Procreate Art - Blue Pottery Style Drawing using Zentangle & Traditional Motifs

1. Welcome!: Taking inspiration from everyday life objects and infusing it with Zentangle art is kind of like my superpower. Seriously, I'm not joking! I've done a bunch of wild and experimental pattern art and Zentangle art classes before, but throughout all of those classes, one question that's always popped up is, "Ridhi, when are you doing this on Procreate?" Well, the answer is today. Right now! It's not a drill! We're doing this! Hi everyone. My name is Ridhi Rajpal, and I'm a Filmmaker and a Multidisciplinary Artist from India. I'm also an art educator and a creative entrepreneur running my own creative studio by the name of TheColorBirdie. And if you're wondering why I talk about Zentangle with so much enthusiasm, it's because I'm also a Certified Zentangle Teacher as well as a Top Teacher over here on Skillshare. So the idea for this class came to me, as usual, when I was traveling. I was in the beautiful city of Jaipur in India, which by the way, is famous for blue pottery. This ancient craft is a great source of artistic inspiration because you can spot many beautiful floral motifs and geometric patterns on everyday objects, such as wall plates, tea cups, planters, and more. And of course, the artist in me wanted to capture the beauty and essence of those monochromatic designs in my favorite art style, which is Zentangle. Now of course, we can do this with traditional art materials as well, such as sketch pens and drawing paper. But by doing this digitally on Procreate, we can eliminate the limitations that come with traditional mediums. For example, we can build our designs in layers, change the scale of our motifs, and even change the colors quickly to create multiple variations and combinations. So no more messy inks and paints to worry about. Just you, your stylus, and a whole lot of artistic adventure. In this class, we'll be developing two projects. For the first project, I'll be showing you some interesting Zentangle patterns that look very similar to traditional blue pottery motifs. So if you are already familiar with the Zentangle Method, this will help you to expand your knowledge of various tangles. And in the second project, we'll develop our own motifs, inspired by real flowers, while still maintaining the essence and characteristics of blue pottery designs. This class is perfect for students of all levels. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, you'll find plenty of fresh creative inspiration to infuse the look and feel of blue pottery designs in your own artworks. If you've never heard of the Zentangle Method before, don't worry, I've got you covered. Also, if you've never opened the Procreate app before, don't worry, I've still got you covered. We'll start right from the basics and we'll level up as we go along. Also as a bonus for this class, I have designed three custom color palettes for Procreate inspired by the colors of traditional blue pottery designs in India. Plus, as another bonus, I'm going to show you how you can repurpose your class project into a beautiful, seamless, repeating pattern to upload on print-on-demand websites like Society6 and Redbubble, where you can then see your designs on beautiful products like wallpapers, cushion covers, curtains, and so much more. So in a nutshell, I've got some pretty exciting stuff lined up for you in today's class. Go grab your iPad and let's get started. 2. Overview and Prep: Alright, so before we get started with the actual drawing process, I want to give you a quick overview of how this class is structured so that you can make the most of your learning experience today. First up, let's talk about everything that you will need to get started. Now, this is a Procreate drawing class. So you will need your iPad with the latest version of Procreate installed on it. You will also need your stylus or an Apple pencil. For our first project, we are going to be making a composition inspired by plates in the blue pottery style. For this, I have selected a bunch of wonderful tangles from the Zentangle method that look similar to original blue pottery motifs. But you don't have to stick to the same tangles as me. You can use any of your favorite tangles from the Zentangle method. And in fact, I have also put in some suggestions and ideas in the class resources document, which is available for you to download. So make sure that you check that out before you start with your first project. For our second project, we will take inspiration from nature, more specifically flowers and leaves. We will be developing our own stylized motifs for this project. Now in order to do this, we will need reference images. I've curated a few good photographs from a stock photography website called Unsplash. The links to these reference images can also be found in the class resources document. So make sure that you check them out before you start your second project. Apart from this, you will also find three custom color palettes that I have developed especially for this class, once again, in the resources section. Now, if you're someone who knows how to use the Procreate app and you know how to import the color palettes, you can go ahead and do that right now. But if you're new to the app and you need a little bit of help in importing those color palettes, then don't worry, I've got a lesson ahead for that. Now, one thing that I must mention before you get started is that if you're a beginner and you want to follow along in today's class with the exact same steps that I'm demonstrating and create the exact same piece of artwork that I'm making, then that's totally fine. You totally have my permission to do so. But just keep in mind that you won't be able to eventually sell this artwork either physically or digitally later on. That's because it has my copyright on it. If you're interested to later on sell your designs on print-on-demand websites like Society6 or Redbubble, or even physically with your friends and family members, then I recommend that you try and make your design significantly different than mine. And don't worry, I've got plenty of resources available for you to follow the same steps, but still make your own unique pieces of art in today's class. All right. That's pretty much all the information that you will need to get started. Once you're ready with your iPad, meet me in the next lesson and we'll dive right in. 3. Tangles vs. Motifs: All right, so in this lesson I'm going to talk a little bit about what tangles are and how they are different from motifs. Now, if you're someone who is familiar with this Zentangle method, then you probably already know the meaning of the word tangle. But I recommend that you continue watching this lesson for a quick refresher. And for those of you who are literally hearing the word tangle for the first time, I'm going to give you a quick introduction. So for this, we're going to take a small step back and we're first going to understand what Zentangle is. Now the Zentangle method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. We call these patterns, "tangles". Now because the Zentangle method is so unique and different from any other art methods in the world, the founders of this method decided to come up with their own vocabulary or terminology. And if you're interested to learn more about the Zentangle method, then I have a separate class dedicated to this topic where we look at the history and origins of Zentangle, as well as the terminology in complete detail. But for the purpose of today's class, all you need to know is that tangles are basically patterns from the Zentangle method. And these are created with a combination of dots, lines, simple curves, S-curves and orbs. These simple shapes are known as the elemental strokes in all kinds of Zentangle art. Now, most of the tangles in the Zentangle method have an element of repetition to them. In other words, the same drawing strokes are repeated over and over again to produce a beautifully structured design. This element of repetition is what makes Zentangle very relaxing because it puts you in a very meditative state of mind. Tangles are usually abstract. That is because Zentangle art itself is abstract and non-representational. Even the names of the tangles are chosen in a way that they have no relevance or connection to what the design actually looks like. However, that being said, it's interesting to note that certain tangles bear a striking resemblance to actual objects or natural elements found in our surroundings. This shouldn't really come as a surprise, since ultimately tangles are actually crafted by artists just like you and me, who draw inspiration from their environment. Despite the presence of repetitive patterns and abstract qualities, certain tangles may appear more familiar because they share similarities with things that you've encountered previously. This resemblance is particularly noticeable in organic tangles, which often resemble flowers, leaves, and other organic forms. Some of these organic tangles will be used in our first class project. Now, as you may recall from our previous lesson, I mentioned that we won't be utilizing tangles for our second class project. Instead we will be creating our own stylized motifs. This naturally raises the question - how are they different? What sets tangles apart from motifs? The distinction between tangles from the Zentangle method and stylized motifs lies in their approach and purpose. Tangles within the context of the Zentangle method are intricate, repetitive patterns created using specific steps and guidelines. They're often abstract and they don't aim to represent recognizable objects directly. Tangles are designed to promote relaxation, mindfulness, and creativity. On the other hand, stylized motifs don't necessarily have specific steps and guidelines. They are more focused on representing specific objects or elements in a stylized or decorative manner. While they may still involve patterns and repetitions, their primary goal is to capture the essence or visual qualities of a particular subject. Stylized motifs often draw inspiration from nature, culture, or personal imagination. And they can be used in various art forms, such as illustrations, designs, or decorative elements. Now my goal in today's class is to teach you both the approaches because, well, why not? Using pre-existing tangles from the Zentangle method is great when you're experiencing a creative block and need a little bit of handholding. But when you feel more confident and you want to explore and experiment further, then it's always a good idea to develop your own stylized motifs from scratch, which truly reflect your own personal voice and style. This way, as an artist, you will have a lot more tools in your toolkit to rely on. Alright, now that we have all of those basics covered, let's move on to our next lesson and get this Procreate party started! 4. Importing Color Palettes: All right, in this lesson, I want to give you a quick demo on how to import these color palettes that are provided with this class. There are three color palettes that I've provided and you can import these directly into procreate. Now to access these color palettes, you need to go to the projects and the resources section of this class, which looks something like this. Now I'm sure that a lot of you have the Skillshare app already downloaded on your ipad. And you're probably watching this class on the ipad itself. But in order to download these color palettes, you'll have to log on to Skillshare from a browser instead. For example, I'm logged in from my Safari browser. This is only because at the time of filming this class, the skillshare app does not have the feature or the capability for you to download the resources directly from the app. The workaround is that you just log on to the website from the browser, and then you'll be able to see these resources. But in the future, as soon as Skillshare provides this option for you to be able to download the resources directly from the app, I'll definitely put an update about it in the discussions tab. Currently, this is the best workaround available if you're accessing the class directly from the app. You can easily recognize procreate color palettes by looking at the extension of the file name. Dot swatches usually means that it's a color palette which can be taken directly into procreate. You can just click on any of these. Just tap and it'll give you a download option. You download that and then it's going to bounce over here. It's gone into your downloads folder. You just tap over there. Find the file. It'll already have the Procreate icon; you just tap over there. And the file is already imported. If you want to see where the file has gone, then you can just open any of the Procreate canvases that you have and click on the circle, the colorful circle on the top right corner, which is where you can see all of these palettes. You'll have the palette imported right at the bottom, which is Indian Garden, in my case right now, because that's the palette that I've just imported. But if you want to take it to the top, you can hold it and just take it all the way up. Or if you want to place it between existing color palettes, you can do that as well. I'm just going to take it all the way up right now. Now, I already had this color palette with me, which is why you can see it twice. In case that happens to you, you can also click on the three dots over here and delete the color palette. But basically that's how you import color palettes in Procreate. I recommend that you go ahead and download all your color palettes right now and import them into your app so that they're ready for you to use when we start our first project. 5. Canvas Prep: All right. We're now in the procreate gallery. Of course, I have a bunch of different projects that I've been working on. Yours probably might be empty if you're just starting out with Procreate for the first time. Don't worry if your screen doesn't look like mine right now. I'm sure it'll get filled up soon. We want to start off with a new canvas. I'm going to click on the plus icon over here on the top right. Over here, you'll see that Procreate gives you a bunch of templates that you can play with already. You'll see the sizes mentioned over here. And you are definitely welcome to use any of these for today's class. But what I'm going to do is create a custom canvas for myself. For that, I'm going to click on the plus icon over here on this black little folder like icon. And I'm going to create a canvas of 3,600 pixels for the width, as well as 3,600 pixels for the height, which is going to give me a square canvas to play with. This will basically become 12 " at a DPI of 300. Basically, If you multiply the number of inches with the DPI, then you can get the number of pixels. In this case, we've already chosen the pixels to be 3,600, which means that at a DPI of 300, it'll give us an output of 12 " Which means our canvas is basically 12" in width as well as 12 " in height. Now you can, of course, go bigger or smaller depending on your preference. But the reason why I'm choosing this particular size is because it's a fairly decent size for when I have to print it, let's say on a greeting card, on a coaster or any other merchandise. Um, and at the same time, this is a decent size for me to get my maximum layers as 76 over here. You can always see the number of layers mentioned over here. In this case, I'm getting 76, but yours might be different. This basically depends on the model and the make of your iPad. Depending on the RAM that your iPad has, your layers might be more or less as compared to mine. If you choose to change the width and height of your project, that's totally fine. Just as long as your layers are somewhere around 30 or 35; you definitely want at least 30 to 35 layers to play with for today's project. Just try to find a sweet spot between the number of layers as well as the size. Just to give you an example, if I go to, let's say, 7,200 which is double the size, that's going to give me only 16 layers. That basically gives me very little room to play for today's project. So my sweet spot or my compromise is that I'm going to go for 3,600 pixels in width and height, and then get a maximum layer limit of 76. The next thing that we want to do is go to our color profile. And over here, you get options of RGB as well as CMYK. I usually let it stay on the second option over here, which is sRGB IE61966-2.1. This is the color profile that I've been using... I don't know, since the beginning of time or since I've been using Procreate... And this has worked fairly well for me for displaying my designs digitally as well as physically to print on different types of merchandise. This is the profile that I'm going with, but if you ever have specific requests from a client or from a vendor that prints your products and they ask you to do it on CMYK, then you definitely have that option over here in Procreate. Yeah. These are the settings that we are going to be working with. And then I'm going to hit Create. And we get our canvas. We can use just two fingers to scale it down like that so that it's easier for us to navigate and rotate it as well. So yeah, if you're new to Procreate, then just take a moment to play around over here and just get comfortable with rotating your canvas. Once you're fully set with your canvas, meet me in the next lesson where we'll start to prep our design. 6. Project 1 - Plate Base: All right, in this lesson we're going to start developing the base, or the structure for our design. As I mentioned earlier, this is going to be inspired by the wall plates or the dinner plates that we see in the blue pottery style. That means we're going to be creating a circular design over here. For this, we're going to start by drawing a circle. And we need to select a brush for that. I'm going to go into the brush icon over here, and it will give me a list of brushes that come pre-installed in the Procreate app. So these are the default brushes. Now, my list might seem a little longer than the list that you have and that's only because I've purchased a lot of brushes as well as collected them from other artists. I'm like a "brush hoarder", if you want to call me that! But basically, yes, if this is the first time that you're opening the app, then don't worry if your list looks a little shorter. The brush that we're going to use today is a default brush, so you're going to find it in the calligraphy tab. And the brush that we're going for is the monoline brush. You just want to click on caligraphy, go to monoline, and that's the brush that we're looking for. By the way, when you click on the brush, it just opens like the brush settings... as you get more used to procreate and as you want to make specifications according to your own hand and your own gestures, you can play around with these little properties over here and basically just customize the brush. But I'm pretty okay with the way it is right now. I'm okay with the standard settings. So I'm just going to click on the monoline brush. We have that set to default. Then this one, the second icon is the Smudge tool, and then the third one is the eraser tool, which we will also need. You can use the brushes as erasers as well. When you click on the erasers tab, you will see that all the brushes are available as erasers as well. Again, what we want to do is click on Recent and click on the brush that we're going with, which is the monoline brush in this case. You can also just hold your eraser a little longer and you'll see that there's a pop up that comes, which says "erase with current brush." So for example, if I change my brush to, let's say this one, Odeon, and I come to my eraser tab and hold it. This will automatically change to Odeon as well. Same way now when I go to Monoline, and I click on my eraser tab and it says, "Erase with current brush", it's automatically switched to Monoline. Of course, we're going to see this once we actually start drawing, but that's again, just a little Procreate hack for you to know that if you long press on the eraser tab, then you're going to get the same brush as the eraser. Now on the top right over here you will also see a small circle with a color in it. Now mine currently shows blue because that's the last color that I was working with. Yours could be a different color. Over here you'll see all the color palettes that you have imported as well as the color palettes that procreate comes with. So the default color palettes will also be here. Just like the brushes, I also hoard color palettes as well as develop so many of my own color palettes. My list is obviously very long, but yours might be shorter, and that's not a problem at all. It doesn't mean that your app is any different than mine. Just putting that out there for anyone who's new to the app. I already have my classic Jaipur blue pottery color palette loaded over here. This is currently set to default. This is the one that I'm going to be working with for the first project. Now, of course there are no hard and fast rules over here. You can choose to work with a different color palette, if that's the one that you prefer. You can choose the color palettes which are available in the class resources, or you can create your own custom color palette. That's totally fine. Now whichever color palette that you choose to work with, you want to set it as default. Basically, for example, if I was using this color palette over here, I would click on the three dots and then select this option called "Set to Default". What this allows me to do is use this as a standby color palette for any changes that I want to make. For example, if I go to the disc icon, I have this over here on standby. Same with the classic... harmony. Basically, this color palette is my base color palette. And then I can keep building further on it. So it's always available to me on standby. Obviously, this is not the color palette that we're using right now. I'm going to go to palettes and I'm going to go to my classic color palette. And then I will click on the three dots and set that as default. Now this is the color palette that you will see at the bottom, over here in all of these tabs. Okay, we're going to start with the darkest blue that I have over here in the classic Jaipur palette. I have my brush thickness set to 100% The brush thickness can be easily changed from this little navigation bar over here. At 100% it is this thick. Then if I go down to about 17% it's thinner. Same way at 2%, it's this thin. Basically, you can just play around with the thickness. To undo or to clear, you can just tap with two fingers. And it will "undoes!" So basically it "undos" or it "undoes" the action. To bring back an action or to bring back a paint-stroke, you can just tap with three fingers. If I tap with three fingers, it'll redo. It "redoes". And to undo it will go back with two fingers. So anyway, right now I am going to keep this at 100% because I want this to be like a nice big circle and we're going to fill it with color eventually. So honestly, it doesn't matter which size you pick. But I just like to use it at a thicker setting so that it's easily visible to you on camera. Okay, now we are going to create a circle. If you are already familiar with procreate, you know how to draw a circle with the Quickshape tool, but for new people, well, we just start with a really messy circle. It doesn't honestly matter what kind of circle it is. And then you hold it, and then Procreate automatically smoothens it out for you and creates an ellipse. Then you just tap with one finger and it'll convert it into a circle for you automatically. You also get this little menu on the top. You can take it back to an ellipse or you can take it back to a circle, depending on what your preference is. But you want to catch this menu quickly because then it disappears, if you don't like tap it in time. Just going to do that once again. I'm just going to undo this. It doesn't matter how messy your circle is; you just want to make a circle, hold, tap, and you'll get a circle. It's already at a circle, but in case you wanted to edit it, you could go back to creating an ellipse. That's how we have it. Now this is not big enough. I want to cover almost the entire canvas with this. So I'm just going to do a really nice big ellipse. Tap. And that pretty much looks like it's going to cover the whole canvas. Okay, now we have our circle in place. Now as you can see, this circle is currently not centrally aligned. Meaning that there is less space over here and more space over here. It's not in the middle of the canvas. To make it centrally aligned, we're going to click on this Transform tool over here, which is the little arrow. And you will see that it automatically selects whatever is on that layer. And if you want to see the layers, they're here. So this will probably be a little hard for you to see on camera. But I have my dark blue circle over here. And otherwise, it's a transparent layer because there is nothing else on that layer. If I uncheck this box, my circle will get hidden. But if I tick mark it or check it, then basically the circle will become visible. We can collapse this back by clicking on that layer icon. Come back to our Transform tool. Now we want to try and bring this in the middle. Now to do this, procrate again comes to our rescue, making our life a little easier. You want to be on uniform and you don't want to be on free form because uniform make sure that the aspect ratio of your circle doesn't change. If you're going to be on freeform; so let's show you what that is. It's basically just going to change the aspect ratio. You see how it's allowing me to change the entire shape of the circle, which we don't want. So I'm going to go back to where it was. Click on the Transform tool again. And now this time I want to do this on uniform, which will basically allow me to scale it back and forth with the same aspect ratio. It's not going to squish my circle or elongate it in weird ways. I don't want it to be small. So I'm going to undo and take it back to the size that it was. Click on the Transform tool again, and we are back to this menu. Now what I want to do is go to snapping. And we want to make sure that the magnetics and the snapping are turned on because this will now allow us to position our circle in the middle. You can see these golden lines which are popping up; as soon as you see them intersecting in the middle, or you see that cross sign, that's your indicator that the circle is basically now in place with equal distance on all four sides. If your snapping and magnetics were not turned on, then you'll be moving around your circle like this, trying to eyeball the center. And it wouldn't be accurate. So to make our life easier, we just go to Snapping; turn on the magnetics and snapping and make sure that we are right in the middle using those golden guidelines. Yellow-golden guidelines. Okay, we can close our Transform tool. Now, we want to fill this with color. You want to just basically drag the color. Now, whatever color that you used to draw your circle is what's going to show up over here. I'm just going to drag it and drop it, and that creates a fill for us. The circle is now completely filled. Now, in the same way, we're going to create a couple more circles, but they're going to be on different layers. I'm going to go to my layers panel, tap on the plus icon over here, and create a new circle on this layer. For this, I'm going to choose, let's say this creamish ivory like color. I basically just want to create a nice border. Again, I'm just going to create a circle. And I'm going to tap; create the circle. Just scale it a little bit. I'm going to fill this first. Go to my Transform tool, make sure my snapping and magnetics are turned on, and I'm just going to align this centrally. Okay, same way, I'm going to create a light blue circle as well. I'm going to go to my layers. Click on the plus icon to create a new layer. I'm probably going to go with this sky blue like color and do the same steps basically. Again, just scaling it. It doesn't matter if they cross the previous layers because you can always adjust the placement. And I'm going to bring it to the center. It's pretty big right now. I want it to be smaller. I can always scale it down a little bit. There we go. Okay. Actually, I think I want to add one more light blue circle, which is between the ivory and the dark blue circle. If I don't like it later on, I can always delete it. But for now, I just want to add another circle. Instead of going back and repeating all the same steps again. I'm just going to do a quick hack. I'm going to go to my layers panel. Instead of drawing the circles all over again, I'm just going to hide my blue and ivory circle. And instead of drawing a circle, I'm going to duplicate my dark blue circle. I'm going to color drop my light blue on this. Now the light blue circle is on top of the dark blue circle, but we just can't see the dark blue right now because they're of the same size. And I want my light blue circle to be just a smidge smaller than the dark blue circle. So I'm going to keep both these layers visible right now. And I'm going to make sure that I'm on the light blue circle. I will click on my Transform tool and make sure I'm on uniform. I will just take it a little smaller than that. Yeah, I think that looks good. And then I'm just using my snapping and magnetics to position it in the middle. Yeah, that looks pretty good. Now, if I see it with all my other layers turned on, this is pretty much the effect that I'm getting. Yeah. Like I said, if I feel at a later stage that I don't like this light blue circle, I can always hide that layer. And it'll get deleted automatically. Well, not deleted, it'll just get hidden. That's a decision that I can take later. But for now I like this look. I encourage you to create a basic plate for yourself in the same manner. And then meet me in the next lesson where we'll start adding motifs on top of this. 7. Project 1 - Adding Tangles: All right, let's start adding some beautiful patterns to this wall plate structure that we have created. Now this is our first project. As I had mentioned earlier, in this particular project, we're going to be using tangles from the Zentangle method to create our final composition. Now I actually had a lot of fun researching various kinds of tangles on the Internet. I have selected a few tangles which have an uncanny resemblance to the blue pottery motifs that we see in real life. The tangles that I'm going to be using to demonstrate the steps for this particular composition have similar characteristics as real life blue pottery motifs. But as a reminder, you don't have to use the exact same tangles as me. If you're interested to create a unique piece of artwork for yourself in today's class, then you can totally use different tangles as well. In fact, I have put in a lot of options for you in the class resources document, which is available for you to download. Feel free to check them out. All right, now coming to this particular composition, I want to actually start off with something in the middle. I want to add some sort of floral element in the middle. And create a composition where everything is radiating outwards or blooming outwards, pretty much like a mandala or one of those sacred geometry formations. We can actually draw each element individually by hand. And we can actually create each stroke by hand. For example, if I click on the layer over here and add a new layer, let's say I want to create a flower in the middle. Then I can actually create each petal individually and build a framework which is blooming outwards step by step with each stroke. But I want to create a design which is slightly more professional, slightly more polished, and it has a mandala like quality to it. In order to do that, procreate actually has a very wonderful feature called the Symmetry Tool. And what this tool does is that it basically saves us from drawing each stroke individually because it can create mirror images of some of the strokes that we're drawing. For example, I'm going to first clear this layer over here. I'm going to click on the layer and hit Clear. And I'm going to come to my wrench icon, and I'm going to click Drawing Guide over here. I'm going to click on Edit Drawing Guide. Here is our symmetry tool. Under the options, you will see various kinds of symmetry options. We have vertical, horizontal, quadrant, and radial. I have vertical selected right now. I'm going to click on Done. And I'm going to come back to my canvas. As I was saying earlier, if I draw something on one side, it's going to mirror it on the other side. Same way, I'm going to go back to Edit Drawing Guide. This time I'm going to click on Horizontal. I'm going to click Done. You can actually see this line which appears; it's like a guideline. It might not be so visible on the camera right now, but if you're following along with the same steps as me, then you can definitely see this line. This is the horizontal one. Again, if I create something on the top, it's going to mirror it on the bottom. Same way, we'll try the other two as well. I'm going to click on the layer and hit Clear. Then I'm going to go to my wrench icon. Click on Edit Drawing Guide. Let's do quadrant. As the name suggests in the quadrant one, whatever you draw on one quarter, it's going to repeat it on the other three quarters. Then the other one that we have is the radial option, which is going to give us eight sections. Anything that I draw in one of these, it's going to repeat itself on the other seven. This is basically the easiest way to create a mandala or to create a blooming radial design in procreate. Now we're going to use this to our advantage and basically use Zentangle inspired patterns over here so that we don't have to draw each stroke independently. And this is going to help us to preserve the sizing of our elements, and at the same time, everything is going to look very consistent and very cohesive. This tool is actually great for building very professional, polished designs. We're going to clear the layer again, and we're going to start off with our first tangle, which is Blooming Kangular. I'm currently on the radial symmetry option right now, which is great for us because this will help us to build a lot of petals for our flower. But if you want to try a different symmetry tool, that's totally fine as well. For example, if you are very clear that you want to build a four petal flower, then you can go to the quadrant setting. You can basically play around with the symmetry settings and create a design for yourself. I'm going to start off with Blooming Kangular over here on the radial symmetry option. To start off this tangle, we want to draw a V. Okay, now that's a little too thick for me. I want to reduce the size of my brush. I'm actually going to bring it down to, let's say, about 16-17 percent. Let's see how that looks. Yeah, I quite like this thickness. Now I want to actually make sure that all my designs are of the same thickness. So what I'm going to do is; since this is at 17%, I'm going to tap lightly over here and click on the plus icon. Now anytime that I move my slider, I don't have to constantly bring it back to that 17% mark. I can simply tap on that mark over here. The slider will jump down in place and it'll come to that 17% mark. This is a quick way for me to make sure that all my elements are with the same outline or with the same thickness. That's a quick Procreate hack again. Now, coming back to drawing Blooming Kangular, it basically starts off with a V. I actually like what's happening over here in the middle. It's giving me a star element. This is the way it's actually drawn. I actually like what was happening earlier. I'm going to do that. I'm purposely going to make it not meet in the center so that I can get this little design in the middle, which is basically just adding a few more details. You can drag out your brush and see how it gives you different formations like a kaleidoscopic effect. Yeah, I think I like that. There's a little bit of gap that's happening over here which I think I want to change. Yeah, I think that's pretty good. While I was doing this, I think you probably also noticed that anytime you draw a line and if you hold it long enough, procreate will automatically straighten it for you. If you're worried that your lines are a little wonky, well, don't worry about it. Just hold it long enough and procreate will basically straighten it out for you, unless you are going for a wavy line or a wonky line. Then you want to basically lift your stylus really quickly so that procreate automatically doesn't change it to a straight line. In case it does that, then you can of course just tap the undo button. For example, if you want a curve and procreate automatically makes it a straight line, just undo it and it'll go back to the original shape that you intended. Anyway, coming back to Blooming Kangular, the way this is done is that we basically have these V-shaped petals. Then we have an inverse V, which goes something like this. Maybe I just want it to end slightly lower; something like this. I like how this is right now. Then, you basically just want to connect these sections. Now for all the empty spaces that you have over here, you can actually repeat the same steps and you can create more petals. You can create something like that and maybe then connect it like so; if that is something that you want to create. So that's a fun way to create a design. But what I'm actually going to do is extend this and create a longer petal; something like that. So even within the tangles that we have from the Zentangle method, you're totally free to change some strokes here and there. Tangles are not set in stone. Every time you play with one stroke, you are going to end up having a variation of the tangle, which is also known as a "tangleation" in the Zentangle method. So feel free to create as many tangleations as you like, and basically just have fun with the symmetry tool and create your own kind of compositions, create your own kind of motifs. I promise you this is going to become pretty addictive in some time. Yeah, so now that we have this, what I also want to do is add a line going like so. I'm not going to do too many details right now. I'm going to come back to the details later on. But right now, I just want to start getting some elements in place to see how my composition is going to look like. Now I'm going to move on to my second tangle, which is going to be Mooka. I'm going to add this tangle on a separate layer. The reason why I'm going to do each tangle on a separate layer is because it gives me the flexibility to delete them later on or to change the color of each of those elements without hampering the other tangles around it. Because I have 76 layers to play with, I can use them to my advantage. In case you have lesser number of layers, then you can do two or three tangles on the same layer as well. There is no rule against that; just that I like to use layers to my advantage, and I like to have a mix and match and various permutations and combinations of different elements, which is why I like to keep hiding and unhiding all of my layers. I like to play with it that way, but you don't have to do the exact same thing as me. So for now. I'm just going to create Mooka on a separate layer. Mooka is actually a pretty old tangle in the Zentangle method. Over the years, many artists and many certified Zentangle teachers like myself have created their own different versions and variations of it. The way I like to draw it is that I do an S stroke and then I create a bulb. And then I bring it down and connect it to the stem like that. But there are other ways of doing it. Some people like to do an almost straight line with a bulb, which connects it right at the top. There's a very thin stem and then there's a bulb at the top, almost like a paisley shape. Then there are some people who like to do it with a C-stroke like that and then connect it like so. So yeah, they're basically various different versions of doing this, but I want to do it with the S stroke, which is my favorite style. Now one thing you must have noticed is that while I was doing this over here, this did not replicate on all the other sections. And that is because we do not have drawing assist on. When you go to your layers panel, you'll notice that in the previous layer it says assisted. That is because when we had selected the drawing guide, this layer automatically had that drawing guide applied to it. The radial symmetry automatically got activated. But the minute we created a new layer, we have to now tell procreate that the drawing guide has to apply to this layer as well. To do that, we're going to click on the layer and click on Drawing Assist. As soon as this is turned on, you're going to see the word assisted over here. That basically means that it has been activated on this layer as well. So I'm now going to create my Mooka. I'm going to bring it down and connect it to the stem. I'm just going to neaten that up a little bit. There we go. We have Mooka in place; we have eight such beautiful Mookas. Actually, I'm just going to create another one which is nesting under this one. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to keep the second one, but right now I just want to have some sense of the composition. I'm keeping it right now. I might delete it later. We'll see. Okay, so that's our second tangle done. The next tangle that we're going to be using is called Eze. To create this, I'm going to first go on a new layer and I'm going to put my drawing assist on. Then I'm going to come here and put a curve like that. That's actually too high; so a curve, go inward, make a curve again, and bring it back and connect it like so. Just gonna neaten that up a little bit. Now again, tangles have no hard and fast rules. For example, if you wanted to do this with the curve inwards and like that, that's totally fine too. That's a different effect, but it's okay. It doesn't matter because tangles have no hard and fast rules. Nothing is set in stone. You can do this according to whatever is your comfort, whatever is your aesthetic. No rules over here. I might actually do this again because I want the curve to echo the shape of the Mooka, just so that it nicely sort of snugly... Snugly? So that it's nice and snug. It fits there basically. Yeah, something like that. And I'm going to use my eraser; I'm going to long press on the eraser so that it uses the same brush as the brush that I'm using. That's too much. Okay. Yeah, so I have Eze in place. Once again, I'm going to go to my brush and I'm just going to add a line over there like so. Now this leaf is actually very similar to the leaves that we see in a lot of Indian, Mughal, Persian patterns as well. A lot of blue pottery designs have this kind of a leaf in them. You will spot this literally everywhere on Indian clothing, on decorative items in India. This is a very familiar motif. Interestingly, it happens to be a tangle as well. Yeah, I definitely wanted to use it in my design. All right, the next tangle that we're going to be working with is called Flux. Once again, I'm going to start with a new layer and I'm going to make sure my drawing assist is on. Then I'm going to come here and add it somewhere over here. I'm going to try and echo the effect of the outline of the Mooka, which is drawn previously. It's like a paisley shape. But you can create many different variations of this tangle as well. You can have one which is more symmetrical, looks like a literal tear drop. This one has a slight more bend at the bottom. You can accentuate it even more and close the bend a little early on, so you'll have like a stem at the bottom. There are many different ways of creating this. Choose the one that you like the most. Okay. It took me a couple of attempts to get that. Yeah, I'm finally happy with the one that I have over here. Okay, Now I have this little odd space in the middle. Instead of actually filling this with a tangle, I'm just going to follow along the outlines of the previously drawn shapes. I'm just going to create a decorative shape. Once again, I'm just going to go to a new layer. I'm just going to follow along the outlines. Yeah, this is not exactly a tangle, but this is more or less like a filler element; and a decorative, stylish filler... You can add these anywhere; wherever you feel that your design is looking a little bit empty. Instead of trying to think of a tangle that you can fit here, you can just add some decorative elements here and there. In fact, later on I might add some dots and some other random fillers here and there as well. Right now, this looks pretty good. I'm just going to add a line over here like that. Or maybe not. That looks a little odd. Yeah, I'm going to let it be like that. Yeah, I think this is shaping up pretty well. I'm going to grab a little bit of coffee right now and then I'm going to see you in the next lesson where we're going to continue adding more tangles to our design. 8. Project 1 - More Details: All right, I'm nicely refreshed and re-energized after my coffee break. And I am now ready to get back to this illustration. And we are going to now start with a tangle called Henna Drum. I'm going to make a new layer and I'm going to make sure my drawing assist is on. Now again, Henna Drum, is a very versatile tangle. It is pretty organic. You can take it in any direction that you like, but you don't have to stick to the exact same steps as are mentioned in the step-out. You can actually choose to improvise the tangle. I'm going to improvise it as well with the strokes and the structure over here. I have this nice stem as a base. Then on this I'm going to add a few flowers. The way Henna Drum works is that we basically add a semicircular element on this stem. Then we have some petals which are coming out of it. Actually, I think I'm going to take the flower a little lower because I want to try and close the gap somewhere over here. Okay. Yeah, I quite like that. Now I'm actually going to add another stem which is sort of branching out from this one. Something like that. And then I'm going to have maybe a little pod or like a bulb which is going on like this. Then I'm just going to add another flower over here. Okay. That looks good. And then I think I'm going to add another one over here as well. Okay, so now that we have these in place, we can refine the stem a little bit. Of course, I only have this much space in my illustration, but if you have a different composition and if you feel like you can add more stems and you can add more flowers, then totally go for it. There's no hard and fast rules over here. So basically, just go with your aesthetic sense and fill up the illustration the way you like it. I like to have most of my illustrations with a lighter feel to them, so I like to have some sort of like an airiness to my illustration, so I don't overstuff them with elements. But if you want to like fill it completely with more patterns and more tangles, then this is the time you can add more details to your illustration and basically just draw to your heart's content. And yeah, there's no pattern police, there's no tangling police that's going to come and stop you from doing what you like. I think I'm pretty happy with everything on the illustration. The only thing that I want to do is try to have some sense of cohesiveness going on. At the moment, these flowers are standing out completely as a different element. There is nothing else on the illustration which is going with the same strokes or the same characteristics so to say. I want to bring in some harmony in my design. The way I usually do that is that I borrow strokes from some of the elements and add it to the other elements. For example, currently what's bugging me is that I have nothing which is looking like these petals. While this is a beautiful element in itself, it's currently not looking like it belongs to the same family. I want to basically introduce this somewhere in the illustration. I think I'm going to experiment with some details over here maybe. I'll go back to the layer over here. Let's see if we can add some wavy elements over there like that. Yeah, that could work. Okay, now they look similar to the flowers outside. I'm also thinking that I want to add this stem somewhere else in my design. This stem that I have done over here is actually very similar to an element in the Zentangle method called Fescu. It's basically stems with these little pods at the top. What I'm going to do is try and add them at a couple of other places as well. Let's see where we can do that. Maybe one over here and this could be a new layer. I think we can do this over here. I need my assist on. Okay, so that looks good. I think we can also add them over here. Now, these are basically just filler elements that we are playing with. You can choose to add as many filler elements as you like. I'm actually going to change the shape of that and match it to what I had done previously. And same way I'm going to try and add more details. Now is also a good time to change your brush size and add a few other elements here and there. These are elements that will come to you intuitively. So wherever you feel that you need to add some more decorative motifs, or if you feel like you want to add fillers, you can do that pretty intuitively. There are no rules over here. For example, I'm going to go to my flux layer and I'm just going to add a few stems and dots and things like that. I'm also adding another flux. I'm on the same layer so that later on when I rename these layers, I'll remember that all the flux elements are on the same layer. Let's see if I want to add any more elements. Maybe another one over here. Same way, I'm just going to go to all my layers and see if I want to add any more details. You can also add some simple strokes that just echo the effect of the previously drawn strokes. That just adds some more ornamental value to the illustration. I'm trying to get the right angle here. This is the time when I really like to refine my illustrations. I spend a lot of time looking at every tiny detail to make sure I'm fully satisfied with it. For example, over here I'm just erasing it a little bit to get that line to look smooth. Then again, I'm just going to add a few more details here and there. All right, at this point, I think I'm fairly happy with the details that I've added and I'm not going to add more details till I don't color the illustration. What I'm going to do is first add the colors to these outlines, and then I'm going to judge if I need to add more details or not. Meet me in the next lesson and we're going to get started with the coloring. 9. Project 1 - Coloring: All right, time to make this baby look even more beautiful. And we are going to do that by adding some color so that it'll give more life to this illustration. I'm going to start with the center one over here, and then gradually go outwards. What we want to do over here is add our color on a separate layer for each of the elements. The reason why I like to do that is because it gives me more flexibility in case I want to make changes to the texture or the color later on. As an example, I have my center element selected on this layer. I'm going to add another layer on top of it. I'm going to come back to my original layer and click Reference. When I have reference selected, Procreate will basically understand that I need to fill color within these outlines. I'm going to go to my new layer. As an example, I'm going to take this blue color, bright blue color. I'm going to drag this color into these areas. Now procreate understands that I'm going to add color only within these outlines. The bottom layer is basically acting as a reference. Now that I have this, I am going to color the inside petals with a different color. I'm again going to do a new layer on top of this. For this, I'm going to take it between these two layers. Again, the immediate bottom layer is the reference. And procreate will understand that I'm adding my color in reference to the bottom layer. You don't have to keep dropping the color from here. If you saw that there was this little pop up that came over here which said "Continue Filling"; so let me go back... Instead of dragging each color individually like this, which is a little time consuming, you can just click on "continue filling", and then tap at various areas. And it'll basically understand that you want to color the other elements as well. So right now, however, I just want to color these diamond like shapes. I don't want to color the petals. I actually don't know what color I'm going to do for the petals. So I'm going to leave that right now. I'm going to move onto my flux. Where is my flux layer? I should actually rename these now, at some point. Here is my flux layer. And I'm going to select my flux layer as the reference. The top layer is empty, that's where I'm going to be dragging and dropping the color. For this, I think I'm going to use this light green. One thing that I wanted to mention is that the layer that you have on top can also have drawing assist on. For example, right now you saw me adding the color individually to each of the elements. That's going to take me a lot of time; if I start to add color to each of the elements individually. So I can have drawing assist on on this one as well. Now I can just quickly fill in the elements. Okay, that looks like we've got all the flux. Let's see, what do I want to do next? Let's do the leaves and the Mookas. Same process. I'm going to click on Reference. Add a new layer. As I mentioned earlier, you want to have "Drawing Assist" on also. Just so that it makes it a little easier for you. And let's start dropping in the color. For the center element, even though I have two layers of color already; I have my original outline as a reference layer and I have the blue diamonds and the white diamonds on individual layers each; I still want to create one more layer for the petals that we have added. This is because I want to shade each of them individually. Having colors separately on each of the layers is going to give me a little bit more flexibility with that. Now, I have my entire illustration colored. I recommend that you also take your time to decide which colors you want to put on your illustration. Just balance out the darks, the mediums, and the light colors. And once you're happy with the base colors, meet me in the next lesson where we'll start to shade them. 10. Project 1 - Texture & Shading: All right, so we're going to start shading the illustration now. But before we do that, let's actually quickly rename our layers. And this is just going to be like a hygiene check on the list of layers that we have over here so that we're not lost in this puzzle, this maze of layers. So what I want to do is I want to quickly start renaming each of the layers with the tangle that they have. And then the top layers will be called assisted or color or whatever they are. As an example, if I have my Eze layer over here, I'm just going to click on it. We just want to click on Rename. It'll give you a keypad. I want to call it Eze. Then the layer on top can also be renamed, and this one is going to be called color, or you can actually call it Eze color if you want to be even more specific. And then same way, I'm just going to rename each of the layers so that it's easy for me to identify them when we're scrolling through the list. All right. I have all my layers named now and the one with the fillers is just called fillers. What I'm going to do is now just group them as well so that it's easier for me to navigate through this entire long menu. To group the layers, we just select one layer and slightly just swipe right on the layers that we want to group at the bottom; you'll see a difference in the color. The selected one will be a different shade of blue. And the ones that you want to group under it will also be in blue, but in a different color. In a different shade of blue rather. You're going to see the group icon over here. You just click on that. Then same way you can rename the group as well. I'm going to call this Blooming Kangular. When you want to collapse the group, you can just click on this drop down menu; that just makes life a little easier. I'm going to quickly do that for the rest of the layers as well. The random element that we had placed, which was a decorative element, was not really a tangle. So I'll just called it "Deco 1" You can choose to call it whatever you like, just as long as you are naming it in a way that you remember what you had drawn over there. Of course the fillers are just a layer by themselves; nothing else in the fillers as yet. So I'm just going to leave that independently for now. And now it's time to start shading. Before we actually start the shading process, I want to give you a quick idea as to why we're doing this. Currently, the illustration looks pretty good. If you want to stop at this point, you totally can. This is pretty good right now and the colors are nicely filled in. All the details are looking pretty nice. But the reason why I thought we could add some texture and shading is so that it could look a little bit more handmade. The reason for that is that I want to make it look like authentic blue pottery wall plates or ceramic dishes that we get in the blue pottery style. Usually the artisans hand paint these motifs and then the dishes are actually given some heat treatment because of which the color sets in on the ceramic dish. Sometimes they're put inside a kiln; other times they're given other types of treatments. But basically there is some heat processing that happens. So the colors are completely set in on the dish. When that happens, there is a certain amount of inconsistency that appears on the plate. We can actually see little specks of paint going lighter in some sections and darker in some sections. That's the nature of any item which is hand painted or handmade that it'll have some little minor inconsistencies here and there. So just to replicate that texture and to give a nod to the handmade feel of these dishes, we are going to add texture and shading over here. What I'm going to do right now is that I'm going to demonstrate with a couple of tangles. Then the process is pretty repetitive. So you'll be able to follow along looking at the steps that I'm doing. Let's start with the middle one, actually, because that has the most amount of colors. We're going to start with Blooming Kangular. I'm going to go to my layers panel. The first thing that I'm going to do is come to the green color layer, which is the inside petals. On top of this, I'm going to create a new layer. Right away, I'm going to change the blending mode of this layer. Currently it says N over here next to the checkbox. And we want to change it to multiply. N stands for normal, but we want to change it to multiply, which will give you an icon like this. You'll have M written over here. Basically, what happens with the multiply mode is that whenever you apply another color on top of this, it's going to multiply the effect on top of the layer which is under it. In this particular case, I'm going to take the same color, which is this teal color. Now I'm going to actually change my brush as well. In the charcoals tab, I'm going to take the willow charcoal brush, which has a very nice texture to it. So now, over here; let's make sure we're on the correct layer; so with the multiply mode, if I add this, you can see that it's giving a darker effect. The lighter color is already there. But on top of it, when I'm adding the same color, it's just doing that multiply blending mode action and it's giving me a darker effect. Now if I let this be on normal, then you can see that it's basically the same color, right? You can't really make out any difference. I'm only talking about the color inside. I'm not talking about the color that's spreading outside, which we'll also get to in a minute. Basically, the point is that if you're applying the same color on a separate layer and just letting the layer be on normal, then you're not going to see any difference because it's literally the same color. But the minute you change that to multiply, the effect will become darker. In fact, if you want to play around with different types of blending options, you can do that over here; you'll see Screen which makes it lighter. Then the Color Dodge effect basically also gives you a slightly luminous effect. Then we have Add which really highlights the color. You can play with different types of blending options over here. For now, I'm going to go with the Multiply option because I want to create some darker patches. The reason for creating these darker patches is that when these artisans traditionally apply the paint, um, the paint brush is really heavily filled with paint, right? So in certain sections, the paint starts to pool in. That's the effect that I'm trying to replicate over here. Now coming to all the extra stuff that's coming outside; that is happening because we currently don't have a clipping mask on. As an example, if I currently now start to, let's say use a different color. For example, say I do the white. Now I start to add this; you can see that the color's going outside on the blue areas as well. It's really subtle, but you can still see that happening. And the reason for that is that we currently don't have a clipping mask on. A clipping mask is basically, again, a tool in procreate which allows procreate to understand that the previous layer is supposed to be used like a reference. The top layer is going to clip itself to whatever is drawn on the layer below it or under it. I'm going to clear this layer for now. I'm going to click on Clipping Mask. And you'll see this little arrow which will pop up, that's an indicator that layer number 26 that I have over here is currently clipping itself onto the green color layer. I'm again going to go back to my teal color; and because I don't want to spend too much time coloring each of the elements individually, I'm again going to put on my drawing assist on this one as well. Let's see how this goes. I'm going to try to add some darker elements. Okay, that's too big. I'm going to make my brush size way smaller. Okay, that works. The difference is really subtle, but you can make out the slight texture; and that is so much better than just having flat colors. That's one effect. Then, since we have this color selected already, let's go to the decorative element. Again, I have my green layer; on top of that, I'll add another layer. I'm going to click on Clipping Mask. And I'm going to change the blend mode to Multiply. Let's add it over here. It's very subtle texture, not too much. Oh, it looks like... ah! My Drawing Assist was not on. Let's undo. Yeah. The exact same thing that I was saying earlier. I'm guilty of doing that. Sometimes I forget to put on my drawing assist. Okay, let's do it again. There we go. Okay. Now it's on all four of them. Now let's go back to Blooming Kangular. I'm going to do the white one now. So white ends up looking creamish, or more or less like an ivory cream color when it's put inside the kiln. When you buy these blue pottery dishes, or even Chinese blue pottery items or any Delftware items, you can often see that the white is not exactly pure white. We'll see that effect when we start to multiply with the white color itself. Drawing assist because I've done that mistake once! Clipping mask; I'm going to change the blend mode to multiply and I'm going to select the white color. Just make sure we're on the right layer. Okay, now it's really subtle, but you can see that it's almost like a slightly yellowish, creamish tint which is on top of the base layer. Now if you feel that this is too little, you can always duplicate the layer with the multiply mode, and that'll really intensify it. Now you can really see that. Let's do it once more. It's becoming more and more yellow as you're duplicating the effect. It's totally up to you whether you want to add this kind of an effect or not. Actually, I wasn't planning on doing this, but now that I see this little yellowish tinge appear, the tint on this, I like it! Yeah, I think I'm going to keep it this way, but yeah, you can choose to do this color or like you can go even lighter, totally up to you. But I like this yellowish effect that's happening. As a side note, if you feel that this is too much, let's say you were doing a single layer and you feel that this is too much, you can click on the M icon over here and change the opacity as well. You can always reduce that. Instead of trying to make the color lighter, this is a quicker way to reduce the intensity of the color. But for me, I think I quite like the effect that was happening there. This yellowish effect is nice. Yeah, I think I'm going to leave it like that. Then, since we already have the white selected, let's do the Henna Drums. Or we can actually do the Ezes first. So I go to my Eze folder, click on the white color layer, add another layer, drawing assist, clipping mask... Change the mode to multiply. Let's add the effect. Really subtle... By the way, you don't have to do this with the same color. You can do the Multipy mode with a different color as well. For example, actually, let's try doing that on this layer. So I'm going to clear this. Let's say I want to have a bluish tinge over here. I'm going to take the slightly pale blue color. Everything else stays the same. Clipping mask, drawing assist, multiply. Now it's giving me this effect. This is also an option that you can explore. If this is too much, then, as I mentioned, you can reduce the opacity. And that looks pretty subtle. Yeah, that's another way to play. Imagine that if this was hand painted and they had the white paint and the blue paint next to each other; then some of the color trickles in. These are, again, very small handmade imperfections that we're trying to replicate over here. It's totally up to you whether you want to add this texture or not; and you can play with your aesthetic preferences over here. No hard and fast rules. For this, I think I'm actually going to keep this light blue little texture. This also gives it a slightly more modern look because we have these little highlights and little textures. It's giving it a very traditional meets modern vibe. Then let's do the Henna Drums. The willow charcoal brush is actually pressure sensitive. If you press more then you're going to get a lot of color. But if you press lightly, then you're going to get very subtle color. So play with the pressure to get the kind of gradation effect that you want. It looks like we got most of it. Yeah. Okay, that looks pretty nice. I think I want to actually color in those circles as well; those semicircles. While we're here in this folder, I'm just going to add a new layer on top of the Henna Drum layer. And in the bottom one, I'm just going to make sure that reference is switched on. Now in this layer, I'm going to switch to the teal color. Come back to this layer. Just double checking that my reference is on. Yeah I'm just going to fill. Okay. Yeah, I quite like the green centers over there. Same way I'm going to do Mooka as well. I know I'm going a little back and forth here and there in terms of the order of the tangles. But that's because I'm trying to just use the same color that I have used previously. I'm trying to work according to the color rather than the order of the tangles. You can choose your own workflow. I just tend to go a little back and forth on my illustrations. I'm not really picky about the order of the tangles. Yeah, if you want to stay organized, totally go for it. But I'm just going according to whatever color I have. Yeah, we were on Mooka right now. Again, on the blue layer, I'm going to add another layer on top of it. Drawing assist. Clipping mask. Make it to multiply. This time I'm going to use the same blue color. Let's see how that goes. Yeah, this is, really dark, and I think you can make out the difference on camera. This is the original blue and this is the dark effect. For this one, actually, I might do another layer which also has the screen mode. Right on top of the multiply mode; the layer that has the multiply mode, I'm going to click the plus icon and create another layer. And on this one, I'm going to do screen mode just because I want to bring some nice patches on the top half of that bulb. I'm going to click on Clipping Mask again. It's automatically going to clip down below to those layers under it. Drawing Assist is on. Let's see how this looks. Yeah, this is giving me a lighter effect. This is what I meant when I was telling you earlier that sometimes the paint has little inconsistencies here and there, when this is hand-painted. I'm doing a lighter effect which is blending down into the previous layer that has the multiply effect. But this is too intense, so I'm going to reduce the opacity. You'll see a really nice subtle shift going from light to dark. Yeah, let's keep it at about 85, 86%... something like that. And I'm going to do it for the other Mooka as well. First on the multiply mode. It's the same color, so lucky for us that we don't have to keep switching the color. This is the darker effect, and then on the screen mode, this is the lighter effect. Okay, Yeah, I really like that little ombre gradation effect that's happening. In fact, let's do this on the Kangular as well; since we have this color selected. So we come to the blue layer. Add another one on top and we'll actually need two. One with multiply and one with screen. Actually, let's try doing just with screen and see how that goes. So Drawing Assist... Clipping Mask. Screen is selected. Let's see how this goes. Yeah, this is a little too streaky. And that's because my brush was at a very, very small size. So I'm just going to increase the size a tad bit. In fact, I'm going to change the direction; I'm going to do it from this way. There we go. I like that better. You can see this subtle shift from dark to light. I feel like I want to add pops of this little light green, yellowish color that we have created somewhere. I'm just going to keep that as a mental note. Yeah, let's do the flux now. A new layer on top of the colored layer... Drawing Assist. Clipping Mask and Multiply. This was the lighter... sort of, sea green color. Okay, let's do it over here. Yeah, there we go. The other fluxes are really tiny. You won't really need too much over there. Just one stroke each should be enough. That pretty much covers Flux. I think I'm going to do something on the centers as well over here because these are looking pretty bland. Let's play with screen mode on that. Henna Drum. We've got to come to the layer which had the centers... add another layer. Screen mode and clipping mask... drawing assist. And let's try it with the same color and see how that goes. Yeah, it's just like this tiny little highlight, although I want to make it a little smaller. Yeah, something like that. There we go. And this one as well. Just play with different blending modes to see the effect that you like. I actually want to brighten up this deco element as well. I might add one more layer over there. We already have one multiply layer but I'm going to add another one with screen... and drawing assist and clipping mask. This is the entire reason why I was saying that we should have as many layers as possible because we can totally play around. We don't have to worry about the number of layers when we are creatively brainstorming and playing around with our ideas. What color was that? Okay, that was the same teal. Yeah, more number of layers are definitely a good idea. Okay, on this one, I think I want to reduce the intensity of the multiply layer. I'm going to click on the M icon and reduce the opacity. And this is much better because this is quite subtle. That's how I like it. Okay, we have covered pretty much shading all the elements. Now it's time to add some final touches in terms of more decorative elements, and this is totally a personal choice. As I had mentioned earlier, I want to add some elements with this particular color that developed while we were creating the layers. Now we don't have this color on the color palette, but we can just tap over here and procreate is going to pick up that color for us. If you just hold for a little while, then it's going to pick up that color. When we come to our color palettes; this was the palette that we had... on this, we can just tap over here and we can add this color to our palette now. So we just expanded our palette by one color. I want to add some elements with this color. So I'm going to go to my fillers layer. And here, I'm going to change my brush back to the monoline brush. Actually, we can play with the syrup brush, which is pressure sensitive. If I draw lightly, it's going to give me a thin line, but if I put more pressure, it gets thicker. Now, using this, we can add some elements here and there. So nothing too big, just small decorative elements. I think I'm going to add a few dots as well, somewhere here and there in the composition. For that, I'm actually going to switch to my monoline brush, because it's easier to draw circles with that. For these small dots, I'm going to try and not use too much of the QuickShape feature because I want these dots to, again, look slightly hand drawn and handmade. I try not to rely too much on the features of procreate when it comes to creating organic elements. Yeah, it's a good thing that we are adding this color because it's really helping to brighten up the piece a little bit. This looks like a combination of the syrup brush and the monoline brush. I'm just going back and forth and playing with the design. Just adding some fillers here and there. I actually want to color in these little triangles from the Blooming Kangular element as well. Again, I've got my drawing assist and we actually don't need clipping mask on this; we just need the previous layer to be on reference. Yeah, I'm just going to add this color here now. Just looking at this in case I want to add any other touches, but I'm fairly okay with this now. And that finally leaves us with the outside circles to deal with. If you remember earlier, I had mentioned that I might not use the second blue circle. Yeah, I knew that I might not use that, so straight away, I'm going to hide that. I like this look much better. This actually looks like a wall plate or a dinner plate now; with the thick border. I'm going to do the exact same texture thing on the plate as well. But for this I'm going to switch off my drawing guide completely. The reason for that is that I want the texture to not be replicated on each of those eight segments. I want it to look natural. So on top of this layer, I'm going to add screen mode. I'm going to put on my clipping mask and let's take that color. I'm just going to go lightly around that entire circle, but I forgot to select the brush, which is willow charcoal. You can see this really subtle shift which is happening. I want to make it even more subtle. I'm just going to add it randomly, here and there. In fact, for this, I'm going to play with two or three different types of colors. This is barely doing anything right now. I'm going to actually reduce the opacity of the screen mode. On top of this, I'm going to add another layer, which is also going to be on screen mode. I'll have my clipping mask on, but I'm going to take a lighter color over here, maybe, this pale blue color. Yeah, this is now bringing in some variation. I'm just going randomly as you can see. I'm not going all over... but this is too bright, so I'm going to reduce the opacity. Now you can see this really subtle texture. It's not repetitive. It's not even and repeating itself or mirroring itself in those eight sections. That's why I wanted this to have a slightly more hand drawn feel. This is too bright... if you feel that it's getting lighter and lighter again, as I mentioned, just play with more layers. You can add one more with multiply on. Make sure you take the darker color for this because then the multiply effect will be even more. We have our clipping mask and the brush selected. As you can see, it's just subtly adding more texture. Now you can really see light and dark specks over here. It's like a nice mix of paint flecks in lighter colors... and lighter tones and darker tones. This looks pretty good. Maybe a little bit over here as well. Okay, let's do that on the white one as well. Add a new layer. We're going to have clipping mask and multiply, and I'm going to take white for this. You can actually take the slightly sandy-ivory color as well. That's just going to give it an even more pottery like look. I'm going to do one more with screen mode. Screen is basically the one that I use to lighten and multiply is the one that I use to darken. Just play with these modes. Yeah, you can see that it's slightly lighter at some places, slightly darker at some places. Almost like... there's a little bit of dust... not even dust actually; It's literally mud that is used to make pottery. It literally has that effect; almost like that ceramic texture to it. Now one thing that I want to do is that I also want to add some texture to the blue circle inside. But before that, I actually want to change the size of that lighter blue circle. Before I actually come to that, I'm going to first group the other layers, so that it's easier for me to identify which layer is in reference to what. So this is going to be the dark blue layer. I can rename them later, but just to clean up my entire layer panel over here, I'm just going to group them. We have this for the white group. Then I think I can get rid of the blue layer completely. Okay, I can select this and I can make this go bigger and I can readjust this. This is a quick fix, but I would really recommend not to do this. Simply because every time you resize elements in procreate, it has to recalculate the number of pixels required to create that design again. So basically this is a pixel-based app. And every time you make an element smaller or bigger, or you try to distort it or warp it or make any kind changes to it, it has to recalculate over and over again the sizes or the pixels for that particular element; and that creates a loss in quality. This is a really simple element and it'll just take me a minute to create a blue circle again, so instead of actually being lazy and just scaling it, I'm just going to delete the layer and create a new circle altogether. Because I don't want to have a loss in quality. I'm quickly just going to add another circle and that's going to be much easier. Okay, there we have it. I just wanted it a smidge bigger, but that just gives me a little bit more blue area to play with. I wanted the white border to be really thin, very similar to how we see it in real life, blue pottery wall plates. Now I can actually add some texture to the light blue background over here as well. I'm just going to add a new layer. And on this, I'm actually going to do screen mode because if I do multiply and it creates a darker effect, then it's going to take away from all these luminous elements that we have on top. So I'm going to do this on screen mode. I'm going to do; I don't need drawing assist, but I don't need clipping mask over here. Let's do the same light blue color. I'm going to change my brush to willow charcoal. Ooh, that is really making it super bright. I don't want it to be so bright as well. I'm actually going to reduce the size of the brush as well. I'm trying not to be too consistent and too even with the application. So like over here, this is a really nice luminous patch. Then the other areas are slightly more dull. Yeah, that's the effect that I like. I'm just going to reduce the opacity a little bit, just so that it's really subtle. Because if this is at 100% opacity, then we can't really see those nice yellowish green elements that we had created. Just going to keep it very, very subtle. On second thoughts, actually let's do a subtle multiply as well. If I don't like it, I can always delete it, but there's no harm in doing it right now. Clipping mask; multiply is on. Yeah, I'm glad I decided to try this. This brings even more variation. Yeah, I think I really like this subtle texture. Okay, so that finishes up our first project, and I truly hope that you have enjoyed making your wallplate as well. If you've used different tangles, then I'm sure your result is going to be equally phenomenal. Either way, whether you've followed the same steps as me or you've tried different tangles, I would love to see the results. So make sure that you put them in the project section. And don't forget that I reply to all the projects posted over there. This is a great way for you to get some feedback from me. And also if you need any help in problem solving... so definitely connect with me in the projects tab as well as the discussions tab. Once you're ready, meet me in the next lesson where we'll start working on our second project. 11. Making Stylised Motifs: All right everyone, welcome back to the class. I'm super excited to get started with our second project. In the previous lesson, we finished our first project in which we used Zentangle inspired patterns or tangles to create our illustration, which was loosely inspired by blue pottery wall plates and dinner plates. But in this lesson, we're going to explore how to develop our own motifs from scratch. In other words, we're not going to rely on pre-existing tangles from the Zentangle method. Instead we're going to look at reference photos to build our own motifs. Now let's talk about these reference photos. There are a bunch of options that you have. The first option that I have included in the class resources document is pictures of flowers. A lot of the objects that are created with the blue pottery style in India, such as vases, dinner plates, wall clocks, and so much more have floral motifs in them. This is because a lot of Indian folk art and traditional art forms have a heavy emphasis on natural elements and flowers. Needless to say, there are a lot of Indian flowers that you can see appearing in blue pottery designs as well. And for inspiration, I've included some of these pictures of various kinds of flowers which I've taken from a stock photography website called Unsplash. And I've included the links for that in the class resources document. That's going to be our first resource. The second resource that I have is pictures of various monuments that you can find in the city of Jaipur, which is famous for blue pottery in India. The city of Jaipur is absolutely stunning. It's absolutely beautiful and it has these wonderful architectural delights. And I've included some of these beautiful pictures of various sightseeing places and monuments in the class resources document. When you look at these pictures, you can really zoom in and get some ideas for color palettes as well as for motifs, for shapes, for the way the elements are interacting with each other. And basically just get your creative juices flowing. This is going to be our second resource. Then, because I've been lucky enough to visit the city of Jaipur twice now, I've also included a lot of my personal photos. In the class resources document, you will see a lot of these close up shots that I've clicked of all of these places that I visited. Interestingly, inside the City Palace of Jaipur, there is an entire room which is dedicated to the blue pottery style. Here's a close up of that, which I've also included in the document. Here you can really see how the blue pigment is used on the walls and how these designs are basically creating this intricate pattern. This is another resource that you can look at. You'll get a lot of design ideas. One more resource which I've included in the class document is the Pinterest Board, which I've created, again, especially for this class. So you'll find pictures of flower pots, decorative items and fabrics, et cetera, which are all in the blue pottery style. So make sure that you check out that board as well. All right, now we have all of these resources and we have all of these references. But we need to understand how we can use them to create our own motifs. In order to do that, we must understand what exactly are the defining characteristics or the defining features of the blue pottery style. Of course, if you look at these pictures, the first thing that you will notice is that the elements are always simplified in terms of shapes. For example, if we look at this picture over here, let me zoom in. You'll notice that all the motifs, the flowers and the leaves, et cetera, are done with very simple shapes. You'll notice C strokes and S strokes over here to achieve these basic simple lines and curves. Similarly, if you look at this picture, which is of a monument called Patrika Gate in Jaipur... You'll notice that all the paintings, which are done on the wall panels over here are done in the blue pottery style. Or at least similar to the blue pottery style with very simple lines and curves. Even though there are geometric shapes and even though there are these floral motifs, what's common in all of them is the fact that basic simple strokes are used. There's use of C strokes, S strokes, simple curves, simple lines. Over here as well, you can see that the leaves are done with very simple strokes. While they're intertwining and while they're going here and there in different different directions to give it a flowy effect, they have the leaves still with very simple shapes. That's one of the most defining features of blue pottery style. Once again. If I zoom into this picture over here again, you'll notice that these are basically simple strokes. It looks very ornate and it looks very intricate. But you can basically make out that this is just a combination of different types of arcs, which are used to create this scallop shape. Even over here, we have this little shape over here, which looks like a tear drop. Then we have the simple lines or simple curves which are basically bringing some ornamental value. Same way over here, the flower is done with simple outlines, basically, overall, just use of simple shapes. Similarly here you can see that it's just, again, a combination of simple curves. And this element over here is actually very similar to the Mooka that we had done in our first project. Basically, we're seeing a lot of colors. We're seeing a lot of details. But if you look at them very closely, you'll notice that everything is simplified in terms of structure, in terms of shape. That's one defining feature. The second thing that really, really sets the blue pottery style apart from other folk or traditional art styles in India is that the elements are not always overlapping. There's a lot of empty spaces and there's a lot of negative spaces. For example, over here you'll notice that the elements are never overlapping each other. They'll branch out definitely from the vines or the twigs that are drawn or the branches, but they will basically never be overlapping. When we look at real life flowers, for example, let's say I open this one over here. Now if I look at the picture of an actual flower, we can see that the petals are overlapping. But if the same flower had to be represented in the blue pottery style, the petals will not be overlapping and the shapes will be simplified. In fact, I think I have a picture where there is a sunflower motif somewhere. Let me try and find that. I think it's here. Yeah. Okay. For example, over here, you'll notice that the sunflower is represented with very simple shapes. And the petals are all equal sized. And they're also almost equi-distant from each other and they're not overlapping each other. It's almost like a silhouette or like a flat cut out which is on the wall. Again, I can zoom in over here to show other examples of how the elements are simplified, but at the same time they're not overlapping each other. Same for the geometric shapes, same for the floral motifs as well. Over here as well, no elements are overlapping. Same way, these flowers are not overlapping each other. The final trademark, or the final USP, or defining feature of blue pottery style, is that everything has a little bit of flourish and style to it. For example, if we're showing the leaves, then we'll exaggerate the ends a little bit. We'll exaggerate the tips of the leaves a little bit. Over here, also, if there is an S stroke, then there's a little bit more emphasis on the curvature and there's a slight bend in the shapes. So basically, there's heavy use of stylistic flourishes. And like these flourish lines or these wavy motion like lines which give it a flowy quality. That's true for almost all blue pottery designs. This design philosophy, or this design language, is very Turko Persian. It's inspired from Turkish patterns and Persian patterns, which of course, have a very long and very vast detailed history. A lot of that influence is on Indian architecture and on Indian art forms as well. In fact, when blue pottery came in India, it was with heavy influence from Chinese delftware, as well as from Turkish patterns and Persian patterns. It was like a mixture of all of these influences, and you can see a lot of that in the monuments. Even when I look at this picture, which is from the city palace in Jaipur, while this is not traditionally in the blue pottery style, you can still see that the design language is still similar. For example, over here we have these lotus flowers, which are shown with outlines. And then the elements are not overlapping each other. But at the same time the shapes are simplified and the tips of the petals are emphasized with a little bit of curvature. Is slightly stylized in that sense. Then same way the leaves over here, which are again with the outlines, but they have like these simple C shapes which are going on the edges. So the curves are done with a little bit of like a stylistic touch to them. Overall, this is the look and feel that has loosely translated or trickled down into the blue pottery style as well. Which is why I've created an entire Pinterest board, in which you can look at so many examples of Turkish patterns, Persian patterns, and actual Jaipur, Indian blue pottery motifs. You can do like a mash up of all of these references and build your own patterns. Now when it comes to our second project, we'll be building a tile or a block which can then be repeated to create a seamless pattern later on. For that, I'm very excited to show you how we can take inspiration from real flowers and all of these other references as well, and basically build our block. So for that, let's do a couple of practice exercises first. So I'm going to go to procreate. I'm going to create a new canvas which is again, going to be 3,600 pixels. That's my usual size, but you can go with any other size as long as it's a square. Then I have my DPI to 300 and my maximum layers as 76. I'm quickly going to check my color profile and it's the same one that I usually keep, which is the SRGB profile. We are in our new canvas. Now the first thing that I'm going to do is bring in a couple of these pictures so that I can have them on the side as a reference. So I can click on the Wrench icon, and then I'm going to click "Insert A Photo". Then I'm going to bring in the sunflower image just as an example. It comes with a selection and you can just put it on the side; just scaling it down and keeping it on the side so that I have it as a reference. You'll see that it comes on the layer that you're on. The image is imported. Before we actually go any further, I want to show you one more way of bringing in a reference image inside Procreate. Let's say you don't want to have this image right on the canvas and you want to keep your canvas completely free with the reference image on the side. Then you can come to the wrench icon. And then inside the canvas tab, which is the second tab, you will see that there is an option called reference. You just want to switch that on. And you have an option over here to import a new image, and I just cleared the previous one. You can click on Import, and inside your photo gallery, whatever images you have, you can bring them as a reference. Let's say I want my sunflower as a reference. It'll come here. And then I have this entire window to move around wherever I like. I don't really need the image on the canvas. I can actually come to my canvas and clear this particular layer. And I have my reference over here on the side. This is great when you want your canvas to be free and you just want to draw on the canvas without having another layer over here or without having an element over here. So you can scale it like this and draw side by side from reference. But if you want to trace over the image, then the other method works, which is that you click on the wrench icon and you go to the Add tab over here, click on "Insert a Photo" and bring in the photo. And it'll be here on the canvas. Pick whichever option works best for you. For now, I'll have this option with me because I can then trace over it. I have this as a layer. Then on top of this, I'm going to add another layer. Coming back to my first layer, I'm going to reduce the opacity because I just want to see the shape. I don't want to see too many details and I just want it for reference. Then coming to my second layer, I'm going to draw over here. I'll come to my brush icon. And inside the sketching tab, you have a lot of these pencils that you can use to practice your sketching. I usually go with the Narinder pencil. And I also like the 6B pencil. I use them interchangeably. Right now I'm just going to use the Narinder pencil. Let's try making a motif. Now remember the three principles that we're going to follow. We're going to keep the shapes simple. We're not going to overlap the elements. And at the same time, we're going to add a little bit of like a stylish touch to these elements. If I wanted to do a sunflower in the blue pottery style, I'll start off with something really basic, like a circle like so. I'm going to wait for procreate to convert it into an ellipse. Put my finger and convert it into a circle. Then if I want to do the petals, instead of doing it in true botanical style, I'm just going to take the general shape of this petal. I'm going to bring the petal like so; and I'm just going to make my motif like that. Now of course, you can use the symmetry tool as well to create this. So that you can get all your petals equidistant and almost of the same size. But this is basically a practice exercise to show you the difference between an actual botanical illustration versus a blue pottery style illustration. When you look at reference images, you can translate them, or you can create them rather in the blue pottery style by just keeping these principles in mind. Now I have a sunflower and I can get rid of that image, so I can just hide that layer. Now this is, again, just a sketching exercise, which is why I haven't done a neat job. But you get the general idea. If I want to add some design touches over here or if I want to include some stylish touches, I'll probably just show the center with a few dots or circles. I won't really be adding too many details over here. I'll just scatter a few circles here and there. That will basically qualify as a blue pottery style motif. If I just want to add maybe a few more touches, I'll probably just add a few lines like so, but not too many. The more detailed we start to make it, the less it looks like the blue pottery style and the more it leans towards actual botanical illustrations, which we don't want. Something like that would qualify as a blue pottery style design. Now let's say we want to do another image, I'm going to create another layer. Let's try carnations. Because carnations are popular as an Indian flower and they often appear in the blue pottery style products. You can see a lot of carnation design motifs in flower pots. You can see it in wall clocks. You can see it in jewelry boxes and so much more. It's also shown a lot in Mughal architecture and in Persian and Turkish motifs. Carnations are basically like one of the favorite flowers in India. Let's say I want to do this. I'm going to maybe add another layer over here. I'll hide my sunflower for a bit. Let's say I want to do carnation on that layer. I need to reduce the opacity. If I want to do a side facing carnation or like a profile of it, I will just take the basic shape; I'm on, the wrong layer. Coming back here, I'll basically just exaggerate the shape of that little center or the bottom. Then instead of doing so many petals, which would lean more towards the botanical style, I will just take some general shapes like that. That would be one petal, something like that, and something like that. That would qualify as a carnation in the blue pottery style. In fact, you can actually go ahead and fine tune the arc as well. How you will actually see carnations represented in the blue pottery style would be with a bulb like so. You will see the petals with a little bit more flourish like that. The top arc is going to be; actually that one should be defined a little bit more. So you'll see something in that style where the top arc is like a geometrical outline over there. Another way that carnations are usually shown is that we have one petal like this, another like this. Then you can do three petals or five. Usually they're in odd numbers. Then you'll have a center like so, and then a stem going like so. That's another way of showing the carnations. Now you can exaggerate the petal a tad bit. So you can do this kind of a petal where you can emphasize the curve. Over the years, the style has evolved quite a bit. So there is no such thing as a true blue pottery style. All of the artists have a different way of interpreting this style. Even the local artisans who have this style running for generations in their families, they have evolved the craft quite a bit, and now you will see slight deviations in every artist's work. Feel free to add your own unique touch to this. Basically, you can emphasize the curvature if you feel like it, but if you don't feel like it and if you want to keep it loose, that's totally fine as well. Okay, now let me actually see if I have an example of the carnations. I think I had it somewhere. Yeah, For example, over here you can see that I've done a basic loose interpretation of the carnations with these simple strokes in the middle. And then the leaves are basically just like silhouettes and they don't really have a lot of details in there. Yeah, this is inspired from the blue pottery style as well, and it has a limited color palette. And you can see that the strokes are very, very simple, with some stylish flourishes here and there. And that's like the blue pottery look. Similarly. Let's look at other photos. Let's say you want to do tulips. I, I did that on the wrong layer. I'm going to undo that. Hide all my layers, bring the tulip in on a new layer. Let's keep this over here. I'm just going to keep that on the side as a reference; come to a new layer. Let's say if I want to do a tulip in the blue pottery style, it'd be something as simple as doing one petal like this. And then we can have maybe another petal going like so; maybe another petal going like so. Then we'll have the stem. So very simple; no overlapping elements, basic outlines, simple shapes with just a little bit of emphasis on the tips so that the curve is a little bit more stylized. That would qualify as blue pottery. Of course, you can add some details like that, but not too many. Similarly, when you're doing the leaves; let's look at the sunflower example for that. Let me bring this to 100% If you notice this leaf has a lot of these pointy edges. If I was to do this in a true botanical style, then I would be following each of those pointy edges and I would really try to imitate the effect in my illustration. But when it comes to blue pottery, that's not what we'll be going for. We'll actually just be taking the general idea of that shape. I'll be doing a stem like that and then I'll be simplifying it further. I'll just take a loose interpretation of that shape; and that will qualify as a blue pottery leaf. You can add some veins and little nodes like that. It's not the same number of pointy edges as in the real leaf. It's also not the same number of veins as the real leaf, but it's a loose representation of that with simple strokes. And that's exactly what the blue pottery style is. Basically, just go through these reference pictures and try to experiment with different kinds of shapes, with different kinds of formations. Just really study these pictures to see how the elements are interacting with each other. For example, over here you'll see the stems are criss crossing each other. Here you can see that there's an S stroke on both the edges and then we have like a little center petal. So basically, just look at all of these images and practice different kinds of shapes, different kinds of formations. You can also look at pictures of monuments where we have Persian and Turkish influence on the architecture. Over here for example, you will see how these flowers have simple outlines and simple shapes. And then we have these beautiful branches with like nice curves and twirls and swirls. They have these trailing leaves coming out. Again, it's either silhouette or its outlines. You can see that all of this is basically flat colors on silhouette style painting; there's not a lot of detailing inside, but once in a while you'll see these outlines inside or the details inside rather, which have simple-simple strokes. Over here, there's not a lot of detailing. It's just a simple blob of color with a little dot. And then we have these petals; it's all silhouette. This is also a silhouette. But once in a while, you'll find some strokes. For example, over here you have some lines which are showing the detail. This is actually a great example of a rectangular tile block. But in the next lesson, we'll be developing a square block, which can then be repeated into a seamless pattern. Have fun and play with these motifs and explore these designs. Just practice a few strokes, warm up your hands. Really immerse yourself in these motifs. Then I will see you in the next lesson where we can start to create our block. 12. Design A Block: All right, it's time to get started with our second class project. As I had mentioned earlier, in this lesson we are going to be developing a block or a tile, which can then be later on converted into a seamless, repeating pattern. Once again, I have my canvas set to 3,600 pixels in width and height, at a DPI of 300. And I've got my color profile selected as SRGB. First things first, I'm going to activate my symmetry over here. I'm going to go to my wrench icon. Click on the Drawing Guide. Edit Drawing Guide. Symmetry. And I'm going to choose radial symmetry over here. You can choose to work with a different symmetry tool, if that's what you like. Feel free to customize the project in any way that you like. Depending on your aesthetics, depending on the motifs that you're going for. Basically have a lot of fun in this project. This is a great opportunity for you to add something new to your portfolio today. Hopefully, this will also give you an opportunity to monetize your pattern later on via a print-on-demand website like Society6 or RedBubble. Have fun, take this opportunity to create something new and unique for yourself today. All right, let's get started with some reference images. I'm going to import my reference images one by one, and these will help me to get some ideas for the general shapes that I want to add in my motifs. The first image that I have is of Patrika Gate, which is a very beautiful monument in Jaipur. It has a lot of motifs on each of the wall panels. I usually start with the corners when it comes to these blocks, because that gives me an idea on how the pattern is going to shape up, once it's repeated seamlessly. I usually start with the general shapes first and then I get to the details later on. Once again, as a reminder, you don't have to use the same reference images as me. If you are planning to build a unique pattern for yourself in today's class, then I definitely encourage you to use different reference images so that you can build something unique, which reflects your own personal style and your own voice as an artist. So take this opportunity to really have fun and create something beautiful that you can add to your portfolio. So here I'm just adding a general flower shape in the center. And then I'm going to use this to build more outlines. Now I'm just going to add a new layer and fill it with a solid color to create it as a background layer. Now even though Procreate comes with a background layer pre-installed, I'm just using a separate layer for the background. So that later on when I flatten these layers, I can have my background moving along with the rest of the elements. Now I'm just going to add more elements over here. It's all about rearranging your layers and adding more details in the foreground, in the background. Basically creating something that reflects your aesthetics. So on the layers, where I have to add circles, I usually don't keep the drawing assist on because that helps me to place the circles exactly in the center. But for other details like these, I have my drawing assist on, so that I don't have to draw each of those curves independently. For the colors, I'm actually using a combination of colors from all the three color palettes that I've provided in the resources. All of those colors work very well together. I think those arcs were looking a little dominating. So I've switched to this Mooka shape. I want a little pop of yellow, but I definitely don't want it to be very overpowering. Same way, I'm just going to continue adding more details. So wherever I feel like I want to add similar elements over and over again, I'm using the drawing assist; but whenever I'm focusing on individual elements in the center, then I'm keeping my drawing assist off. I'm basically choosing colors from all the three palettes. Just mixing and matching various colors over here. Here I feel like I want a slightly lighter shade of green for my background. I'm selecting the same color, and in my disc icon, I'm taking it a little bit more towards the lighter area. I think that should be a better choice for the background. I can always change it later, but right now, I want the foreground elements to stand out a little bit better, which is why I've changed the background color. Then, same way, I'm basically just adding elements here and there. For this design, I also want to play with some straight lines and some geometric patterns. Let's see how that goes. I'll actually speed up the video over here a little bit for you to see my progress. Because a lot of these steps are similar to what we have done in the previous lessons. I'm basically going back and forth between my layers and my color palettes, and I'm adding different elements here and there. Sometimes I'm also duplicating elements so that I don't have to keep drawing them over and over again. Remember, every time you want to transform an element, or you want to scale it, you can definitely go smaller. But it's not a good idea to go bigger on the elements because then it'll lead to pixelation issues; that will cause a loss in quality. That's something to keep in mind whenever you're scaling your motifs. To bring some variety and interest in my drawings, I like to switch between the Monoline brush and the Syrup brush, because the Syrup brush is great for adding these flourish lines and to add those little wavy touches. It actually imitates the effect of a real paint brush very nicely. Feel free to use these brushes to your advantage. Now I'm just going back and forth, trying to balance out the colors. I definitely like this pop of red over here. It's almost like a dark rose red. I think it's really helping to liven up the piece. It's also very close to the reference image that I have. I'm using the cool colors as my base palette with pops of red and yellow on it. I quite like this interplay of the warm colors and the cool colors. Making these tiles and blocks is a very fun, relaxing, and addictive process. You can draw all of your elements in separate layers. If you don't like an element or if you're unsure about its placement, then you can always hide that layer. And you can draw a new element on a separate layer and see how that one looks instead. Basically, instead of working on limited layers and erasing the elements constantly, you can just keep hiding and unhiding the layers. That way you get a better sense of the permutation-combination between the layers. That is one of the biggest advantages of creating these tiles on Procreate. In fact, so many times I'm just playing around like this and I keep on adding elements on separate layers. But I don't really decide or settle on the final motif till the very end. I keep hiding and unhiding my layers to see the best permutation- combination possible. That's when I finally decide on the final look or the final motif. Yeah, it's all about experimenting. It's all about playing. It's just basically all about having fun. One of the things that I also like to do is to start off with a very limited color palette. For example, over here I'm just working with yellow, blue, white, and red. Then later on I introduce a new color. For example, now I'm adding the green. The reason for this is that it helps me to first focus on the composition and then move on to the colors. Usually, if I have too many colors with me right at the beginning, then that tends to confuse me a little bit. I'm sure that there are others also who feel the same way. Because then the brain basically starts focusing on the balance of colors rather than focusing on the composition or the motifs. Colors tend to do that with our brain, right? Like we basically just start focusing on colors and the emotions that those colors are giving. I like to keep those decisions for later. First, I like to focus on the composition. When I started off in the beginning, I purposely kept my palette very limited. Now when I'm adding this green, it's giving me an idea as to where all I can place it on my tile. Now I can use this green to brighten up some of the spaces or some of the elements. It's definitely a nice addition. But had I started off with this right at the beginning, then I wouldn't have been able to incorporate it in this way. I would have definitely felt very confused having so many colors right at the beginning. Yeah, I'd say work with limited colors in the beginning and then gradually expand the palette to add those little pops and those little vibrant touches and accents here and there. Once I feel that I have exhausted pretty much all possibilities with one reference image, that's when I bring in the next reference image, so that I get some more ideas on shapes and colors. Using this new reference image, now I feel like I want to add a slightly darker green somewhere on the background, because that whole area is looking very empty. I definitely want to add some elements over here, but I don't want them to be overpowering or distracting from the main elements. Which is why I'm using a shade which is just slightly darker than the background color. This can be a great way to add some new elements in your design without suffocating it. Really, if you feel like your design is missing something but another color is not really adding value, just use a lighter color or a darker color similar to what you already have on your palette. That way you can add some tiny details here and there. Same way, I'm just going to add some details on the inside elements now. These are all with the syrup brush because it helps to replicate the effect of paint strokes. Then I'm just going to work on the corners once again. I want the corners to have these petals which can eventually become a flower once the entire pattern is repeated seamlessly. But I definitely want it to be a secondary motif and not a primary motif in my design. The center element is going to act as the main focus or the focal point of the repeat pattern. Then these corners are eventually going to get patched up or lined up in the seamless repeat and they're going to become the secondary motif. I'm just changing the shape of the petals a little bit so that the flower is not too overpowering. But at the same time, it's also helping to balance out that little yellow in the center. Yeah, it looks like we've got most of the work done over here. I feel like I want to add a little bit of pink on my illustration, because when I'm looking at the reference image on the left side, I can see that there's this beautiful pink and there's this whole lotus pond illustration. Even though I've not really drawn any lotus flowers in my illustration, I feel like I want to use that pink. Let's see how that looks. Yeah, I think I want to add this color to my palette. Instead of keeping that white in the center, I'm going to keep it as a light pink. Then just to balance it out, I'm also going to add a few dots on the corners which are in the same light pink color. Maybe a little arc over here, which will eventually look like a bud once the pattern is all stitched up together. All right, that looks good. As a final step, I just want to add a few more details on the central element. For this, I'm once again going to take a color which is slightly darker than the light pink that I already have on the palette. With that color, I'm going to go to my Disc option here. I'm just going to move a little bit more towards the darker side of the spectrum. With this slightly darker pink, I'm going to add a few lines which are echoing the shape of that flower in the middle. Once again, this is a great way to fill up the negative spaces without adding any other overpowering elements. It's just helping to build some ornamental value. And to add some fillers here and there, maybe one more circle in the center. All of these circle layers don't have the drawing assist on because it's just one circle which is common for the whole canvas. I'm not using drawing assist on elements like these where I need them to be in perfect geometrical shapes and I'm just placing that in the middle. There we go. Okay, this looks pretty good now. And I'm not going to be adding any texture to this, because I want this to be converted into a seamless repeat pattern, which can then be later on used on multiple products. These products are made of different materials. For example, wall clocks are made out of wood, there are acrylic boxes, then there are curtains and bed sheets which are made out of fabric. Then there are mugs which are made out of ceramic. Basically, the same pattern or the same design is going to be used on a bunch of different products. I'm not sure that the texture is going to translate well on all of those products. For this particular project, I'm choosing to keep this illustration flat, but if you feel like you want to add some textures or if you feel like you want to add some shading here and there, then definitely go ahead and do that. There is no right or wrong over here, It's just all about your own aesthetic preferences. Once you have this block ready, then meet me in the next lesson where we'll convert it into a seamless, repeating pattern. 13. Build a Repeat Pattern: All right, in this lesson we are going to look at how we can repurpose this illustration or this block that we've created and convert it into a seamless, repeating pattern. The first thing that we want to do is to create a copy of this file so that everything is safe on the original file. Our original artwork stays unaffected while we work on building our repeat pattern on a separate file. I'm going to go back to my Procreate gallery. I will click on Select, click on my File, and tap on Duplicate. And I will have a copy of my file. Now our original artwork is safe on another file, and we can always go back to it whenever we like in its original state. This is the new file that we will be building our repeat pattern on. For those of you who are just getting started in the world of surface pattern design, I must start off with a quick disclaimer. Surface pattern design is a whole big world in itself with infinite possibilities, where there is a lot to learn and experiment with. What we're doing in today's class is just the tip of the iceberg. But the reason why I wanted to include this quick introduction in today's class is because I want to encourage you to start looking at your illustrations from multiple perspectives. And to try and look at ways of monetizing your artwork via print on demand websites like Society6 and RedBubble. Basically, I want you all to work smarter and not harder. This can be a great side hustle for you and it's a wonderful way of earning passive income as well. Consider today's class to be a little sneak peek into the world of surface pattern design. Consider this to be a little head start for you in case this is something that excites you. Now, surface pattern design is the process of creating art for the surfaces of products. As the name suggests, surface pattern design is primarily artwork that repeats itself in a pattern seamlessly for it to be printed on products like wallpapers, fabrics, gadgets, stationery, and more. The fundamental concept behind surface pattern designing is that whatever elements you have on your design must repeat themselves seamlessly in a horizontal as well as a vertical direction. They must line up perfectly without any kind of odd spaces or gaps in the middle. When anybody looks at a pattern, they should not be able to figure out the beginning or the end of the pattern, because it should all connect seamlessly. And that's what we're going to be doing with this block that we have created. First things first, I will come to my layers panel and I will group all my layers over here. This also includes the background layer that we had created. Once I have this group ready with me, I'm going to create a copy of this group. Then on this new group, I will tap lightly to get this little menu with a bunch of options. Here I will click on Flatten. This will basically flatten all the elements into one single layer, so that when I move them around, they all move together instead of separate elements. To show you an example of this, I will first hide my previous group. By the way, once again, the reason why I have this group over here is so that I have all my elements in their original state available to me as a backup. But for the purpose of creating our pattern, we are primarily going to be working with this flattened layer. Now when I click on the transform tool and try to move this around, you can see that everything is moving together. Earlier in the group, they were all moving independently. But now that we have this flattened layer, we can move them all together. Now I will close my transform tool. And with this layer selected, I'm going to duplicate it three times to get a total of four copies. Just to make it easier for me to see things on the canvas, I'm going to switch off my drawing guide because we're not illustrating anymore. So I can see my illustration properly. Now coming back to the layers, I'm going to click on the transform tool on the first layer. Just making sure that I'm on uniform and also double checking that my snapping and magnetics are turned on. And using this corner node over here, I will simply drag this into the first corner or the first quadrant of this block. Once again, over here you have the yellow golden guidelines. Same way, I will come to my second layer. I'll click on the Transform tool. Now I will drag this to my top right corner. Coming to my third layer, I will drag it to the bottom left. My fourth layer will go to the bottom right. This process becomes a lot easier when you have your snapping and magnetics turned on because you don't have to position the elements independently and you don't have to calculate the pixels in trying to place them correctly. The snapping and magnetics will do that for you with the guidelines turned on. Now we have a seamless, repeating pattern ready with us. Now the way we check that this is seamless is that we zoom in and try to look for any gaps or spaces in the middle, Especially at the points where the tiles are lining up next to each other. When we can't see any gaps, that is basically a clear indicator that everything is lined up perfectly and that this pattern is seamless. In the same way, if I had to repeat this block multiple times now horizontally as well as vertically, then it would line itself perfectly. You won't really be able to make out the beginning or the end of this pattern. That's what a seamless pattern is all about. Now this pattern that we have over here is 3,600 pixels in width and 3,600 pixels in height, because that was the original size of our canvas. But when you're designing patterns for specific products, then each of those products require different sizes. This is where we need to create templates which are specific to each of those products. As an example, I will go to the Society6 blog, where they have a list of products available along with their dimensions. These are all the products that they sell on their website. You can look at each of these products and then create a custom canvas based on the size that's given over here. As an example, let's do the one for the benches over here. Now this is 8175 pixels into 3675 pixels. You can also do a different product. That's totally fine. The steps will pretty much remain the same as I'm demonstrating. We'll go back to our Procreate app. And here, I already have a canvas created with this size. It's 8175 pixels in width and 3675 pixels in height. If you're doing a different product, then of course, yours is going to be different. Now I will go back to my pattern file. From here I will take my block, but I will not take the blocks that are already arranged and transformed, because these are now scaled down in size. When I click on the transform tool and I click on the node over here, you can see that these are now only 1,800 pixels in width and height. Because we scaled them down. And we actually need the block in its original size. I will make a copy of the original group that we had with all the elements in their original size. I will now flatten this group. I will hide all my other layers on the top. This is the flattened layer that we have now in its original size. This is 3,600 pixels. I will go to my wrench icon, and in the Add tab over here, I will click on Copy, which will copy this layer. Then I will go back to the gallery, open my bench file. Here, once again in the Add tab, I will click on Paste. Now remember that our original file is 3,600 pixels in width and height, whereas the height of this bench file is 3675 pixels. Which is why we have this extra empty space on the top and the bottom, which accounts for the extra 75 pixels. But this empty space will go away once we repeat the tile and line up our pattern over here. First we will create a duplicate of this layer two times. With the transform tool, I will place one on the right and one on the left. Then we are just going to zoom in to check that everything is lining up perfectly. Now we will deal with the top and the bottom. We will just group these layers and then duplicate that group two times. With the transform tool, I will drag one group on the top so you can see the pattern filling up that space seamlessly. Same way. I'll line up the second group as well. Now we'll just again zoom in and check that everything is in place. Now this file is absolutely ready to be uploaded on Society6 for the bench. And all we need to do is create a JPEG or a PNG of this file and it can be uploaded and it's ready to be printed on the product. But I want to quickly show you one more example of how you can design this bench. Now, depending on the motifs that you have designed, sometimes a pattern can look too big for a bench. You can actually play with the scale of your block to create a more aesthetic look for each of the products that you design. This is where you really get to show your eye as a designer for the products that you're designing. To give you an example, I will first create a copy of this file. I will clear all the layers over here to make it an empty file. Then just like before, I'm going to go back to my original block and I'm going to copy that layer and paste it on this new bench file. Now this time I'm going to play with the scale over here to show more of the repeating pattern. Using the corner nodes, I will scale it down and place it in the middle. I'm just going to adjust the size of this to 2000 pixels by clicking on the corner node over here. It's easier to do this in even numbers so that you can line them up perfectly. Then I'm basically doing the same thing where I'm duplicating the original block and then I'm lining it up on both the sides. Now once your middle row is done, then you can group all the layers and once again place them on the top. And then place them on the bottom. Now it's the same design, but now you have it available in a smaller scale. As a surface pattern designer, you get to choose the best placement of your artwork on each of the products that you're designing. I encourage you to look at templates for each of the products that you're going to be designing for, and test out your pattern at various scales and proportions. Because going that extra mile to achieve that perfect aesthetic look will really improve your chances of selling the product that you're designing. Now, one more thing that I want to quickly mention is that what we've done in today's lesson is a very basic block repeating pattern. But as you dive deeper into surface pattern designing, you will learn that there are many ways of creating a repeat pattern, such as a half drop pattern, a diamond repeat, a stripe repeat, a brick repeat, and so much more. In fact, you can also customize workflows in various software like Photoshop or Illustrator to speed up the process so that you don't have to manually arrange your blocks all the time. But as I mentioned earlier, this is all stuff that you can explore as you keep diving deeper into surface pattern designing. I hope that this first step in today's class has got you a little bit excited to try out these ideas. In case you'd like me to do more classes on surface pattern designing, then please do let me know in the discussions tab and I'll definitely create something for all of you. Hopefully you'll try out the ideas that we've explored in today's class and try creating some mock ups and products for yourself. That's it for this project, and I absolutely loved creating this illustration with all of you. Once you've finished with your project, do make sure that you put a picture of that in the project section where I'd be happy to give you my feedback. 14. Wrap up!: All right, so congratulations on finishing this class and making your beautiful projects. I truly hope that this class was helpful for you in taking inspiration from blue pottery motives and infusing them with entangled art. I truly encourage you to keep practicing this technique further. And I promise the more you practice, the more improvement you will see in your work. Also, if you found this class to be useful for you, then may I please request you to drop a review about it in the review stab reviews. Make sure that all my classes and my presence over here on skillshare Fantino is going forward and that I can keep building more valuable content for you. Skillshare is truly a student driven platform. I love creating classes around your feedback and suggestions. If you have any ideas and suggestions for future classes, make sure that you put them in the discussion stab, which is right below this video. The discussion Stab is also open for you to ask me any questions about this class or exchange ideas in general. I also recommend that you visit my profile over here on Skillshare and hit the Follow button, which is right next to my name, that you subscribe to all my notifications over here. This way you will be the first to know whenever I launch a new class or add a bonus lesson, or when I plan a giveaway and have other exciting announcements to make. In case you haven't already done this, I want to give you a quick reminder to post your projects in the project gallery, which is right below this video. I reply to all the projects posted over here. And this will be a great way for you to receive personalized feedback from me as well as feedback from other students in the class. In the same tab, you will also find the class resources document, which is available for you to download. As I mentioned earlier, it contains links to some of my favorite tangles as well as some additional reference images. Finally, don't forget to connect with me on social media. I've created a hashtag community on Instagram where you can find students from all my classes posting their wonderful work. This way we can all exchange wonderful ideas and inspiration. Thanks so much for joining me today and until next time, keep creating.