pixels, but if I tap on it, I can change it 2 centimeters. I'm going to tap undone and with the grid size bar, I can decide how large I want these squares to be. 10 centimeters is perfect for what I want. I can reposition my grid with these blue dots, so I'm going to align it to the start of my canvas and set it to 10 centimeters. With this top bar, you can change the color of your grid, and with these bars, you can change the opacity and thickness. I don't want it to be that visible. So I'm going to tap on them. And now when I resize my elements, I have a much better sense of their size. See, I thought they were smaller, but now using these guides, I can scale them down into around 10 centimeters. Now that I have defined the size of my assets, I can go ahead and make my grid invisible. Once you've imported and resized, your images meet me in the next lesson where we're going to start our parent tile. I. 10. Starting Your Tile: Central Composition: In this lesson, we're going to start creating the central composition of our pattern. At the moment, all of my images are aligned in the central of my canvas, so it's hard to see them. I find it very helpful to display the images in a way where I can see them all at the same time. I usually put them within a group. I'm going to get rid of this one because it's repeated and then make them invisible to have more canvas space. So my pattern is going to be multi directional. So I'm going to move my assets around and start organizing them in the central area, making sure that none of them surpass the border. Be mindful of the space that you're living in between your elements and try to keep a similar distance in between them. You can activate and deactivate the rest of the layers to start deciding which element you want to use next. I am also making sure that my elements are facing different directions. If you have two elements of the same color like these two purple ones, try not to put them side by side. If this happens, it's not a big deal, but be mindful not to repeat elements too much in one area. So keep these top tips in mind. Keep a similar distance in between your elements. Avoid placing two of the same colors side by side and always keep in mind the direction of your pattern. Okay, I'm going to work with these five elements for now. Depending on how many elements you have and the space that you want to keep in between them, the central composition might take you a little bit longer than me, but that's totally fine. Take your time, enjoy it. Be mindful on how you place your elements. And once you have your central composition ready, meet me in the next lesson where we're going to start working on the horizontal repeat. 11. Creating the Horizontal Repeat: Okay, let's start working on the horizontal repeat. To make this, we need to merge all of our illustrations into a single layer. I know that I could import these illustrations again, but since I have changed their size already, I want to keep a copy of them in separate layers. For this, I'm going to group them first and then duplicate this group. So I'm only going to flatten one of the two groups. This way, I can keep a copy with all the separated downscale illustrations, including this yellow creature that I haven't used and merge the other one into a single layer. I'm going to tap on the arrow icon. Now, pay attention to the bounding box. See how it's only surrounding the drawings instead of the whole canvas. If we were to do the repeat with this selection, nothing would fit, and it would be a bit of a disaster. There are lots of methods out there that involve creating new layers and groups, but after trying a couple of methods, I have discovered the one that I'm about to show you, and I love it because how simple and straightforward it is. So I'm going to exit the move tool, and in the same layer of my assets, draw four marks, one on each corner of the canvas. Don't worry about the color as well erase these marks later. Just make sure that they're not too small and that they're touching the corners. Now if I activate the move tool again, the bounding box will include the whole canvas area. Col right, no extra layers or groups needed. Now let's duplicate this layer to create the horizontal repeat so that our layers are aligned perfectly in the middle. We need a little help from Procreate. When you tap on the arrow icon, you'll have to enable the snapping and magnetics toggles under the snapping option on the bottom central menu. Keep these bars quite high as they will help in the process. This setting turns the images into magnets, aligning them perfectly to the central edge of the canvas or to other images. See how when I move my layer to the left is snapped into the middle of the canvas and this line appears. Now I can open the layer stack, select the bottom copy, and move it to the other side. It is key to always zoom in to check for any white lines in the middle. If you see any, you have to go back a few steps and try again. And if the problem persist, you may have to increase the distance and velocity bars so that the magnet effect is stronger. The problem of having these lines is that if you create the rest of your pattern, your final pattern is not going to work because you will be able to spot that line anywhere in the repeat. So if you see any, just go back and try again. If everything is looking fine, open the layer panel and merge the two layers by pinching them with two fingers. Now we have to remove these black marks. Instead of using the eraser, which could leave some pixels lying around, I'm going to use the selection tool, which is the third ribbon icon on the top left of the screen. I'm going to select the free hand mode from the bottom menu, surround the top mark to select it, tap on the Add button from the bottom menu and enclose the bottom area to add it to the selection. Then I will tap on add again. Then swipe three fingers down and tap on cut to remove them altogether. Now it's time to fill and polish the central space. This process might be super easy or might take some time depending on the type of pattern that you're creating. In my case, it's quite easy. I just have to add this yellow creature into the central area. You might be wondering why it's being so easy for me. Well, first of all, I have a lot of experience grading patterns, but I have also had in mind the brick composition that I taught in the pattern fundamental lesson. Knowing these fundamentals will help you create a balanced composition from the beginning. Okay, back to the pattern. Now I'm going to activate the group which contains all the elements in different layers, and I'm going to select the yellow one because I haven't used it. So I'm going to duplicate this layer to keep the original for layer and take it out of the group. I'm going to collapse the group, and I'm going to put the yellow creature in the center. To be able to move it freely, I'm going to deactivate the snapping tuggles and there's a sensation I have. This image seems a bit smother than the other ones. I could increase it slightly in here, but since inprocrit, images tend to lose a resolution when they're resized. I'd rather get rid of it completely and import it again from my image library. And this is precisely the cool thing about working this way. You are always going to have your images in full resolution ready to be used. Now, there's a trick I still want to show you if the loss of resolution is not terrible. You can go to the adjustment panel and select Sharpen from the drop down menu. By sliding your pen to the right, you can bring the borders back. But if this doesn't resolve the problem, then it's better to replace the image with a saved version from your library. You can check how your assets look facing different directions by rotating your canvas with your fingers. This will help you check how things are looking, especially when working on multi directional patterns. All right. Now that our horizontal repeat is done, we're going to move on to creating the vertical repeat. See you in the next lesson. 12. Creating the Vertical Repeat: Now we're going to work on the vertical repeat to complete our pattern. Once more, if I tap on the arrow, can the bounding box only surrounds my elements instead of the entire canvas. I'm going to create my marks in the middle, one below the other, just to show you that you don't always need to place them on the corners. As long as there's an element touching the border of your canvas, you can make the marks anywhere you want. I'm going to duplicate the layer to create the repeat and making sure that the snapping is enabled, move one to the bottom and one layer to the top. After confirming that there are no lines, I'm going to merge the layers and remove the marks using the selection tool. Now, there's space to add another element in here. I think the blue element fits well here. See how all the surrounding colors are different. I'm going to deactivate the snapping and magneting options to move the object freely. It's easy to think that this pattern tile is now finished, but there's something missing. Let's test this pattern and make it smaller to see if the problem is revealed. I'm going to merge the layers and duplicate this layer. I'm going to make the bottom one invisible as I want to keep the original scale intact. To test my pattern, I'm going to tap on the arrow icon, activate the magnetics and snapping toggles and move the corner of my tail until it fits the middle. Look how these horizontal and vertical lines appear. Now I'm going to swipe three fingers down, tap and duplicate, and move the copy to the right. And now the problem is very clear. There's one element missing in between these two tiles. Now, I had spotted this problem from the beginning, but I wanted to show you how important is to test your pattern once in a while when you're designing it. When testing it, you will also be able to check if the tiles aligned correctly or if there's any unwanted line that you need to go fix before you keep on designing your pattern. I'm going to get rid of these copies because I don't need them, and I'm going to create the vertical repeat again. And whilst doing so, I want to show you something else. I'm going to start by duplicating my tile, tap on the move to, and this time, I'm not going to move the image to the exact center, but instead, I'm going to leave it at a random distance from the edge. Here is fine, and now notice how when I move the other layer, it snaps into either the center of the canvas or to the pixels of this new layer. This is to show you that you don't always have to align everything to the middle. This information will be valuable for when you're creating more complex patterns and need to move your images based on pixels across your canvas. I'm going to merge these layers and choose an element to place in the gap. Looking at the surrounding colors, I think that the yellow element works well in here. I'm going to deactivate the snapping options and adjust the position by flipping the image vertically or horizontally until I see it fits. Once I'm happy with the placement, I'm going to merge my layers. Although you have already kind of seen it, in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to test and amend your pattern if necessary. See you in the next lesson. 13. Testing and Refining Your Pattern: When making patterns, is key to test them before exporting them or adding smaller elements to make them look more dense. Let me show you how to do this. Open the layer panel and duplicate the pattern tile. You should always keep one of the layers at its original size, and I suggest that you make it invisible. Making sure that the snapping options are enabled, resize the layer until it fits the middle of the canvas. After that, swipe three fingers down, duplicate the layer, and move it to the right. Now you can merge these two layers, duplicate this layer again and push it to the top. Now merge the layers and zoom in a little bit to see if there's anything that needs fixing. If there's nothing to adjust, you might still want to duplicate your pattern once more and make it even smaller. Sometimes visualizing a pattern in a smaller scale can help you spot things that need amending or spot any gaps. In this case, I'm very happy with the patterns layout, but I want to show you how to amend it if necessary. Sometimes there are things that might not work well. Maybe one of your assets is looking blurry or there are too many elements of the same color in one area of your canvas. Okay, let's say that this yellow creature here is giving me problems and I need to amend it. The first thing I need to do is memorize where this item is placed in relation to the other elements. This will help me spot it on my original tile. If it was placed somewhere inside the canvas, I could just enclose it using the selection tool and move it a little bit. But in this case, this creature is on the corner of my tile. Let me show you how to fix something which is on a side or on the corner of your canvas. Now, before I go ahead and create a second version, I like to keep the first version as well, just in case I prefer it after finishing the second one. Not only is good to be able to compare the different layouts to see what works best, but it's important to be able to go back to the first option if you like it more. So I'm going to group the original tile and the tests, and I'm going to duplicate this group to create another version. I'm going to make the bottom group invisible and get rid of these two layers because I'm going to create a new version and I don't need them anymore. Now let's see how to amend an object which is on the corner. The first thing I'm going to do is duplicate this layer and move each of them to one side to create the horizontal repeat again. See how this has joined already the two parts of this creature. Now we need to do the vertical repeat to complete the figure. So I'm going to merge my two layers, duplicate it again. Send one copy to the bottom, the other copy to the top, and Valla, we have our creature complete. Remember to zoom in to spot any unwanted lines. Now I can go ahead, merge my layers and move this yellow creature around. So after amending your items, you have to test your pattern tile again. So I'm going to start by duplicating the initial tile and make the bottom one invisible to keep the original tile intact. To keep things fun and varied, I'm going to show you a second way of testing your pattern. I'm going to duplicate my pattern four times until I have five layers. The bottom one is going to be the original tile. Tap on the move tool, activate the snapping options and start moving the corner of each layer until it meets in the center. Now I can merge my pattern and compare it to the previous option. You can do this by making the bottom group visible and checking on and off the layers that contain the pattern at the same scale to be able to compare them. In this case, these patterns are very similar and both work well. I quite like the new option, but I have noticed that both of the yellow monsters are looking up, even if when it's flipped, it's quite similar. So being a little bit picky as I am normally, I'm going to create the repeat again, flipping the creature vertically. Once more, I'm going to test my pattern, and that's better. I like it more. So once you've completed your pattern tile, using your big elements, meet me in the next lesson where I'm going to show you how to use the medium elements to make it a bit more dense. 14. Filling the Gaps: Adding Smaller Assets: O. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to use medium elements to fill in the gaps of your pattern so that it looks a bit more dense and varied. I'm going to open my photo gallery and select the medium elements that I illustrated along the characters, drag them to the canvas, wait until they import, and close the photo gallery. I want these four elements to be smaller in scale than the main creatures to fill in the gaps in between them. Whilst placing each of the elements on each cap, I can check the size and be mindful always of the color that I'm using. This flower has too much detail and I feel that it doesn't fit the style of the rest of the elements. Let's see what happens if I cover the caps. Much better. I'll keep moving the smaller elements around and recoloring them if necessary. In this case, for example, I like this dot here, but it's yellow, and the creature above it is yellow. So I'm going to change it to this light pink. I don't really like it, so I'm going to turn the flower yellow. It doesn't matter always that the colors are side to side, but it's good to be mindful. Sometimes it can be very helpful to visualize your tile at a smaller scale whilst you work on the pattern, and so there is something I want to show you. If you tap on the ren icon and tap on Canvas, you can activate the reference taggle. This is going to open a small preview that you can move around your canvas. If you tap on it, you will get the full preview, and you can adjust size by dragging the bottom right corner. I'm aware that this iPad pro is larger than other ones. So if you feel like this preview is taking too much space on your screen space, just close it. When seeing the small preview, I can see that maybe I could add another triangle here or another star, but the triangle seems better. Now, I need to fill these other gaps, but before doing so, I want to keep a copy of these elements to filling the rest of the gaps. So before merging them all in one layer, I'm going to select one of each shape, group those layers. Duplicate the group and take one of them out of the main group. This way, I know that these shapes will be saved for later. I'm going to make the group invisible and merge all the layers that compose my pattern. So now I have two layers, one with the tile and the group containing the medium elements. Now we're going to create the repeat again and you already know how to do this. I'm going to create two copies of this layer tile just in case. Move one to the left, the other one to the right, and merge them. I can see that this triangle here is not well placed, and the lilac is the same as a creature on its side. So I'm going to change it to orange. This color is a bit too strong and I can see it on the small preview. I'm going to use the other purple, which looks softer, but still has some contrast. Okay, now I'm going to make the vertical repeat and fill the rest of the gaps. I'm going to deactivate the reference view because it's taking too much space. Take your time filling up the empty gaps, and if after resizing them a lot, you see they've lost their image quality, import them back from your photo gallery and resize them again. This yellow one is a bit too big for this space, but since there's a bit more space down here, I'm going to exchange these items. I'm going to fill in this empty cap with another triangle and change the color once more. As you can see, when you're in the process of making a pattern, there's a lot of testing, a lot of trial, and I wouldn't say error, but there's going to be things that you like more than others. If there is an item that is merged with the other layers that you need to move, use the free hand selection tool to move it around. Okay, I think this is looking fine for now, so it's time to test my pattern. I'm going to duplicate my layer and create the repeat. Okay, at this point, my pattern is well composed and all the gaps are filled with shapes. But there's something I want to show you. Sometimes, especially when the patterns are simple, I give myself the freedom to start drawing things here and there, funny words, more geometrical shapes and stuff like that. Now, before doing so, it's important to make sure that you're keeping a layer with the original tile intact. This way, if you don't like the drawings that you have made previously, you can always discard them and go back. And as we did when we were testing our patterns, towards the end, you can compare which of the patterns is your favorite or save the two tiles. In my case, I like both of them, but I'm not going to keep them on the same file. So I'm going to go back to my gallery and duplicate this file. I'm going to open this one and erase one of the patterns so that only one tile is contained in the two sizes and do the same with the other one. So open it and erase the bottom one. I don't like having more than one pattern per file because it can get really confusing, and I have spent hours in the past looking for a pattern because of having too many tiles on the same file. In the next lesson, we're going to test some colorways. 15. Exploring Colorways: Being able to turn your artworks into different color ways is not just fun, but it can be a great way to expand your portfolio and reach out to a wider audience. The same pattern with different colors can fit different collections and be used across different seasons or even markets. In this lesson, we're going to modify the colors of our patterns using the adjustment tools available in Procreate. Many of these tools are used in photography to enhance artworks, but I love using them to explore new color palettes. Okay, before we start playing around with the adjustment tools, start by modifying the background color of your pattern. If you tap on the white thumbnail, you can see how your pattern looks over different background colors. I love how different it looks over a dark background or over a white background. Okay, now let's test the adjustment tools. Always start by duplicating your initial pattern tile to ensure that you keep the original colors. Tap on the magic one, icon to open the adjustment spanel. We're going to explore these four top options, starting with the first one, hue, saturation, and brightness. With these bottom bars, you can explore different color ways. The first one goes for. Moving this bar, you're going to start discovering how your pattern looks over multiple color variations. I have to say that this option works better when you have a limited color palette. The combinations tend to be more cohesive and prettier. When the palette is more varied or your items are full of volume and texture, the variations can have some clashing colors that might not combine so well. With the saturation bar, you can make your colors look saturated and full of life or more opaque and black and white. And with the brightness bar, you can adjust if you want your pattern to be lighter or darker. Before I move on, if there's any color combination that you really like, you can tap on the layer panel to commit to the changes and save this color combination. You just have to go to the layer panel and make the layer that contains the combination that you like invisible and duplicate the initial one to start again and explore new combinations. Let's open the adjustment panel and tap on color balance. You have these 3 bars on the bottom that you can play with. The changes you can explore with these bars are more subtle, but still very interesting. If you tap on this sun icon on the right, you can select if you want the changes to affect the shadows, meat, tones, or highlights. Without getting too technical, I invite you to play with these options until you achieve color ways that you like. There's nothing right or wrong. This option can help you achieve a tunnel pattern with colors of the same spectrum that work well together. One thing is that not a lot of the colorways work over the same background. And whilst it's practical to change the color directly on the background layer, when you have loads of colorways, you might end up losing a lot of time and cool combinations because of not saving the background color as well. A way to work around this is to first explore the color in real time using the background layer. But once you find one that you like, create a layer directly below the tile and fill it up using the color that you like. In this case, white. Lastly, you can create a group with this colorway, make it invisible, and keep on exploring new colorways. Okay, let's duplicate the original colorway once more and explore the third option, curves. In the Gamma option, you can adjust the shadows, midtones, and highlights individually. If you move on the top blue node, you will affect the brightness, and with the bottom node, you'll manage the saturation. Now, you can create new nodes by tapping on the line and moving them individually up and down. Below the Gamma option, you have the red, green, and blue channels where you can also modify the nodes individually, and this will give you a myriad of different color combinations. I love this way of exploring color combinations as I feel that I have more control over the changes. Every time that you like a color array, remember that you can duplicate the initial layer to save it. And lastly, let's open the adjustment panels again, and you have the gradients map, which I also love. When you're in this function, you will see lots of gradients down here, and by tapping on different ones, you'll get a new option. Now, the cool thing about this tool is that you can create your own gradients. If you tap on the plus icon, you'll get a boring black and white dull bar that you can customize. To change the colors, you'll have to tap on the squares and pick a color. You can create as many colors as you want by tapping anywhere on the bar. I'm going to put this blue here and a black here. Now, if there's a color which you can't see like this blue one in the middle, I suggest that you start moving the colors side to side. If you want to erase any color, you will just have to tap and hold on one of the squares and select delete. You can even change the order of the colors by moving them side to side. And in real time, you'll see your pattern in different combinations. How cool is that? Sometimes this way of changing colors might have unexpected results like this red border, but you can use it as an exploration tool. All these tools allow us to achieve thousands of different color ways out of a single repeating pattern tile. This will ultimately expand the possibilities of where you can use your pattern. The same pattern used in soft pastel can be great for baby clothes, and when used with bold colors, it can be used in more adult clothes or stationery, a jacket or anything you want. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to export your pattern in different file types so that you can start saving as many colorways as you want. Mm 16. Exporting and Backing Up Your Pattern: Now we're going to export our pattern, and I'm going to show you how to do it in different formats. Tap on the range icon and tap on share. The files that I use the most when making patterns are the PSD, which goes for Photoshop. I export my patterns on this format when I want to pass it on to Photoshop and keep the layers, masks, and all that. JPEC, which is great for sharing online or social media because how compressed it is. And PNG, that is a losless format, which means that your file won't lose its quality over time. Also, in the PNG format, you can save your patterns with a transparent background. On websites like Red Bubble are print on them on website where you can print your items and start selling them, allow you to upload patterns with a transparent background and choose the background color on different products. So that's really cool. You already saw this, but when you want to export your pattern with a transparent background, you have to make the background layer invisible first and then export your file as a PNG. I'm going to save this image on my iPad. Now, if I open my gallery, you will see my artwork now appears in here. You can also save your file in a procreate file, and this will help you open this same pattern in another iPad with procreates installed. You can go ahead and save as many color rays as you want, take your time, test them over different backgrounds, as in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to visualize them into real life products using mockups. Before doing that, let me show you how to back up your pattern properly onto a second hard drive or into the cloud. Anything can happen to your iPad, hopefully not. Hopefully, it doesn't break or you lose it or something. But if you do, knowing that your patterns are saved onto another space will give you peace of mind. So I like to save my patterns on dropbox I have my dropbox in here where I have created a folder named Procreate Artworks backup. So I'm going to open it, and here I have loads of my patterns saved. I haven't done this in a while, and this is a reminder for myself to backup all my patterns instantly after publishing this class. I'm going to split my screen into two parts just so that you can see the saving process in real time. I'm going to open this pattern, which is the one that I created in this class. I have the tile at 100%, 50% and 25%. I'm going to tap on the wrench icon, and save this pattern in a PSD format, which I could open on Photoshop later on. So I'm going to tap on Dropbox, search for my folder, and tap on Save. Now, look what's happening. It is asking me if I want to replace this artwork which is called untitled artwork. If you tap and replace, you would be replacing one of your artworks which are contained already on your backup folder. So I'm going to tap on Cancel, and I'm going to show you how to fix this. I'm going to go back to the main gallery, and before exporting my patterns, I need to give them unique names so that they don't overwrite patterns which are contained on my backup folder. Oop, I pad storage fold time to backup my patterns. I'm going to tap on the tiles name and give it. And I mean here, you can use a code, your name, or anything you want. For now, I'm going to use pattern one, Pattern two, and Pattern three. Once in a while, I like to save various patterns at the same time onto my Dropbox folder. Let me show you how to do this. Tap on the select word up here and select the patterns that you want to backup. Tap on share, and I usually like to backup my patterns in the Procrit format that allows me to open the file on another iPad with Bocart installed or in PSD that allows me to open my patterns in Photoshop and keep the layers, masks, and all that. So I'm going to tap on PSD. And in here, I'm going to select Dropbox. I'm going to make sure that I'm in the procreate backup folder and tap on upload. You can now see that these three patterns have been uploaded to my Dropbox folder, which not only gives me peace of mind, but now I can access these patterns from my computer or other devices. Ideally, you would do this every time that you finished designing a pattern, but this is not realistic sometimes. So I advise that you backup your patterns at least once a month or every two weeks. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to visualize your pattern over real life products. There is nothing more exciting than that. 17. Part Three: Elevating Your Patterns and Artworks: Before we dive into the third part of the class, let's do a quick recap of what we have covered so far. In the second part of the class, we talked about the importance of considering the size of both your document and your illustrations and how keeping the final product in mind can help you make smarter design choices. You also started building your own image library of reusable illustrations and use them to create a seamless pattern in Procreate. Along the way you learn how to create the repeat, fix any errors, replaced elements if they lost their image quality. We also explored colorways using the adjustment tools, and I showed you how to export and backup your pattern files. So, guess what? You already know how to create patterns. Now, this third part of the class is a bonus section that I have added to make your learning journey even more exciting. I'm going to show you how to visualize your patterns on real life products using Mups. I have included three free Mups that you can download using the link in the class description, and I'm going to also give you a sneak peck at one of the mockups from my first ever digital product, the Ultimate pattern bundle. I'm so excited to show you this. Usable illustrations are not just for creating patterns. I also use them a lot for placement graphics. I have added a special lesson where I'm going to show you how you can start experimenting with placement graphics using Canva. Lastly, I'm going to show you how to publish your project in the gallery of this class, and I'm going to share some additional learning resources to help you continue building the skills you've gained in this class. Let's get started. 18. Visualizing Your Patterns with Mockups: O. One of the most exciting parts of designing a pattern is seeing it come to life on a real product. But let's be honest, getting it printed isn't always easy, and it can take time and cost money. That's where mockups come in. Mockups allow us to visualize our patterns on real life products without the hassle of printing them. It might not be exactly the same feeling as holding your own printed fabric in your own hands, but trust me, it's still pretty amazing. And the best part is that mockups can be super helpful for a few key things testing patterns. Visualizing your patterns on different products can help you decide which fabrics to use when it comes to printing them. Maybe you'll discover that a certain design looks better on a pillowcase than on a toadbg or that it pops more with a colored background. You might even find that you prefer your pattern at 100% scale, or perhaps it looks better when it's reduced to 50 or a 25% scale, building pattern collections. Testing various patterns on the same Map scene is a fantastic way to see how they pair up and how they work together. This, in my opinion, makes it so much easier to start building cohesive pattern collections. Mocaps are also perfect for getting feedback from clients or even your social media followers, even before you go into production. This can ultimately save you time, money, and some potential headaches. When it comes to presenting your pattern to clients, showing the tile along a mocap gives them a better sense on how the design works in the real world. So it's a great way to get your clients excited about your work. I've included three Maps for you to download in the Project and resources gallery of this class. I'll walk you through how to use two of them, but since they all work in a similar way, you'll get the hang of it quickly. Plus, I'm also going to show you how to use one of the more advanced Maps from the pattern bundle available for purchase. This is a bit more complex to use as it lets you test out multiple patterns in a single scene. It is perfect for experimenting with your designs and start showing them to the world as collections. Okay, with all that said, let's type and see how your pattern looks on Maps. So I'm going to open the notebook Map, and you will see that there are three layers, the background color, then you can see that you can add any color to this background. The background table and the shadows of this notebook. I'm going to open my photo gallery, and I have decided to make an album with all my patterns so that they don't start mixing up with all my photos. I'm going to import the pattern that I did in this class and drop it in Procrit. Once it's imported, I'm going to move it to the bottom layer and resize it if I want. I actually quite like how this pattern looks in a large format, but I also like how it looks when it's in a smaller scale. Now when it comes to testing your patterns in Procrit, I do advise that you save various scales of the initial tile. What I mean by that is if I go to my initial tile, I have the pattern at 100%, at 50% and quickly, I'm going to scale this down to have its size again. The reason why I'm asking you to do this is because this will help you test your pattern in different scales when you're in the Maps. I'm going to merge this. Go ahead and save this with a transparent background so that I can test the background color directly in the notebook. Save image. Going to go back to my mockup folder. And in here. So I'll find them here, and I can import this pattern in a smaller scale and keep testing its size. Visualizing patterns on mockups is incredibly useful because it allows you to see how your designs will look on real products, helping you take decisions on the scale, the background color, and the overall impact of your designs. It also provides a professional presentation, making it easier to showcase your work to clients or potential buyers and increases the chances of licensing your designs. Okay, I love how this looks, so I'm going to open the stain battle mockup. This mockup works in the same way. It has different layers. I'm going to get rid of this pattern and import another one. Once more, I'll place this layer at the bottom of the layer stack, and there you go. As easy as that, I'm going to go back to the gallery, and I'm not going to open the cushion because it works the same way as the stained bottle and as the notebook. Instead, I'm going to open one of the mockups that come in the pattern bundle to show you how it works. So when you download the pattern bundle, you will find these three folders, one with the pattern templates. The other one will contain the presentation and email and lastly, the Procreate mockups. I'm going to open this file because it's a little bit more complex and you can add three patterns, one on each product. So this is the preview, and I need to import the one that says Procreate. You can do this tapping on Import and selecting the file in here or you can also drag the file to import it. I'm going to slide the finger to the left to close this and tap on the new file. Now, if I go to the layer panel, you can see that this file has many layers and groups. I've designed these mockups so that each group contains an object, and you should take the time to go through each object and understand the way I've organized the layers. Everything has a name and it's very easy to navigate. Let's start from the bottom. If you tap on wall, you will see color your wall, so you can either select a new color and drag the active color to your wall or use the adjustment tools, which sometimes I find easier because I can see that changes life, and this helps me take better decisions. If I tap on table and wall, I have decided to leave you two surfaces for the bottom, so you can choose the one that you like the most. And then I'm going to start on the plant spot, this one. When you open the folder, you will see a layer which is empty and says at your pattern. So I'm going to open the folder which contains my patterns, and I'm going to open this pattern which I created on my previous class where I teach a similar method to create patterns, drawing the doodles straight in the pattern tile instead of using reusable illustrations. You can add a different color to the background of the pot if you want. And after testing a few, I'm going to leave mine white. Now I'm going to open the Tad Back folder. There's this layer here saying add pattern, so I'm going to select it and split my screen into two parts. I'm going to import the pattern that I did in this class. I'm going to commit to the changes by tapping on the arrow icon and then import the one which is at a smaller scale, so I can test both. To close the photo gallery. And you can see that in here, you have two shadows. One is a little bit stronger than the other one. The difference is quite subtle but. You can start activating and deactivating these layers to see what you prefer. If your parental has a transparent background, you'll be able to test the background color right in here. Okay, I think I'm very happy with this blue. The handles of this bag are also on separate layers, so you can change their color. And lastly, with this makeup back, you'll just have to repeat the same process. You can test as many patterns as you like in these products and start also checking which of your patterns combine well together and could be presented as part of the same collection. Now, one recommendation I have is that if your pattern is looking a little bit dull or needs more contrast, you can fix this by duplicating the pattern tile, place the copy on top of the object. Create the clipping mask so that it only appears within the product, and play with the opacity and blending mode. Some of these blending modes will help your pattern get the contrast and bright colors back. 19. Maximizing Your Image Library with Canva: Now that you have seen how powerful reusable illustrations can be for creating patterns, let's take it a step further. One of the things I love the most about having a library of illustrations is that they're not just for patterns. I also use them a lot for placement graphics. During my time as a designer in the visual industry, I often found myself needing to create both a pattern and a complimentary graphic to go along with it. Great way to create cohesive collections that work across multiple products. Whilst I'm not going to explain in depth how Canva works, I decided to add this bonus section to get you started. You're going to see how easy it is to take those same illustrations and use them in Canva to create beautiful placement graphics. Canva is free, super user friendly, and accessible, making it a great tool for anyone who wants to expand their design possibilities beyond Procreate. So let's dive in and explore how you can take your designs to the next level using Canva. I have my assets in here in a PNG format on my library. They're all in here. And I'm going to open my Canva up, whilst I'm not going to explain how Canva works in depth, for that you can take my from Procrit to Canva class where I make a proper introduction to Canva. I'm going to show you around quickly. After creating an account in Canva, you will enter this window, which is the homepage and contains everything that Canva has to offer. Then you have this menu on the left side hand of the screen. Here are your designs, all the designs that you have made, and we're going to tap on this second icon that says projects. You have this menu here containing these tabs. Under the image folder, you will find all the images that you have ever uploaded into Canva. In designs, you will find the designs that you have made. And on the folders tab, you can create folders to keep your images organized. I'm going to tap on add new to create one, tap on folder, and give it a name in here. I'm going to write Procreate class, but you can use any name you want and tap on continue. Here's my new folder, so I'm going to tap on it, and we're going to upload our images in here, just so you know, you can also upload your images when creating the design. But for now, let's upload them onto this folder. Tap on the at New button and tap on upload. You can select the photo library and start selecting the images that you want to upload. Now, when you upload your images using this method, for some reason, the PNG images are important without a transparent background, and that's going to be a problem when designing anything. Canva DAS has a function to erase backgrounds, but that's not included in the free version. So I'm going to show you how to import your images with a transparent background. Slide your finger up and split your screen into two parts. Now select the image you want to import and slide it into Canva. You can see that for some reason, they're the same image, but one has been imported with a transparent background that you can recognize with this checkered background, and the other one has the background white. I'm going to get rid of this one by tapping on these three dots and selecting move to trash and import all of the other images at the same time. I'm going to tap on the select button up here, select them all and slide them onto Canva. Now I can go ahead and close this window. These images are going to be here forever until I have my Canva account ready to be used in any design. And the best part is that you'll be able to use them from your phone, your desktop, or your iPad. Now I'm going to go back to the homepage and tap on create design to create a design. In here, you will find lots of amazing templates made by other designers. You can filter them by things to print, presentations, social media, videos, and more. I'm going to go to social media. And create an Instagram post, which is square. Once more, you have different tabs in here where you can filter your designs, and this is going to take me onto this page. On the first, I can hear that says designs. You have loads of amazing free unpaid templates. You can take your time scrolling down through them. If I go to projects and scroll down, you can see here the folder that I created named Procreate class. To import these images onto my Canvas, you just have to tap on them and they will appear in here. Now you can also upload your images by splitting the screen and sliding your images into your canvas directly. Both ways are fine. I just like to import them onto a folder to keep my images organized from the beginning. So you can do it either way. If you tap on your items, you can scale them using the bounding box, rotate them with this icon down here. With these arrows up here, you can redo or undo steps. If you tap on edit. You can access different filters here, effects and really cool features that you can explore. The background remover is a pro feature, but now you know the how to import them without a background. You can animate your assets with ready made animations. I'm going to remove animations down here because I don't want my items to move. And you can start adding more assets and placing them around to create a cool design that you like. Now there is something that I want to show you. I'm going to import this creature, and I want it to be behind the others. For that, you have to tap on the position stub up here. And then you have two tabs, arrange, where you can arrange your items or layers where you can access the layers and send items to the front and the back. These creatures are having a little bit of a party here. It's really fun. If you drag an image on top of the bounding box of another, you will just replace it. I'm going to go back. See this in action, I'm going to slide it on top of the other images and see how it replaces them. So this is a reminder that to import an image, you just have to tap on it. It's as easy as that. Now I want to select all of these images to make them smother and place them at the bottom of the canvas. I have to select one of the images, tap on these three dots, tap on select multiple, and start selecting all the images that I want to select. Then I will have to tap on D up here. Then I can group them together in here, and now I can resize them all and move them freely in the canvas, all at the same time. You can tap on and group if you want to move them separately again. And now let's add some text by tapping on the text, icon. Down here, you have loads of cool templates. Some of them are paid, but loads of them are free. Let's see if I can find anything that I like. This coffee break has a beautiful font, but it's paid. So I'm going to scroll down. Oh, my God, look, play, I can believe. This is perfect. Playtime. My class from cade to Canva, I show how to modify text, add it separately, search for fonts, decorate all type of designs with it. But in this class, I just wanted to show you how cool Canva is to work with your reusable illustrations. Okay, this is nice, but I think I can enhance it a bit more with my medium illustrations. So I'm going to open my photo gallery and just start dragging these triangles, stars and dots I made to decorate the whole thing as if it was confetti, as if it was a real party. If at any point you experience problem selecting things is because probably one of the top layers is overstepping the one below. Each of the items in Canva has its own bounding box that you can modify independently. And in this case, the bounding box of the time word is way too big. You can either tap on position and reposition the time word so that it's on the bottom, or you can adjust the bounding box by making it smother. I'm also going to shrink the play bounding box, and now I can select the medium acids freely. Okay, so once you're done, I'm going to show you how to download this image onto your iPad. To do this, you have to tap on share, tap on save us, and in here, you can choose any format that you like. I usually use the PNG format because as I already explained, is a type of format that won't deteriorate my image over time. You cannot save this image with a transparent background unless you pay for a pro account, but this will allow you to test loads of ideas and create social media posts. For that, I'm going to tap on the JPEG format and tap on download in here. I'm going to allow Canva to access my photos and save the image onto my iPad. Now if I go to my photo gallery, you will see my image saved in there. 20. Publishing Your Project: Thank you so much for your hard work throughout this class and for getting this far. The best way to learn is by actually doing, and I really hope that you have created one or more patterns using your use of illustrations. I know how daunting it can be to share your work with the world, but it's through putting your creations out there and receiving feedback that you'll start to see your creative world expand. So I encourage you to publish your project and showcase your amazing work. Now let me guide you through the process of publishing your project in the gallery of this class. Once you finish the class, head to the project and resources section and tap on the purple button that says submit project. Enter a title for your project in the provided box. I'm going to write my fun pattern. And very importantly, don't forget to add a cover image. Otherwise, your project will appear with a dull gray box, and we definitely don't want that. You can use your pattern at 50% scale, full scale, or even a mockup if you prefer. Next, under the project description, you can add as many images as you want. Tap on the image icon below, select your images from your device, and upload them. I'm going to start by uploading this slide, which I have put together using Canva to present my patterns, and I will also add some text. I would love to hear your thoughts on the class. What did you struggle with? What did you enjoy the most, and what inspired you to create your pattern. Sometimes I take a bit of time to respond, but I always go through each and every student project. When someone share their thoughts on their process with me, I can leave a more thoughtful review. Fading your insights along your project helps me to know you better. I really can't wait to see what you have come up with. You also have the option to make your project to make your project private by checking this box that says, Make my project private. Once you're ready, hit the published button, and your project will appear in the gallery for everyone to see. 21. Presenting the Pattern Bundle: Making patterns is so much fun. It's easy to get caught in creating them, and I have definitely fallen into the habit of making patterns just for fun, letting them sit on my iPad or on the hard drive for months or even years. But the key to really growing as a designer is to turning those designs into something useful and impactful. That's why I have built these resources to help you go from the creative idea to a finished product, the Procreate pattern kit. You can purchase this bundle as a digital product here on Skillshare or through my website. It is designed to help you turn your patterns into something truly professional, whether you're presenting them to a client, adding them to your portfolio, or even launching your own collections. The bundle includes 12 mockups to visualize patterns on different products. 20 pattern layouts to help you compose your pattern harmoniously from the beginning and without much effort. You can use them to create conversational patterns in various directions, floral patterns, and I've also added a few geometrical tribal templates for you to have fun and expand your pattern skills. A Canva presentation template that you can use to showcase your work as a professional. When you're done with your patterns and mockups, just upload them into Canva and drag them into the Canva presentation as you see fit. I've included a few optional covers so that you can pick the one that you like the most and the sections that I think that every great portfolio should have. Plus I've even added an Emil template that will help you start sending your patterns to potential clients. I know that sending an email with your patterns to potential clients can initially feel intimidating, but having the right tools will really help you taking the first steps. Personally, having these resources have been a game changer for me. I'm in the process of licensing a few of my pattern collections, and having everything ready in one place has made such a difference. Being able to easily pair patterns together has helped me decide which designs go in which collection and which colorways work best. And honestly, working in Canva has been such a treat. Having everything in the same template and using the drag and drop feature makes the process so simple and fast. For anyone who decides to grab the bundle, I'll be doing a full demonstration on how to use these resources so that you can make the most out of them. I want you to feel confident and ready to share your patterns with the world. 22. Expand Your Skills with These Classes: Before we wrap things up, I want to share a few class recommendations that will tie in beautifully with what you have learned in here. If you're looking to expand your skills and dive deeper into Procreate Illustration, or even into other software like Photoshop, I highly recommend taking the following classes. Let's start with my digital illustration a beginner guides to Mastering Procrit. To take your pattern design skills even further, mastering digital Illustration in Procrit is key. To make the most of this amazing app, you need to know all the essential painting tools and functions. In my Procrit beginner class, I'll teach you procrete inside out, and whilst doing so, you'll create a beautiful set of botanical assets that can be transformed into an infinite number of stunning plants. Thise skills and workflow will not only enhance your pattern design abilities and expand your library, but also open up new creative possibilities in your work. And I don't know if you have noticed, but fruits always seem to be on trend. So there's your next creative challenge. For those of you who love flowers like me and enjoy drawing or painting them, you're gonna love my class from Procrit to Canva, turn your illustrations into digital designs, and don't let the class title fool you. Half of that class is dedicated to creating beautiful floral elements that can be easily turned into patterns. Plus, I'm going to show you how to create Maps directly in Canva, making it easy to visualize your design in real life applications. If you're looking for more fun pattern making classes, my fun patterns in procret from doodles to designs in minutes will be a great way of practicing the concepts that you have learned in this class with a different application. Advanced Photoshop classes. Now, if you're serious about design and want to mix handmade illustrations or watercolor paintings into your digital world, I have two photoshop classes that you're gonna love. Procrit is an incredible tool, but Photoshop opens up a new world of possibilities. Repeating patterns in Photoshop, incorporating sketches into digital design. In this class, I'm going to teach you how to digitize hand drawn sketches, polish them, color them using a limited color palette, and the method that I use to create repeating patterns in Photoshop. Then there's my botanical scenes in Photoshop. Turn Watercolors into digital design. One of my most loved classes. I'm going to teach you how to paint a simple set of watercolor assets. You can even paint them in forcrit and turn them into intricate floral designs. By the end of the class, you're going to have a whole library of stunning botanical illustrations, all made out of a simple set of petals and leaves. And the best part is that you can use all those botanical illustrations into stunning patterns or into placement graphics using Canva. This class will truly expand your creative skills. In the next lesson, I'm going to share some final thoughts and say goodbye to you. 23. Final Thoughts: Thank you so so much for joining me on this creative journey. I really hope that you enjoyed this class as much as I enjoyed creating it. If after watching the class, you enjoyed it and learn something new, please review it. It would mean a lot to me as reviews help me know what I'm doing well, what I can do better in the future, and also what my students enjoy the most. I love to keep in touch with people through emails. Although I only send one a month or one every few months. I love sharing news behind the scenes of projects I'm working on. You will hear about new classes, get access to discounts on my digital products, hear about giveaways and what comes next. If you want to check my other personal projects, which include patterns, murals, paintings on different techniques or just behind the scenes, I would love you to follow me on Instagram at silvispina dot art. Also, if you decide to share your patterns in there, please tag me so that I can see your process and share it with my followers, as well. I have some exciting news for you. I have just launched a patron page where I will be hosting two live drawing sessions a month, sometimes using Procrit, sometimes exploring other tools. Patron will be a great way to connect on a deeper level and to create together. And the best part is that many of the things that you can draw in the live drawing sessions can be turned into stunning patterns later on. Some of these sessions will be posted on YouTube as well, so be sure to subscribe to my channel. I encourage you to keep expanding your image library every time that you can. Take the time to enjoy drawing and painting for the sake of being creative. Try out different styles and techniques, and once in a while, make sure that you take the time to export and organize your illustrations in your image library. Keep expanding your library as you grow as an artist. And if you ever create patterns using this method in the future, you can come back and update your project. And that's all. Thank you once more for being here. Enjoy your creativity and see you in my next class.