Surface Pattern Design: Automated Diamond Repeat in Affinity Designer

1. How's This Course Different?: This year, I have completely changed the way I'm creating a repeat patterns in Affinity Designer. I am super thrilled to share my new process with you. Once you see how I'm drawing in my automated templates, you will be actually shocked at how you could have been working all this time using the life pattern preview tool. You will be surprised that how much you were actually missing out. Imagine if there was a way that the repeat was created automatically for you. That's right. No more transform studio and no more manual calculations. You're practically drawing your pattern. The repeat is created in real time as you're drawing. Hi, my name is Vera in case you don't know me. I'm an illustrator and surface designer based in Berlin, Germany. I'm teaching about the graphic design and surface pattern design in Affinity Designer. This time around we are tackling the most requested by my students, diamond repeat, but with an automated twist. I'll be showing you step-by-step the new way of creating pattern repeats with my automated templates. You will solidify your knowledge about using symbols in Designer, and I will teach you how to harness them to create repeat automations. The result is beautiful and detailed repeat patterns with no mistakes, speeding up your overall creation process. Apart from that, I will be showing you how I'm managing my color palettes in Affinity Designer, especially for faster re-coloring, as well as how I am naming and managing my Affinity files. This course comes with a free diamonds repeat workbook, three color palettes, and a free automated diamond repeats templates so that you can start designing right away. Are you ready to automate your patterns with me? Then I'll see you in the class. 2. Getting Started: To get started with the course, all that you will need is your affinity designer software and your drawing pencil. I'm recording this course in May 2023, and my affinity designer version is 2.0 0.4. I'll be showing my demonstration in affinity version two on my iPad. However, you can certainly follow along regardless of your version. The steps that I'm demonstrating in this course can be applied to both version one and version two, as well as to both the iPad version and the desktop version. This course is suited for more intermediate students, but I'm pretty sure that ambitious beginners can keep up with it. If you're a complete beginner and you don't know the interface of Affinity designer just yet, please consider taking my introduction to Affinity Designer course. If you'd like to proceed with this course and at the same time work with vector assets when building your pattern, check out my vector assets course for Affinity designer. Your task in this course is to create a diamond repeat based vector pattern in affinity designer, whichever version. In order to focus on purely mastering the template and learning how to work with symbols, I suggest a simple botanical motive for your project, but of course, feel free to choose any theme that would be a good fit for your own surface pattern design portfolio. If you're active on social media, you can, for example, share your beautiful pattern on Instagram, using the hashtag magical vectors and tagging me in your caption. If you're in our Facebook affinity group, you can post it there and ask for a critique. Don't forget to download your resources. This course comes with a PDF Diamond Repeat workbook, three JPEck color palettes from my own collection. In case you would like to skip creating your automated template from scratch. You can download the Diamond repeat template that I created for you. There's one for Version one affinity and one for version two. Thank you so much for taking my course. Let's start learning. 3. About The Diamond Repeat: In this lesson, we will briefly talk about diamond repeats and give a few examples. Let us first answer the question what is the diamond repeat and why is it so popular? A diamond repeat repeats at a 45-degree angle. Each of the diamonds repeats with one another perfectly in diagonal rows. It's usually squares and this is also what we will be drawing in this class but you can also come across elongated rhombus shapes. Diamond repeats can contain elements of symmetry but they don't have to. It is really fantastic for more intermediate designers and it's also really terrific for both geometrical patterns as well as for well-hidden repeats. It really gives the pattern a very nice flow. I've mentioned before that you can also create diamond repeats with elements of symmetry. You have to stay tuned for another class which we'll tackle that topic. We will be just making a plane diamond repeat where the diamond will serve as a guideline for our pattern and the result will be a pattern that is very detailed, quite intricate, and the repeat as well hidden. Let me show you what I mean by demonstrating a few diamond repeat examples from my own portfolio. This is one of the first botanical patterns that I created using my automated diamond repeat template. This is one of my most favorite patterns. I think it will look really, really amazing on the fabric or on stationary or on wrapping paper. Here you will see that indeed we have a diamond shape within this pattern but it actually looks pretty well hidden and the patterns seems to be flowing very seamlessly. Next, we have another botanical pattern that I created for one-off design challenges that I found on Instagram for a wallpaper design. In this case, I was actually using a template with elements of symmetry so it's a symmetrical diamond repeat pattern with vertical symmetry. I truly believe that the diamonds repeats look really, really well on wallpaper design. This is where you can see my diamond repeat. In this particular example, I was aiming at a more geometrical design. The repeat is not that well hidden compared to the previous pattern but that was actually my aim. Just like in this next pattern. The diamond repeat pattern here is very, very obvious. The diamond served again as a base or as a guideline for the flower shape. I also thought that it would look very, very good as a fabric design so I included this pattern also on the mock-up. Here you can see the diamonds repeat elements. But since it's not so well hidden I'm sure that you could identify it straight away. [LAUGHTER] Now this is a pattern that we will be creating in this course. Once I was finished with this pattern I knew right away that I would like to use it on a stationary mock-up. The repeat is not that obvious. The pattern is very flowy and all the blooms are all the flowers go in different directions. Here you can see my diamond block but it's very well hidden. I also wanted to show you a few examples of diamond repeats from amazing artists that I know from my social media. I'm showing those patterns with the artist's permission. This is such a gorgeous diamond-based pattern by Annelie. This is what she says about the diamond repeat. "I actually do love diamond repeats because they're a quick way to make a simple repeat much more interesting and it makes the eye move more over the pattern. Always a plus when the repeat is less obvious." Here we are definitely on the same page. I also believe that diamond repeats they make the pattern much more interesting and there's a lot of flow in those patterns. She also thinks that it's easier to hide the repeat with the diamond repeat. Another beautiful pattern is by Ashley. At first, I didn't even know that it's a diamond repeat but we were in touch and she actually suggested that I present to you this particular pattern and she said she created it using a diamond repeat. This is what she says. "The diamonds repeat is my favorite. It's my go-to when I'm looking for a structure in my design. Also when you overlap elements the repeat is often not as noticeable or expected." You will notice here that Ashley is using a technique where she pays more attention to those floral elements overlapping. This creates even more depth in her pattern and it makes the repeat hardly noticeable. You would probably never guessed that it's a diamond repeat. It looks stunning. Next, we have Rebecca, who is also a fellow Skillshare top teacher. Another beautiful stunning botanical pattern which I think has a bit of a vintage vibe. I really liked the fact that this whole pattern is monochrome. This is what Rebecca says. "I love working on diamond repeats in Procreate because you get to see how your pattern edges are overlapping with the tiles around them. It feels more like painting a picture than constructing a pattern." Rebecca teaches her technique of creating diamonds repeats in Procreate. You may want to go and check out her classes on Skillshare. Next is Beata, who created this wonderful very modern, and bold-colored pattern where the base is a more elongated rhombus. This is what she says about working with the diamonds repeat. "I love designing using diamonds repeats. This shape introduces balance into any chaotic composition. It's one of the most elegant designs perfect for a wallpaper, fabric, or branding." I can totally agree with Beata that diamonds repeats are very versatile. I've mentioned before that I really love it for wallpaper or for fabrics but it has so many more applications. I also wanted to show it is beautiful somehow very graphic diamond repeat pattern by Jen and this is what she says about the diamond repeat. "The diamond pattern is a favorite of mine for its versatility allowing for both simple or complex motives that create a beautiful repeat pattern." This is totally true. The diamond repeat is so versatile. You can either create very detailed patterns which have a lot of elements but you can also go for more minimalistic patterns that have this Scandinavian vibe. They're very pure, they're very simple, and yet very striking and very attractive. Now are you ready to create diamond patterns with me? Let's get to it. 4. Clip to Canvas: Hi everybody. I get this question quite a lot, even though it is included in the tutorial, but I thought I will highlight it in a dedicated mini video. Namely, sometimes you're wondering how to get the view that I am getting. Let's open the layers studio. So when I switch off the pattern and the background, those are the diamond guides that I built. We can also bring back the color. So this is what you want to see, when you open your document, you usually just see this. That means that your canvas is clipped. Everything that you want to build around it, it's taken away, so this is one preview mode that you have access to, and I already used the keyword here, preview. You have a preview options menu over here. This symbol, I don't even know what it looks like. It looks like some sort of a dashboard, but It reminds me of when you're driving a car and you have all those indications of how much gas you have left. [LAUGHTER] Maybe this is it, so this symbol next to snapping, I use it all the time. When you click on it, you can unclip your canvas and when you click back on it, you clip your canvas. Another way to access it is through the hamburger menu. You can go to canvas, and here we also have the option to select clip to canvas. But those were 1, 2, 3 clicks versus just one simple click. From my own experience, I use this symbol pretty much all the time. I do not even bother to go to the hamburger menu because this is just so convenient. When do you want to use that? Usually when you're curious about your pattern tile. So you're working on your pattern. You see your diamonds, but you're like [LAUGHTER] you just curious you want to see you, okay? What will the final pattern tile look like? Then I select the symbol, and this is where you can see your final pattern tile. So I hope that this answers your question. Let me know if you have any more questions that I could answer for you regarding this course. You can either do that if you're watching on skill share in the discussion section, or you can also reach out per e-mail or in our Facebook affinity support group. 5. Diamond Repeat Automated Template: Let's create our diamond repeat pattern template in Affinity Designer. I will be showing you my process in Affinity Version 2 on my iPad. However, you can replicate this workflow for the Version 1 as well as for the desktop version. Thanks to this template, you will be able to create a beautiful diamond repeat pattern in a semi-automated way, without using the transform studio. That means no more mistakes, hopefully no more in maths, and no more pixel counting. Alternatively, this template will be available for you to download on my platform. However, by following this exercise with me, you will learn more about the program and you will become much more efficient in using symbols. Let's get started. All the pattern templates that I've created are saved directly onto my iPad because I still have a lot of storage space, but you can also choose to save them into a cloud server such as Dropbox or your iCloud. So all the Affinity templates that I created are available here under Templates. Beforehand, I have them saved into my Files app. So this is the Files pp, you can also search for it. I already have it here, but you can start typing in files, and this is the pp that you have. Over here, you can see I have created a dedicated folder, so here you can click on this folder with the plus symbol icon and you can create a dedicated folder, that's what I would recommend to store all your parent templates. You will recognize that those are Affinity Designer template files because they have this extension.aftemplate. Next time I want to use one of those templates, the software will simply create a copy from this template. After creating them, you can access them from the template menu, set over here. When you click on it, the system already recognizes that I have access to this folder, if you cannot find it and if you have saved it onto your iPad, you just go here to the location on my iPad. Here I have the folder that I named with the zero at the beginning so that it's always alphabetically on top of my list. When I click on to it, you will see I have all my pattern templates, so I have one for brick, for checkered templates, one for diamond, diamond with a vertical symmetry, full-drop, half-drop, and I have a lot more in the making. If I click for example, on this diamond template, I will open a new document, so this is my diamonds template. When you go back to the main homepage, you'll see it's just named diamond, just like my file. This one over here, diamonds. Then once you start working on your pattern, you can, of course, go to the hamburger menu, and you can save it as, and this is the way in which you can rename your working file on that particular pattern. But for now, let's close this document and let's create this diamond repeat template from scratch. I'm just going to hit the x and I will close it without saving, and now we will start a new document. Let's go ahead and let's create a new document by selecting new document. I already have created a new category called pixels that I always work with. You know what? If you have taken my previous classes, you can also learn more about setting up your presets and your categories in my beginner's classes. For the purpose of our tutorial, I have a special document that I have called 4,000 pixels pattern. Because this is exactly the setup that will work for those automated patterns or semi-automated patterns. In case you don't have pixels saved yet, you can just choose whatever you have here in your Affinity Designer interface, it doesn't matter. Then you want to make sure that you change your document units to pixels from whatever you have chosen here. I would recommend that if you really want to follow along, you also select 4,000 pixels square 300 DPI, and I tend to work with the RGB color format. Now the most important thing is that you do not create an art board, so normally this would be ticked and this gray switches to the right side and it turns into white. You want to untick it and you do not want to create an art board. If you would like to save this preset here, you can click this plus symbol in the lower left corner and you can save the preset in the given category and you can rename it or just name it as you like, but I will cancel that because my document is ready to go. So very important, no art boards. Then I hit "Okay", and it creates the new document for me. Now, we have a blank page, this will be essentially our pattern tile. This main pattern tile will have, by default a white background. This is really important because it will help us not to lose our focus and to draw somewhere else. Then like the background of the document is set to gray. You can also go back to the main menu, to Preferences in this lower-left corner , User Interface, and you can also play around with the background gray level color, so that when you open the document you have enough contrast, you can also make it lighter or you can make it darker. Whatever helps you to see things better. Now, what we're going to do, we will start by creating a perfect rectangle. In order to do that, we will be using the rectangle tool, so we click on the square symbol, and right on top we have rectangle. Then we start drawing our rectangle and by default it will be gray, so what I recommend is to go to the color studio here and to change the color of the fill and the stroke into something more bright. I have here my signature electric metal color palette, and I think I will choose something more peachy for the fill, and this electric blue for the stroke, which is the outline of my square. It's not square yet, but we will fit it into a perfect square in a second. Before we go ahead, I also like to go to the Stroke Studio here, and I like to click on this measurement here, which is right now, by default 0.2 point. When you click on it, you can just select the new numbers, so I usually take Number 5, click, "Okay", then you will see that this line is getting a little bit heavier. This is just my personal preference, but on top of that, from the Stroke panel, I like to select this second line option where the stroke is actually really in the middle of my shape, so it only makes the line thicker. That's pretty much it. Now, we have created our rectangle and from the Move tool, we have to position that perfectly to our square canvas, which is this white background here. It's super important that you're snapping is on. You can also make sure that your snapping over here is set properly next to this snapping icon. If you click on it, you can open more options, and then you can select snapping options. Here you can have a look, I'll set my interface and just make sure that we have the same setup. Something that I have adjusted quite recently is this setting over here, force pixel alignment and move by whole pixels. This has allowed me to really snap everything perfectly pixel-wise and prevent those nasty white lines whenever you're sometimes testing your pattern or you're making a bigger pattern tile out of JPEG documents. Just have a look if you have everything in the same way and then click "Done." Now, from the Move tool, we have to make sure that our rectangle is perfectly snapped onto our canvas. We will see that by seeing those guiding lines, the green one here, the red one here. Then we will know that it's perfectly snapped. This step is really important for accuracy. What I like to do is having selected this rectangle layer, I go to the transform studio. There's a mistake and I see it's not perfectly snapped. I snap it one more time now I also see 4,000 pixels in height and in my width, and also my anchor point, as you can see here, is in the upper left corner. This is also correct. I have zero pixels on the x-axis and zero pixels on the y-axis, which is my starting point. Everything is perfect. This step is really important that we check our accuracy because even if there is one single pixel difference then our pattern or our template actually will not be error free. Now, we need to turn this square into our diamond shape. As you can see here, there's this little handle. Let's maybe make it bigger on top. When you select this handle, you will be able to rotate your shape. But we would like to rotate it by perfect increments so that this shape reaches 45 degrees angle. In order to do that, you have to put one finger onto the screen, and you will see that every time you move, it will rotate by exactly 15 degrees. From the starting point 1, 2, 3, and now we have the perfect 45 degrees. This is the beginning of our diamond shape. Now, we have to fit this diamond perfectly onto our white canvas over here. To keep this shape still in a perfect square, you will again, at least on the iPad, have to hold one finger on the screen. What we will do, we will have to shift this upper point down so that it fits with our canvas, and the lower points. Just those two points will be enough. Remember that really snapping has to be on. This is super important. First you select and you start moving, and then you put one finger. In this way, the shape will be retained so we really want to keep this perfect square. If I don't have my finger here and I move one pixel there to the left or to right, then we will create a square. But we don't want that. We want here for our shape to snap into a perfect square. Now, you see it has snapped to the upper edge of my canvas perfectly so I can release it. Then I will deal with the lower point here. First I select it, then finger on my screen. See it's still a perfect square. Snapped back. [LAUGHTER]. Now, I'm looking at those guiding lines, the vertical one, the green one, and the horizontal one, the red one to make sure that everything is perfect. Just remember that you really have to keep it a perfect square shape by holding the finger on the screen. Now, we have created our diamond base. The next step is to turn this square diamond into our symbol. What is a symbol? We have been learning about symbols when we're creating our life pattern preview tool. Just as a reminder, a symbol is an intelligent object that can be placed repeatedly in your document. Then any changes that we make to that symbol will be reflected across all the copies of that symbol. When creating a symbol, for example, if I deselect by tapping outside of the canvas, it's important to again, select the layer that is supposed to become that symbol. Our rectangle is selected. Then this is where we have our symbol studio. We tap at it. We make sure that it's synced hamburger menu, and we add symbol from selection. Now, we have created our diamond symbol. Now, if we go to the layers panel, we will confirm that this shape indeed has been turned into a symbol because we have created this symbol folder. We can also open this folder. Our rectangle is still inside of it but it created a symbol folder and you will see that there's bright orange line beside it, and that indicates that this is a symbol. Next, we have to create copies of this diamond. We have to place them around this main diamond, so that we will be able to build a nice repeat pattern and double-check if it's really seamless, and if it repeats nicely. You know if you have been taking my classes that I love the two fingers on your screen gesture. First we select the main folder. Just be careful not to select only the rectangle, better to close it, and then from the top level, making sure that you're on the Move tool. Two fingers on the screen. We will move it, then you don't have to hold the two fingers on the screen anymore. Then you will position it for example, in this upper right corner. Again, making sure, just really take your time, this is a really important step. Making sure again that those guiding lines are perfectly aligned. What I like to do, this is the main diamond on which we will be creating our pattern. I like to put it on top or you can take this one and position it down. When you tap on it, you see the selection here that everything is correct. This is our copy. Let's create another copy and let's place it below. Another way to do that without the gesture is to select what you would like to duplicate and then you can go to the three dots menu and select Duplicate and then move it. But I really love working with gestures. For example, now I can select those two symbols, two fingers, moving them to the left, then I can release the fingers and again snapping everything perfectly. I love it. [LAUGHTER] Which one shall we take now? Let's zoom out a little bit. Let's create one here. Two fingers. A copy was created. Now, let's recycle it. Position one over here in the corner. Now, here at the bottom and one more here. You see everything has snapped perfectly. But really just take your time because this is really important. Now, de-select so that you're not moving anything anymore. Our basic grid has been established. This upper folder will be the one that we will be working on. My recommendation is to select all the remaining layers. You can use the gesture tapping with two fingers on the last one. All those remaining layers, remaining symbols that are around the main symbol have been selected. Then we can group it. Now, we can also rename this group into something like diamond pattern. You can also recognize that already. This is our middle tile. The middle here is missing so here indeed in this folder we have all the other symbols that are only around. By the way, this is something that we will never ever touch anymore so this is important. We will be working only here. We just name it here to know okay this is a diamond pattern but we will not be working in this folder anymore. It's more to put it away so that we do not mess around with it. Let's de-select. Another thing that we have to do, the next step is to create the background layer for our pattern. We're still on the square, on the rectangle too, and we just start drawing. We position it in the middle, we make a bigger background layer. We can shift it right at the bottom, rename it into background. Also perhaps change the color into something more pleasant, something brighter perhaps. This will be our background layer and this is the one and only layer where we change the background color. There's nothing in the symbol anymore. Next, we open the symbol, we go to our original diamond rectangle. We go to the fill and we flip up so that we get rid of the fill. The reason why we had to fill in the first place was to see things better so that we really create a pattern that is error free. [LAUGHTER] But now we can get rid of it. Instead of rectangle, we can name it guide. A quick summary. We have our main working symbol. We have our guides so that we see, this is where I have this pattern shape. We have the rest of the symbols which will only help us to refine the pattern because we will see how it repeats. You will see that in my demonstration, and we have the background layer. This will be always our starting setup. Now, we can save it as a template and of course, this background layer, you can also change it and make it really fit everywhere. In order to save that, we go to the Hamburger menu and we can export it as template. Then we can rename it to something like diamond pattern. Save. Then you basically save it wherever you want. It could be in your Cloud or it could be in a dedicated folder, then you just click, "Move" and this template will be saved. I will cancel because my template is already done. Now, we have the diamond pattern template and we can start designing in a semi-automated way. Your task is to recreate the diamond repeat template with me. Alternatively, you can download the ready template from the course page. Let's go ahead and start working on our sketch, a draft. 6. Rough Sketch: It's a good idea to prepare your draft sketch before you start turning your pattern into vectors. You can work on your rough sketches digitally, for example, you can use Procreate or even directly Affinity Designer, I will show you that in the next lesson or even traditionally in a sketchbook or on such square notes, papers, I don't even [LAUGHTER] know how to call them. Hope you can see that. Basically, those are some bits of paper that were square. If you turn them like that at the 45 degrees angle, you will have your diamond pattern. If you prefer to work like that, maybe, you're somewhere in the cafe, and you're having some scrap paper that you would like to use, you can, of course, work in exactly this way. Then if you would like to import this sketch into Affinity Designer, it's enough that you snap a photo with your iPad or with your smartphone, you send it to your device, to your iPad, and then you can import it directly into Affinity. I also like to work directly in my sketchbook. This is an example from my own sketchbook practice. I have created a few composition ideas that you can copy, and practice drawing by yourself. In your composition, for example, you could cluster three botanical elements with a variety of sizes, so you can make sure that one of the botanical elements is the biggest, one of them is middle, and one of them is small, and spread all the other elements around it. Those three elements will be a central point. You can also create a composition that is completely scattered, and all the elements, as you can see here, they go in completely various directions or you can create a botanical composition that stems from the middle of your diamond, and then it flows as if to the edges of the diamonds like so. You can also choose to create one central botanical elements, for example, one prominent flower, and instead of being straight, it can, for example, go in one direction. For example, it can lean to the left side. Another composition idea is to make it as if it's spiral, so that the composition flows in the spiral movement. My final suggestion is to start the stem of your botanical composition from this lowest corner, and to allow your pattern to grow in all the other directions of your diamond like so. This is a sketch that I have drawn very quickly in Procreate. I can quickly show you how I did the setup. It was very easy. It's important to note that this document is the same size, just like my pattern tile, so it's 4,000 pixels square. Then what I did, if you want to, for better visibility, I can switch it off, create a new layer, I have filled my entire Canvas with color. Then I have gone to the Move tool, rotated it by 45 degrees. Also making sure that Snapping and Magnetics is on. Keeping the uniform settings. I have pushed the edges so that they snap perfectly to the edges of my Canvas, like so. De-select. Then I went in and I lowered the opacity of this diamond, and then I created a new layer. First, I just show some pretty much random colors. I use my favorite waxy dense pencil from Sheryl brushes. Oh, she makes amazing brushes. Then I have drawn some simplified shapes, some stems. In a very messy way, I designed the sketch. Let's maybe reduce the opacity over here. What I have done first, I sketched very roughly the positions for my main flowers over here. Then I knew I also want a few random smaller flowers over here. Whenever I design or sketch first my pattern, I like to use circles and flowy lines. Then I knew, I wanted this one main stem that will run across my diamond from this lower corner up, and okay. I want something to stem off to the right sides, and also another stem stemming off to the left side. When I work on patterns like that, I usually use different colors. I also knew I would like to have some filler elements like some stars later on. At this stage, you really shouldn't be perfect. Just let your hand flow, because this is just a rough stage of our sketch. The main refinement will actually find place directly in Affinity. But what you would like to focus on, is that, your elements are spread out evenly. This is really important that they're not in one line, for example. You can also draw arrows to indicate movement, and you want different scales. You want some elements that will be bigger, and some elements will be smaller. Some elements will be hero elements, whereas others will be more clustered together. This is how [inaudible] this would look like. Then I exported this rough sketch as a JPEG, and I saved it to my camera roll on my iPad. Later on, I will import and place this image into Affinity Designer, and I will be refining it further directly in the program. Using Procreate is absolutely optional. If you want to, you can use something more physical like some sticky notes or your sketchbook, and then you can snap a photo. Your task is to draw your rough sketch. It could be a botanical composition or whatever theme you'd like to tackle for your pattern portfolio. Please note, I will be covering diamond pattern templates that includes symmetrical elements in another course. Now let's go ahead, and refine the sketch directly in Affinity Designer. 7. Sketch Refinement in Affinity: Before we get into vectorizing, we need to refine our final sketch for our diamond pattern. In case you're new to this template, we need to get a bit more familiar with it. Our templates is open and remember in case you closed your document and you again want to reuse your template. You go to templates and you just have to find the template that you saved in your folder or in your Cloud storage. Now we need to place our rough sketch into infinity. You can either place a photo that you'll have taken or the JPEG file from another digital drawing software. We go to the hamburger menu place and we will select the rough sketch. In my case, I will select the rough sketch that I created in Procreate. Why do I use Procreate again? Because I liked the brushes and if I didn't use it for sketching, to be honest, I would never use it again [LAUGHTER] because I really shifted all my workflow to Affinity. It's sometimes nice to go back to Procreate [LAUGHTER] I'm going to place the rough sketch from my photos. There it is and now I tap and I place it in. I'm going to take the sketch and position it between all the symbols that I created previously and the background player and now I will also switch off here the visibility of the background players so that I can see better. Snapping is on all the time, the dimensions of my sketch are the same and now from the Move tool, I have to position it perfectly onto my original Canvas. As you can see here, the guiding lines are telling me that everything is perfect. Then I go to the three dots menu, and I lower the opacity of my sketch. You can also deselect by using this X symbol here so that you don't nudge anything by mistake and now we have our sketch placed. At this stage, you might be wondering why I see my Canvas. The white part like that and why am I seeing my guides like so? This way of working is a little bit different compared with using the life pattern preview. I will show you just as a reminder one preview tool document, for example those electric oranges pattern here. This is how I used to work before I had my pattern templates file over here. Then I remember the drill. Basically, we used a lot the transform studio and whenever we needed to shift the pattern elements onto any of the opposite sides, we needed to use Mattes. This was our preview over here. This is the way, a completely new way of working and in order to access that, you remember when we were creating our document, the very first prerequisite is to not create an art board when we set up our document. Then next, we go here to the hamburger menu Canvas and you can toggle on and off to see the visibility of your Canvas differently by selecting Clip To Canvas. Clip to Canvas like so everything is clipped. That means that the visibility is limited only to your Canvas. When you go back and again, select "Clip To Canvas," you will see everything that is outside of your main Canvas, which is this white square. You can also access it through this menu here. It's called the toggle preview mode. By clicking on it, you can switch it off and on. If you switch it off and you don't see all the surrounding elements, essentially what you will see is your main pattern tile, and then when you switch it back on, you will see everything around it. Okay, now we will be working on our sketch and I prefer to see what is happening around me. I have it not clipped so that I can see the surrounding elements. Let's open the Layers panel and remember, we are not working on those surrounding elements. We are only working within the main symbol that is right in the center of our Canvas. Let's go ahead and open it. Click on the guides, and then hit the "Plus symbol" and create a new pixel layer. Now this pixel layer is positioned between the symbol folder and our guide. This is our guides, those lines here. In case they are too bright, you can click on them three dots menu and you can also reduce the opacity or you can also go here to the color studio and maybe change it to a different color. This is only stroke. Remember, because we have switched off our fill. Now we will be refining our sketch drawing on our pixel layer. As opposed to this rough sketch which we added here, the pixel layer is also part of our symbol because it's inside of this symbol folder. When we open this folder, you will see that everything inside of this folder is our symbol. It will be copied across all the other symbols that are around. You can also recognize it by this orange glowing line beside it. Next, we switch from the designer persona to the pixel persona. From the brush studio, we select our brush. I like to work in acrylic brushes, but you can test it out for yourself. I like the Matte Acrylic 02 brush, so I will select it. I will change its color to this vibrant blue. Making sure that I'm on my pixel layer over here. I can also increase the size of my brush. Here I can increase also the flow of my brush. You have to experiment a little bit with your preferences. You have to test it out and see which brushes you prefer. But for example I like my brushes to be a little bit more chunky. You see everything starts to repeat now because it's an hour symbol. My recommendation is to start sketching out your main flowers or your main elements depending on what you're drawing. Then as you go, you can zoom out and you can see if the proportions are right for you or maybe you want to make some adjustments. That's why it's only a rough sketch. It's not set in stone. Now, with this live preview as you draw, you can see if things really fit. For example, here I have this tulip flower which is supposed to look like that. But seeing everything as it repeats, I see that this bloom is a little bit too big and it creates this weird linear repetition over here. I will still include it, but I will make it smaller. Now, there's a better balance because I'm regarding the entire repeat, not just this diamond sketch in isolation, so to say. If you want, you can also change the color as you go, for example, I will change the stroke now to draw those secondary flowers. As a reminder, we have switched off our background layer because we really want to focus on drawing on this main canvas and not somewhere outside. There's a little bit of focus involved but it really does pay off because look, essentially now you're creating a repeat and there's no calculations, so you didn't have to count any pixels anymore [LAUGHTER]. It's really liberating because I know that some of you were quite annoyed with this transform studio and having to calculate everything. But those times are over [LAUGHTER]. This is why I called those parents semi-automated because of course, you're still this active hand behind that is drawing the pattern. But man everything else is just done for you automatically. That's why automate your patterns. Those types of automations, I'm a big fan because they prevent errors. The last thing that you want to do is to send something to your clients that contains some mistakes. Let's change the color to this blue one, and let's draw first the stems. I'm working on one layer, but of course you are free to create, for example, an additional pixel layer and to work maybe separately on the blooms and separately on the leaves. The beauty of it, sometimes it switches itself to the eraser, so you have to stay mindful, don't panic, if something's switches itself off. The beauty of it is that you can go outside of your guide. In this way, we're creating this seamless repeat. Now it's also up to you. I am creating right now a very dense botanical pattern, which is based on this diamond shape. But if you want, you can stay away from those guidelines so that when you zoom out, you will see that this diamond repeat is really there. It's really up to your personal style, how you want to create. I want the diamond here to be my base. But I don't want it to be so obvious, for example, for this particular pattern. It's up to you. But you can also stay away from the edges of the guide, and then you can make this diamond repeat more obvious. I think at this point we can even switch off our sketch, and we can deal with it without our sketch, making sure that we're back onto our pixel layer. I don't like to switch off the guide entirely because I still want to see this diamond shape. But in case it's too rough, you can also go down here with the opacity. Then going back, I think I will add a leaf here and a leaf there, that will look quite pretty, I hope, and changing the color one more time, maybe to something more yellow. I would like to add in the star. I will have one star here, whoops, here, making sure that, see, it repeats here on the other side, I have positioned this star placeholder a little bit below because I didn't want obvious straight lines, for example, straight horizontal line. I love this preview. This is a completely new way of working [LAUGHTER]. Now I can maybe switch off the guides. Have a look at it again, maybe bring back the background layer. I will go back to this original blue color of the stem. I think I will extend this stem so that it looks more seamless. The iPad is very sensitive, so sometimes, especially in the pixel persona, you might make some inky blotches by mistake. [LAUGHTER] Don't worry. Now, if we wanted to see only our main pattern tile, we can also clip it. You remember get rid of our guide. After vectorizing, this would be our main pattern tile. I think it's beautiful. Can you imagine doing it in the old way where you have to calculate, where does this go? Where does that go? Like I said, I have created a very thick or dense pattern where you don't see this diamond shape. It's not so distinguished but if this is something that you're aiming for, if you would really like to see how this is a real diamond pattern, you can, of course, do that, and you do that by staying more away from the edges of this diamond because I wanted it more dense, I have, for example, crossed my guidelines a few times. I like to create such dense botanical patterns using this diamond template because it creates a lot of nice variety. What do I mean by that? I mean that once you really export your pattern and you make it bigger, you see that it flows really beautifully, it's truly seamless, it's error-free, and there is no obvious repeats in this pattern. A big reminder for this part of our workflow is to remember, always work in the main symbol. I will repeat it a few times because it's really important that you do not find your way to this diamond pattern with all the remaining symbols, just close it, forget about it, and make sure that you only draw in the main symbol. Now we're ready to vectorize our diamond pattern, and this is truly where the vector magic begins. Your task is to refine your diamonds patterns, sketch in Affinity designer, get familiar with the pixel persona, and practice sketching directly in the program. Now let's briefly discuss our color palette. 8. Troubleshooting Pixel Persona Issues: I also wanted to include in a separate video a few tips regarding troubleshooting in case you're having problems drawing in the Pixel Persona. This probably concerns mainly those of you who are drawing on your iPad. The automated templates, they're actually pretty heavy with symbols, so the document itself can demand quite some memory to work in a smooth way. Hopefully you do not come across any of those problems. Unfortunately, I had some of my students reporting that when they draw in the Pixel Persona, then the app can even crash or it can freeze. Personally, this has never happened to me, so fingers crossed that this doesn't happen to you. Now for your information, I am drawing on my iPad Pro. It's a 12.9 inch and I think the year of production is 2020 and it has one terabytes of memory, so quiet a lot. I never, never had this problem with freezing. I wanted to share nevertheless, in case it happens, three tips of what I would do next if it did happen to me. Tip number 1 reduce the number of documents on your homepage. Many of you actually don't know that you can close the many documents that you have on your homepage once you start using Affinity Designer for many of you, it's still a relatively new program, it's not so much cluttered. But if you're like me and you've been drawing in it for nearly two years, then the homepage can become a little bit too crowded. You have so many projects, which is folders with documents inside and so many pattern files, it's actually really not necessary to keep them open in your homepage. What I mean by that, rule number 1, you always have to save your document. It's actually good practice, I know that in this course I forget about it and I do it at the end [LAUGHTER] after I have already created my pattern. But it's a good practice to think of a name for your document and then to go from the homepage through the hamburger menu and to save it as, and then either to save it to your iPad storage, which I do because I have a lot of storage or you can use any editor for example Cloud service, such as Google Drive or Dropbox to backup your documents. This is the first thing that you should do. Then probably you're going to have some files or some collections of patterns for instance, that are way in the past and you can really just close them. Make sure that you save them and then you can really just hit the X button and this will close it. Closing will mean it's not deleted, if it's saved, it will just get kicked out of your homepage on your device, on your iPad, for example if you're using the iPad and hopefully when you declutter your homepage, this will make the app a little bit lighter and it will run more smoothly. Hopefully. [LAUGHTER] Tip number 2, check if you need to update your app. All those updates for Procreate and for Affinity Designer on the iPad, they should actually run automatically, but you might want to double-check and you do that by simply going to the App Store on your iPad. You search for Affinity Designer and then if you just see the button to open or if there is indeed an update. But from my experience, this should happen automatically. I am drawing in Affinity Designer Version 2. I'm not sure if this problem persists and affinity designer Version 1, if you're for example on Skillshare, on the forum, or if you're in my Facebook Affinity Designer group, then I would love for you to maybe start a discussion and to share if you're on Version 1 or in Version 2, and if you're having this issue and maybe how you fixed it. Tip number 3, seeking assistance on the official Affinity Forum. This is really when nothing else works, then you can maybe reach out to professionals like I'm still not working for Sarif. I do have contacts with them and we do have dedicated forum for professionals, let's say, this group of professional users of Affinity Designer, which is separate from the general forum. I may also ask there on your behalf, but normally you do get really great answers simply into your official forum, they are very helpful. They reply very fast. All you got to do is just search for this forum on Google by typing in Affinity Designer forum and 100% it will show up on top of your search results. I think you do have to start an account just with your email address. You don't have to provide any other information about purchasing the app, for example no need to do that. First you got to go through the forum and you got to see if such a problem has already been noted. Maybe yes, maybe you will already find an answer in one of the older threats or you can start a new one. Then alternatively, there's another support group for also troubleshooting some problems. It's a Facebook group that I started this year for Affinity Designer users. You just have to search for the name. If you're not going through my links on my social media, you just got a search for Affinity Designer for Graphic Design and Surface Design and then you will find this group and you can ask your questions. You can share videos or screenshots. It's always good to include the screenshots from your device. It's also a safe space to share your artwork and it's a safe space to ask for an art critique. I'm also active there. I give critiques and I answer questions. But the members of this group are so nice and so helpful, someone might be actually faster and provide you with an answer before me. [LAUGHTER] Having said that, I do hope that you will not have this issue. I just wanted to record this disclaimer video that I know that it's been reported that it might happen. I hope that you give the upper chance and we work together to get it fixed in case you're having issues with the Pixel Persona. It's mainly about the Pixel Persona. Another solution, by the way, which I haven't mentioned as tip number 4 should be that you skip the sketch. You only import the sketch that you have created in some other digital drawing software such as Procreate or from your sketch book and you can go ahead and you can start drawing with vectors. There's no need to be using the Pixel Persona sketch refinement, which I'm showing in one of the lessons. I've noticed that I also do this approach quite a lot. Like I just draw spontaneously and if I need to move any objects, it's all vectors you go to the notes twin is very easy to move around your objects or to change their shapes. That might be a solution too. I hope there are no problems on the way and I hope that you will enjoy your drawing process. 9. Limited Color Palette: I truly believe that it is always more efficient and looks more professional when you're using a limited color palette. I suggest you select maximum six colors for your pattern. My recommendation is to include wide or some sort white or yellowish-white as your highlight, and also to avoid pure blacks, unless it's really part of your personal style. Instead of black, you can choose a dark indigo color or really dark purple. Alternatively, you can also head to my Pinterest, Weronika Salach, and there I have a dedicated board for all my color palettes. At least I try to keep it up to date with my recent patterns. You can pin it over to your boards or you can take a screenshot and then you can import it into Affinity Designer and you are really free to use them for your next pattern. Now, let me show you another way to manage your color palettes within Affinity Designer. Let's go back to Affinity, and I'm going to show you another document. This is another diamond repeat pattern over here. You see that you can put pretty much anything around your main symbol folder. I really like saving my color palettes as assets. This is one example here. If we go to the Layers panel, this folder over here is my color palette. It includes just a neutral gray background, and then it includes those circular shapes which I created with the rectangle tool. Here you can create circles. I filled them with the colors from my color palette basically. For each of those color palettes, the most favorite palettes I saved them as assets. You have to go to the Asset Studio. You have to create a dedicated assets category from the hamburger menu. You can add a new category. You can name it to, for example, color palettes and you can save them. I have right now only three favorite color palettes, but you can have so many more. You can also create subcategories. You can, for example, create a subcategory with some pastel color palettes, another subcategory for bold and vibrant color palettes, some monochrome color palettes. The sky is the limit, it all depends on your personal style again. Then if I wanted to, for example, copy this pattern and to quickly recolor it to another signature color palette of mine, for example, this one, I can insert and I can really place it just anywhere. This is again the background rectangle. Then using this dropper tool over here, I can select the colors very fast in order to recolor my pattern tile. Another way is maybe you have, for example, created a screenshot from my color palette or from some picture that you found inspiring, and you would like to place this picture. Then I drop the colors from this picture directly within your document. You can do that too. You just have to go to the Hamburger menu and place your image directly here into your document. Let's do that. Place, and then from your photos I have this color palette saved here, so I can select this image, tap, place it wherever, make it bigger. I can select those colors directly from this photo. Of course, the color studio, the obvious choice, you can save your favorite colors into the swatches panel. Select swatches. Here you can start a new application palette which will be available across any new document that you create in Affinity Designer. Or you can add the dedicated document palette. You need to create a document palette if you want to use global colors. I use it only if I'm using global colors. Apart from that, if I want to see all my colors across any new document that I create, I add a new application palette and you can save your color palettes here. For example, here I have a new color palette that is more pastel. Then you can select your colors from the color studio. It's up to you. Let me again sum it up for you. You can use color palettes saved as assets. You can use your own color palettes saved in the color panel under swatches. You can also place an image from which you would like to take the colors for your pattern. I hope that those tips will help you set up your color palette in an efficient way. Your task is to choose your minimal color palette. Try to stick to a maximum of six colors and please make sure to include a highlight color and the darker color. Feel free to use my own color palettes, which you can find over on Pinterest. Now it's time to build our vector pattern. 10. Building The Pattern PART 1: Let's build our diamond repeat pattern and vectorize our sketch. For starters, I would like to place here somewhere maybe next to my sketch, my color palette from the assets panel so this will be my color palette. It's again not set in stone. I might actually do some tweaks later on. I would like to change my background color to this purple here. Then let's maybe put this color palette a little bit lower and remember, we're always working on our main symbol. In case you have doubts, it's the one that you have right in the center. If it's easier, you can also switch off the background layer maybe I will actually switch it off for now. We can reduce the opacity of our sketch. I will again snap the color of my guidelines into something a little bit lighter. I think this will be enough. Next, I will create a new vector layer, hitting the Plus symbol vector layer and I will make sure that it's in my symbol. We will be using the pencil tool because as always, I am Amy got a hand-drawn organic shape. Just like in my previous courses, we will be using only fill and no stroke. I have an entire course about creating hand-drawn assets and Affinity Designer with a huge focus on getting to know here the pencil tool. I'm assuming that you are a more intermediate student. We will skip this introductory material. We start by selecting the pencil tool. At first, it's important to de-select everything either by tapping somewhere outside onto this gray area or by hitting this X symbol. Next, we want to use fill, so we select Fill and we make sure that auto close is on. I will be using probably a little bit of stabilization. I usually stick to this Window Stabilizer at about, I think 28% around this level here. Not too much. That it's a little bit streamlined. I will start by drawing my main flowers, which are those tulips over here and I will be sorting everything by color. The way I did my rough sketch, I will have the main colors in a separate folder. Then I will have those secondary flowers in a separate folder. The stems and the leaves will also be in a separate folder. Now zooming into my Canvas. I start drawing. Because auto close is on, my shape has snapped together and now it's also closed, so we have a closed vector. Please note that I am drawing between my guide and the pixel layer with my sketch because I still want to see the sketch above. Now I will go ahead and I will roughly draw those tulip shapes. Next, what I like to do is I like to switch off the sketch, select everything, go to the Node Tool, and see if everything is to my liking. So sometimes I just would like to fix some shapes. But most of the time it's not necessary. I can also rename this folder into tulips. I'm bringing back my sketch from the guide. I am creating a new vector layer. I'm bringing it right above the guide. Back to the pencil tool, making sure everything is de-selected and I will select this color for my secondary blooms. Back to this layer where I want to place those flowers. Now I can start drawing. This is a pretty straightforward process but let me just mention that you can, of course, change the sketch. Again, the sketch has been refined but you can still change it. You can go outside of the lines. You can zoom in, zoom out, and see if you like the proportions. Of course, you can change your mind so that you do not get lost. Which flowers belong? Where am I drawing? On the correct layer? I suggest that you start vectorizing from the center and you move to the edges of this diamond guide. This will help you to prevent any mistakes. For example here, normally would be like, this flower, does this belong here, or does this belong to the symbol, [LAUGHTER] the main symbol. So we start drawing from the center and then we're moving towards the edges. Again, I'm only using fill and no stroke. Let's see. There's one more left. You can set up the opacity of your sketch layer as you like so it could be a little bit darker or you can make the opacity a little bit lower. Let's switch off. I have noticed that this is the same color. Now we're talking. We can change the color from the entire group level. We will talk about re-coloring in a separate lesson, but now, let's make sure that everything has its own color because we have grouped everything by color. Those tulips will be, let's say red and those secondary colors, maybe for now I will just make them this random violet so that I can really distinguish them better. I can do some color changes right at the end. When I'm done with vectorizing the rest of the elements. Now a new vector layer. Let's drag it here below. Now I would like to do the stamps. If you have watched my other classes. I sometimes use the technique that whenever I'm drawing lines like the lines for the stem, I'm using the stroke but this time I will use a different approach because I think it's a little bit more comfortable. First, let me maybe change to this blue color and I will try to replicate those stems by simulating just a filled shape. Let me show you what I mean. Just making sure I'm on the correct layer. Let's also rename those maybe two smaller blooms. This folder with the secondary flowers. This one we can rename it to stems. It's important to stay organized so that you don't make any mistakes on the way. I will start drawing my stem. Then I will try to draw without the stroke, and now from the note tool, I will get rid of some of the notes. I will position it in a better way here so that it fits better with the other flower. We can also move the handles of our vector to adjust the shape or by tapping on its path, we can add new points. See that looks great. Adding one more point, making it a little bit wider. Instead of using the stroke and then converting it into curves, At least lately to work in this way whenever I'm creating lines the elements, so to say. Back to the pencil tool. One more here, and another stem here. Making it thicker. Later on we will add all those lines together you will see it in a second. This one we can also make thicker. But by all means, if you prefer working with the stroke when drawing your lines, you can do that too. I think this is my main stem. It's made of many lines, as you can see. I've probably made some small, tiny lines that are hardly visible. I'm going to erase that. Now I will select all of those layers, and go to the Move tool. I will use the Boolean operations to merge them together. Here you have the Boolean operations, you click on it, and you select, Add, and everything is on one layer. I don't need it to be on separate layers that's why I merged them together. 11. Building The Pattern PART 2: Now a new vector layer. This one will be for my leaves because maybe I will want it to be the same color as my stems, but maybe I will want them a little bit lighter so that they stand out. I want to leave myself some options. I'm drawing with the same blue color and I'm following my rough sketch in a rough way, so to say. Sometimes you can make alterations, of course, if you think something will look better if it's bigger, for example, maybe here I want a bigger leaf. Your initial sketch is only for your first orientation, so to say. But you don't have to follow it blindly. You can make changes as you go because you see you have your live preview, so at any point you can also switch off the guide. Maybe bring back the background and see if you like everything. Bring back the guides. I would like to finish those leaves. I will switch off my sketch and I will just double-check if I like everything. I think I need a different color. Let's bring back the background and let's change those small blooms into something more bright so that I see if there's a balance. I can change the colors later on. I think I will go back to the stem pencil tool and add a stem spontaneously here. I have to switch back to my blue, but it's not a problem, and maybe one more stem here. Now you can see that I have completely switched off my sketch layer and I'm really just improvising. Maybe one more here. This is really fun. One more here. Because my goal is to have a really dense pattern, maybe I will add a few more smaller leaves. Let's see what it looks like. You can always go back or delete something if you don't like it. Actually, let's change those smaller blooms into white. I would like to see if they're spread out in a good way. From the swatches panel, after you have selected one color, you can also use the HSL sliders, make something more vibrant, for instance, or make it darker or brighter, or change its hue entirely. Let's stick to this yellow. The stems are here, the leaves are here, secondary, smaller blooms, and my tulips. If this is too confusing, switch off the background layer, deselect, and here you will have your main pattern tile. Another thing that I wanted, I remember from my sketch, I wanted some small stars. This is one example where I will be using my assets because I have a whole category that I created with tiny stars. I think I would like to use this star over here. We will change the color in a minute. Everything is correct. I just have to make sure that it's in the main symbol and I will just change the color to this vibrant yellow just so that I can see it more clearly. If I want to retain the shape of the star, I have to hold one finger on the screen, make it smaller, and then from the Move tool, I can move it around. I would also like to make my guide not so bright so that I can see better. This is my guide. I will again reduce the opacity. Then this little star, I will create a few duplicates, but I will bring back my sketch because I remember here I have a cheat sheet of where those stars should be. Two fingers on the screen. I'm making a copy, retaining the shape of the star by holding one finger on the screen. Creating another copy. This one could be a little bit bigger, and another copy, this one will be more tiny. Maybe another tiny star here. See because I have here my pattern repeating, I can see okay. I couldn't really position this star here because now they are in line and it doesn't really look professional, so I'm going to place it a little bit to the side so that everything looks good. I will bring back the background layer and from the top folder layer, I will change it to white. I think I will switch off, actually, it's called pixel but we could have renamed it to sketch. Now it's too late because we're nearly done. [LAUGHTER] I will turn off the sketch and I will see if everything is okay. Another thing that I would like is to create some middles of those flowers that also look like a star, so creating a new layer, I'm going to my assets, and I will use this shape to create the middle of this flower, like so. I will change its color in a second and maybe also change the color, fetching a color from my color palettes, getting rid of stroke, making sure it's only fill. This is not prominent enough, so I will choose again this red. I can change it later on. Now I will take some time to create those middle parts for each and every flower, rotating them in different directions so that everything looks in a nice and balanced way. On my iPad, I'm using the two fingers on the screen gesture to create very quick duplicates. I think our pattern is ready. Let's switch off our guides. Let's clip it. It's so beautiful. I'm always happy when I reach this stage. I love it. This would be my main pattern tile and our pattern is ready. You can also bring back all the elements around it and you can see if your pattern is really seamless, if it's well balanced, and if it repeats nicely. We will be testing this pattern tile in a second as well. As a reminder, we were working in this main symbol. We were not touching all the remaining symbols that were around. We had our color palette placed here and this is where we had our rough sketch. Right now we can remove it, we can get rid of it. Inside of our main symbol, we also had our sketch. You can also keep it for future reference or keep it visible right now. We have our guide and we also reduce its opacity, but we can bring it back again. For my pattern, I decided to make something really nice and dense. But you can also stay away from the edges so that when you zoom out and the pattern repeats, you can see that indeed this is a diamond pattern. If this is something that you would like to achieve visually, you can do that by sticking away from your guidelines. The guide is switched off and as you will be exporting your main pattern tile, it is important to get rid of this guide. This is our final pattern tile. In the next lesson, I will show you how to export it and to test it. For now, your task is to finish vectorizing your vector pattern and to sort out your elements into folders by color so that you can manage your vector pattern more easily moving forward. 12. Testing & Exporting Your Pattern: I highly recommend that you test your pattern tiles somewhere outside of Affinity Designer. For the purpose of my demonstration, I will be using again Procreate. To export your pattern, you have to go to the hamburger menu and you can go to the exports section, of course, you can do it also through the export persona, but we have this one single pattern tile, so it's completely sufficient to go through the export panel. In this export window, you see that you have different options regarding your file type. We will be exporting our pattern tile just as a JPEG. This is the original size, 4,000 pixels square, 100% quality and we will be sharing it to Procreate directly. I'm hitting the "Share" button and Procreate, and now it's sending to Procreate. This will take a few seconds and then we hit "Cancel". By the way, I haven't done this before, I usually do it much faster than that. Namely, we have to save [LAUGHTER] also our pattern. From the hamburger menu, Save As, I will rename it as, so 23 is the year when I produced this pattern and then it's Collection Number 5, Pattern Number 2 and this is Color Variation A and then I have this is my own naming convention, and then I have underscore electric midnight. It's just my fantasy name that I created for this particular collection, save, and I'm also saving it on my iPad. I have a folder here for this very collection, and I move it here. Now it's saved. Now let's head to Procreate to look at the pattern tile that we just exported to that program. This is our pattern tile, let's go ahead, open the document and now we can test it. The way I like to proceed in Procreate is I swipe to the left, I make a copy. I turn this original pattern tile invisible and also the background layer to invisible. From the Move tool, snapping has to be on with magnetics and snapping. I snap it to the middle till the guiding line tells me that everything is aligned properly. Then I swipe, make a copy, bring it down and then I merge those two together, duplicate and there it is. I can test it further but so far I see that everything is okay. There are no lines, everything repeats beautifully. If I want to see it in a more dense format, I do it one one time. Create a copy. I already see it looks so beautifully, I love it. That's so nice. I really like it. This is the beauty of the diamond pattern. Let me show you, you can see that, Wait which color shall we take? Maybe this white one. You can see, this is where we had our diamond because there's a little bit of space in there. You see there's a line here, there's a line here. I can see exactly where it repeats. But the beauty of it is that it really hides the repeat perfectly. Let me save that as a JPEG to my camera roll, Save image. I can also use it later on for my marketing purposes. I will also save this one to my camera roll as a JPEG and the original pattern tile. This is what I would send to the client if they just wanted the PNG or a PDF. There it is. Everything was tested properly. There are no white lines. Everything repeats beautifully, there are no mistakes. Everything is great. Now that the pattern work is done, you can for example upload this particular pattern tile into your POD shop, into your print on demand shop like Society6 or Redbubble or Spoonflower. Your task is to export and to test your final pattern tile. I hope that the entire process was easy and you can see that this technique is a wonderful way to create error-free, seamless patterns in a few simple steps. If you were to create such an intricate and overlapping diamond pattern, the traditional way using maths, calculating and the transform studio, you would probably get a headache real quick, [LAUGHTER] so I hope that this technique will come to your liking and you will enjoy this way of making patterns from now on, especially that you have this live preview and you don't have to do any calculations on the way. Thank you for watching so far. In the next lesson, I would also like to show you a few ways to recolor this pattern real fast. 13. Re-coloring Options: I would like to show you a few ways to recolor your pattern in an easy way. What I would start with is creating a copy. You can create a copy by swiping to the left and here is a copy symbol. You can also rename it by selecting Save As. This is just my naming convention I do now B, so this was the color variation A and this will be a color variation B and I get rid of this copy word over here and then I save it in the same folder. This is variation B I'm going to open it. For starters we will change the background. The first technique is by simply changing the colors on the folder level. This is the reason why in the main working symbol everything that we've been working on is on a separate layer and it's sorted by color. For example, all those stars there in white they're in a separate folder, the tulips they are also separate. The middles of those flowers separate. Everything is in a separate folder so that now it's so easy to change the color immediately. We can start with the background for instance, I can go fetch the color palette that I had for my electric medal series, this is this one. I'll have a look at that one too. I recommend that you start by changing the background color. I'm using the color picker tool directly from the color studio, you can also use the color picker from the menu here to the left. First, I will change the background. I can already tell that I have to change those smaller blue colors. So I haven't selected any particular flower within this folder, I make sure it's closed and I select the entire folder. You will see here indeed, the color of those secondary flowers is yellow. Now on the folder level I can also change the color, so I can for example, choose this purple, then I can change the middle for example, to this light yellow and I also do it on the folder level. Next, I want to change the tulips let's maybe try this orangey color, that's also very pretty and I will select the leaves and the stems together because I want them to. Actually this color versions already nice. I could stay with that but I can also play around with this blue, maybe I will make it darker, now that doesn't look that good. Maybe I will use this purple color that could work. But I will maybe stay with the original blue and then the stars they also need to be a little bit more prominent. Maybe I will actually go back to this original red color. I don't know if this stands out sufficiently so I will test out this other blue color for the stars, now I think we're talking. On top of that for instance, I'm not sure about those tulips here. Once you have selected the color that you think will be good which is this orangey color you can use the sliders. I usually have a color wheel, some other sliders, I usually use the hue saturation luminance sliders and here you can play around maybe make them a little bit more saturated, you can make them darker or even brighter, but I think this will look quite good. Let's clip it, so this would be another pattern variation. Then you just have to make sure to save it and now I will show you another way of changing colors let's create another copy and we will save it as, we'll get rid of this word here that gets attached automatically, copy and we will change it to variation C just for the fun of it and we will save it in the same folder. Now what I would like to do is, I would like to have a darker background perhaps so one variation with the darker background so let's choose this very bright and dark blue color. I will shift the other color palettes to the bottom and always making sure that I'm working in the main symbol. I'm selecting one of those tulips because I would like to change this orangey color and I will make a quick recoloring by using the same function which you will find here. From the Move tool same, we would like to locate the same fill color so we select Fill Color and now all those orange tulips have been selected. Since it has been selected and located now we can perform our changes for example, we can make it lighter. The prerequisite is to choose only one element, this is pretty straightforward, this is very easy to locate colors. But imagine that we have a super intricate pattern with maybe 12 colors and you would like to find the color fast then you just select one item, one layer, you go to same, Fill Color, everything you see the selection here, everything will select it, I de-selected it by accident, same Fill Color and now we can make our changes across this one single color that we have pre-selected. I would also like to change definitely the stars. I know that I could have done it on the folder level because everything is so neatly organized that you can do it right here but I want to show you again this technique of choosing the select same option. Select same, Fill Color, let's make it brighter, that will do and now selecting one of the leaves I think I would also like it to stand out a little bit more from the background. This option is available again from the Move tool, select same, Fill Color, now everything is selected and let's see maybe something from other color palettes. This one, that looks nice. We have very nice opposite colors here, blue goes very well with orange for example. De-selecting, let's clip it, that also looks great. I don't know which one is my favorite now. [LAUGHTER] Making sure that you save it. In this pretty fast way we have created two more color variations. You can either change your color by changing it on the folder level if everything is sorted by color, or if you have more intricate patterns you can use the Select Same Fill function. Just make sure to always make a copy of your original pattern and to create those color variations in separate documents. Your task is to create a copy of your final pattern and to work on at least one more color variations that you could show us. This was the final lesson, I hope that you enjoyed the process. 14. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking my Affinity Designer course. I really appreciate every one of you and thanks so much for the lovely reviews for the course. I really do hope that you liked this new approach. It is a little bit different from using the life pattern preview tool but overall, I think it's been already weeks since I opened the templates with the life pattern preview. I have shifted my entire process completely to my automated templates. You have to also stay tuned for more. There will be new courses also coming where I'm introducing different automated templates for half drops, for full drops, for scallops, for orgies so really exciting stuff coming this year. I can't wait to see your beautiful diamond repeat patterns. I'm very curious about what you will draw. Remember that in case you're looking for inspiration, especially from the field of botanical art, you can have a look into my PDF workbook for diamonds repeat patterns. On one of the pages, you will find a full 30 days of botanical prompts list which is included. This will hopefully help you to stay motivated and to stay inspired. Or maybe even to pick up a 30 days project for botanical patterns in Affinity Designer. If you're sharing your work on Instagram, please don't forget the #MagicalVectors because I will be pulling out the work to feature in my newsletter or on my account only from under this hashtag. I would also like to invite you to leave a review for this class and comment how you liked it. It's super helpful for both me as a teacher, as well as for other students who are considering taking this course. Please check out my other Affinity Designer courses and consider signing up to my monthly newsletter to stay in the loop for new tutorials and for artists resources. Until next time, take care and happy creating, bye.