Surface Pattern Design in Affinity Designer V2 | Linear Geometric Patterns | Tracey Capone | Skillshare
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Surface Pattern Design in Affinity Designer V2 | Linear Geometric Patterns

teacher avatar Tracey Capone, Illustrator, Photographer & Designer

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome to Class!

      2:34

    • 2.

      The Class Project

      0:39

    • 3.

      Basic Linear Pattern

      16:45

    • 4.

      Multi Color Basic Linear Pattern

      2:52

    • 5.

      Basic Diagonal Linear Pattern

      11:01

    • 6.

      Variations on Diagonal Patterns

      12:51

    • 7.

      Wavy Line Pattern

      10:06

    • 8.

      Zig Zag Pattern

      4:33

    • 9.

      Final Thoughts

      1:36

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About This Class

Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, wavy, zig zag... so many linear surface pattern designs start with one single line...

How do we take that straight line and turn it in to those beautiful, linear, geometric patterns in Affinity Designer? Let's find out!

Hi everyone! I'm Tracey, an illustrator, photographer and designer from the Chicago area, and welcome to class!

Welcome to the next class in my series of surface pattern design classes, called "Pattern Toolbox!" In this series of classes, we'll focus on a specific pattern, or theme of patterns, in a variety of applications: the Affinity suite, Adobe, and Procreate. With each lesson, you'll walk away from class with a new design for your portfolio, as well as experience in tools that can expand your creativity in surface pattern design and beyond.

In this class, we're going to take a single, straight line and, using Affinity Designer V2, turn it in to a basic horizontal pattern, a diagonal, a wavy pattern, and a zig zag. I'll show you my method for creating linear patterns that allow you to not only create your base pattern efficiently but make variations, quickly and easily as well.

It all starts with a single stroke with the Pen Tool...

  • The basics of linear pattern creation in Affinity Designer: We'll start with a simple horizontal pattern, created with the Pen Tool and a single, straight stroke. I'll show you how to start and end your pattern tile, as well as how to space and tile your final pattern, quickly and efficiently.
  • How to add multiple colors to a basic linear pattern: I'll show you how to take your basic pattern from a single, solid line to a final pattern with multi colored lines of different stroke widths.
  • How to create a diagonal line pattern with ease: While one of the more challenging linear patterns to create correctly, I will show you several things to keep in mind as you create yours that will not only allow you to efficiently and consistently create a successful diagonal, but vary it easily.
  • How to create a wavy pattern that tiles correctly: The wavy pattern is about as forgiving as the basic linear pattern, as long as you keep a few things in mind when creating it. I'll walk you step by step, through how to create a solid wavy line pattern, as well as how to vary it's colors and stroke width.
  • How to create a successful zig zag pattern with a single stroke: I will show you how, taking one additional step when you begin your pattern, can help you efficiently create a tileable zig zag without having to duplicate or offset any of your lines to fill in gaps at the sides.

  • Affinity Designer V2 (desktop or iPad)
    • Please note, there are tools used in this class that are only available in V2 of Designer

I'll be using the desktop version of Affinity Designer V2. Most tools used in the class are available on both the iPad and desktop versions, with the exception of the Move Data Entry feature. For those on the iPad, you can still follow along and use the traditional power duplicate method. Where needed, I will jump in to the iPad to show you, step by step, how to complete complex steps.

While this class is beginner friendly, it does assume some familiarity with Affinity Designer V2 and the overall surface pattern design process. Please note, we will not be reviewing the interface in this class so it is important that you know where all tools are located, and the basics of how Designer works, in order to have a successful time with this class.

Hi there! I'm Tracey. I'm an illustrator, designer, and  photographer located in the Chicagoland area. You can find more information about me, and my work in my full profile. (find the link above) I've been a full time artist for over a decade, after leaving the corporate world behind in 2011. In addition to teaching, I am a full time creator who sells my work on my own site, as well as print on demand sites like Spoonflower, Society6, Etsy and more. 

I've been using Affinity products for the last several years and love to learn as much as I can about the tools so I can not only use them the way they were intended to work but make them work for me; and I love sharing that knowledge with my students! I've had the privilege of being spotlighted by Serif, the company who created the app, twice as a go to teacher for their apps. You can find links to the spotlight articles on my profile page.

If you have any questions about the class, or would like feedback on your project, please feel free to let me know in the Discussion section of class, or by emailing me at hello@traceycapone.com.

I look forward to seeing you in class!

Music Credit: "Passionate Choices," by Mansij on artlist.io

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Tracey Capone

Illustrator, Photographer & Designer

Top Teacher

Hello and welcome to my Skillshare channel! I'm so happy you're here!

My name is Tracey. I'm an illustrator, photographer, teacher and self-proclaimed digital art nerd who loves all the apps, and sharing everything I know. Being able to help students understand more complex applications, like Affinity Designer, and hearing about that moment of clarity when everything came together for them is truly satisfying.

not just the how, but also the why... I believe understanding why I take certain approaches, or use particular tools, will help you absorb what you learn and better prepare you to work on your own later. to embrace the perfectly imperfect... in my mind, it's the best way to develop that sometimes elusive creative voice!

and finally... See full profile

Level: Intermediate

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Transcripts

1. Welcome to Class!: Horizontal and vertical lines, weighty lines, sage zags, abstracts, multicolored lines, diagonals. The variety is endless, but every linear pattern begins with a simple straight line. But how do we take that single line and turn it into a beautiful geometric pattern? And designer, let's create some together and find out. Hey everyone, I'm Tracy, an illustrator, photographer and designer out of the Chicago area. Welcome to the next installment in my surface pattern design series called the Pattern Tool Kit. In this class, we're going to start every pattern with a single straight line. I'll show you how to use affinity designer to quickly and easily turn that line into several linear geometric designs. They can be used on everything from fabric to your favorite print on demand product. We'll begin by creating a simple horizontal or vertical pattern. We're going to start out creating a single solid pattern just to cover the basics. From there, I'll show you how you can quickly and efficiently create variations of that pattern, from the line width to adding multiple colors. Next, I'll share my best tips and tricks on creating a successful diagonal pattern. Every time. While it may seem like it's as simple as changing the angle of a basic pattern, you can run into issues if you don't keep a few things in mind. And finally, we'll create both a wavy and a zigzag pattern. While these patterns are created much the same way, there are a few key steps that you need to consider with each in order to make them tile correctly. Throughout the class, we're going to use a variety of designers efficiency tools like the pen tool grids, snapping and node tools. By the end of class, not only will you have new patterns to add to your portfolio, you'll have a better understanding of how you can use those tools to create future patterns. In designer, I'll be using designer version two on the desktop, but ipad users you can easily follow along. With the exception of one key tool, the move data entry feature, which is specific to desktop. Everything else works exactly the same where there are some differences. I'll jump into the ipad and show you exactly how to accomplish the same task as the desktop. Now this class is intended for intermediate users of designer. Well, you're welcome to take the class as a beginner in order to get the most from it. I do recommend some familiarity with designers tools and interface as we won't be covering either in this class. So are you ready to take a single line and turn it into four fun linear designs? Let's get started. 2. The Class Project: The project for this class is to create your own linear geometric patterns using the techniques we cover in try one or all of the following, the basic line, the diagonal, the wave, and the zigzag. The easiest way to share your project is to take a screen grab and load it in the class project and resources section. Next up, we'll dive into creating our first pattern. Taking a look at the basics of linear design with a simple horizontal pattern. I'll see you there. 3. Basic Linear Pattern: In this lesson, we're going to start out with a single straight line pattern to talk about the basics of creating linear designs. The principal steps shown in this lesson are the building blocks for the patterns and the rest of the class. Let's take a look. I'm starting with a 4,000 pixel canvas set to 300 DPI. I find that this size suits my needs for the various print on demand companies I use without worrying about quality. Now, I haven't created a pattern preview window, and I'm not using a template because the nature of geometric patterns and how they're created don't really warrant it. Because for the most part, we either stay within the bounds of the canvas or where we don't. Repeating the same motif over and over there isn't that uncertainty that you would have where you're placing multiple sized motifs like florals. I have created a pattern tester artboard which we're going to use along with the gradient toll to test our pattern once it's done. Now if you feel more comfortable using a pattern preview or using a template, please feel free to. There are several ways to create a simple linear pattern in a designer. The most popular being that you create two large rectangles that sit within the bounds of the canvas. And each rectangle is half the size of your canvas, either along the x or y axis, depending on whether you're creating a vertical or horizontal. Because nothing sits outside the canvas and there's nothing to duplicate and offset, you can just take this and scale it, and you'll have your linear pattern. However, to create the scale that we want, we would need to take this and duplicate these multiple times. Popping them to the four corners of the canvas over and over until we're at the scale that we want. I find this to be time consuming and not very efficient. Instead, I'm going to show you my method for creating them with a single stroke. Which allows you to not only create the scale that you want without a lot of additional work, but as we'll see in the next lesson, add multiple colors either to the line itself or across the pattern in my mind. One of the most important tools in designer when it comes to creating linear patterns or really any geometric pattern is the grid. Especially working in conjunction with snapping together. They're going to be especially helpful in creating all of the linear patterns in this class on both desktop and ipad. On the desktop, I can engage the grid by using the keyboard chart cut command apostrophe, or I can go up to the top and choose View and Show Grid. I can also go down here to the bottom and choose grid in axis to pull up the dialog box that allows me to change my grid. For those of you on the ipad and the contextual menu at the top, you're going to see what looks like a windshield wiper. If you tap the icon, it's going to engage your grid. If you want to access the settings, just tap the box to the side. And you can choose grid settings down here so that your contextual menu shows you your various options. Now the default on both the desktop and ipad is for an automatic grid. So the first time you open a canvas, if you engage your grid, that's what you're going to get. This one actually changes depending on the zoom level of your canvas, which I find distracting. So I usually use the basic grids and adjust my pixel settings to my liking. This also keeps them locked in. Now I have a 4,000 pixel canvas and I want to create a grid that's going to be evenly spaced across it. So I need to pick a number that evenly divides into 4,000 Now, because I know that I want a tighter pattern, I want to create a grid that's about 200 pixels. So I'm going to change my spacing to 200 for those of you on the ipad. You can also set up a basic grid. But I do want to note that it actually only goes up to 256 for the spacing. This is a known thing and has been as far back as version one of designer. I'm not sure if it's something that's going to change, but if you want to go above 250 pixels, you can either use guides and snap to the guides. Or you can use the automatic and just keep it at a regular zoom level. Ultimately, you also have the option of creating a smaller grid size and simply skipping lines. Now that my grid is in place, I want to go up to my snapping options and make sure that snap to grid is set. So I'll go up to the contextual menu up here. I can see that snapping is engaged because it's turned on there. I'll click this dropdown box and I can make sure that Snap to Grid is turned on. I don't need snap to baseline grid in this case because I don't have any divisions between the main lines. So this is just fine. If you're going to use guides, you'll also turn that on here. We're going to be using the pen tool to create our initial strokes. In this class, I find this approach allows for the most versatility when creating the linear pattern. Because working with strokes means that I can easily adjust the width of my stroke to change the look of my pattern very quickly. I'm going to select my pen tool and zoom in here, because I want to show you one of the reasons I like working in the desktop version with grades and snapping with that on, if I hover over the vertical line here, you can see that when I'm on the line, it shows me a green dot. If I hover over the horizontal on the X axis, it gives me a red dot. Once I hit an intersection between the two, you can feel it snap. And I get a yellow dot. So I can know that I'm laying my node right on that intersection. Now on both the desktop and ipad, you can easily adjust how that snaps by going back up to your snapping options and changing your screen tolerance. The higher you go, the more readily it's going to snap. So I'm going to change this to something like 19 when I hover. As I start getting closer, it snaps much more easily. Now keep in mind this is going to impact snapping overall, not just when you're using grids. I tend to keep mine at three. And I find that works just fine for those of you on the ipad. If you're on one of the newest ipads that has the hover feature available, that same thing is going to work for you. You should be able to see the exact intersection. For those like me who are on an older version of the ipad, you don't have the hover capabilities. But I do find it with grids engaged and snap rid on. It's a rare occasion when I don't hit the mark when I'm laying down my nodes. But if you don't remember it's a curve. So you can easily switch to your node toll and you can either drag it and it should give you lines. When you have snapping on or with it selected, you can go to your transform studio and move it from there. Now that we have our grids and snapping set up, let's begin creating our pattern. Because we're working with the pen tool and ultimately strokes, we can easily control the scale of our pattern, which includes the width of the line and the density of those lines. The easiest way to create this pattern is to start with a stroke that evenly divides into your canvas. So again, I have a 4,000 pixel canvas, and I have a number of options that evenly divide into that. I could work with 250 pixels, 501,000 The larger the stroke that you start with, the less lines you'll need to create your pattern, which means you have a larger and less dense scale. The smaller the stroke that you start with, the more lines you're going to need, leave me with a smaller, more dense pattern. I'm going to show you two examples so you can see the difference. We're going to do the two extremes, 250 pixels and 1,000 pixels. So I've selected my pentel and I'm going to choose 250 pixels as of my width. Now there's a few other things in my stroke panel that I want to make sure I adjust if necessary. The first is that I want my stroke aligned to center. That's going to allow me to easily offset my strokes and make adjustments to them when I need to. The other two options aren't going to work. I also want to make sure that I have scale with object turned on that way. If I do scale that's up and down, the strokes will scale with it. And then finally, I want to make sure that the cap of my stroke is set to butt cap and not round. In the case of this regular basic linear pattern, it's not going to matter. But rounded caps can cause an issue on things like diagonals where you might end up with a gap. So I suggest getting in the habit of always checking that. All right, I'm going to tap out my line. I want to hover over the left side here until I see it snap. And I get that yellow node, letting me know I'm at an exact intersection. I'll click to add a node. I'm going to hold shift down, that's going to keep my line straight. You can see that yellow line there until I get to that other node and I'll click and add that. It's important that the two starting nodes on either side are at the very edge of your canvavas. If they're not, if they're inside a little bit, you're going to have a gap that's going to make its way into your pattern. I want to start my first line halfway off the top of the canvas. The easiest way to do this, because we have the set tool line to center, is to choose my move tool. And I'm going to, with it selected, go to my alignment options. And choose a line vertically to top. That's going to set it in the exact middle of the stroke because of how we have it aligned. And then I can create the one at the bottom that's going to complete it. These are the only two offsets that you're going to have in this pattern. So I'm going to select that line. Since I'm on the desktop, I'm just going to hit Enter. It's going to give me the move, Duplicate Dialogue in my vertical, I want to choose 4,000 again the size of my canvas. I don't need more than one duplicate. And I'll click okay. These two lines are going to complete one another, and always need to remain exactly the same. Let's create the rest of the pattern. So I want to select this top line again. I'm going to hit Enter to engage the move duplicate. I'll go to the vertical. Now I want my lines evenly spaced. I have a 250 pixel stroke, and I want 250 pixels of space between each one. Which means I want to go on the vertical 500 pixels. I'll click on Duplicate. And this time I'm going to click and drag to keep duplicating that line until I complete my pattern. And then I'll click Okay to turn the grid off. Let's back up for a second and look at the math here. 250 divides into 4,000 evenly 16 times. Which means I should have a total of eight of the orange lines and eight of the off white lines. The top and the bottom here are one line. I have 2345678 orange lines, and I have eight off white lines, which means this should tile just fine. So I actually have this pattern in my assets already. I'm going to click my pattern tester. I'll select my gradient tool, and I'm just going to click on this pattern here. And I will scale in. And you can see it's tiling just fine. All right, let's take a look at the difference between this and using a 1,000 pixel stroke. With my pen tool selected and the width set to 1,000 I'm going to go from the far left side of the canvas. I'll hit Shift and create the line exactly the same way as I did previously. And again, I want to move this up to the very top of the canvas, so it's halfway in between the stroke. I'll choose a line vertically to top. And click Apply. I'm going to select that again and hit Enter, and I want to Duplicate this down to the bottom. Those are going to be the two offsets. So I'll key in 4,000 and choose Duplicate. And click Okay. Now I can create the rest of my pattern. Now just like with the 500 pixel want, I want this to spaced evenly, so I need to take into account 1,000 pixels for my stroke and then 1,000 pixels of space that I want between the two. I'm going to select this top one and hit Enter. I want to move this 2000 pixels. That's 1,000 for the stroke and 1,000 for the spacing. I'll click Duplicate. And you can see I only need one to complete the pattern, and there's a lot more space between here. So again, I already have this in my assets to test this out, I'm going to go ahead and click this, and I'll turn the grid off. And if I scale down, it's scaling just fine. So I have a much larger scale pattern that's a lot less dense than the other one. Now technically I can get this pattern to the same as the 250 pixel stroke with, but would require duplicating this multiple times and shifting those duplicates into the four corners of the canvas over and over. And that would take several passes it to get it to where I want. By working with strokes that are set to a particular width, I can more easily control the scale right from the start without having to manually scale down the pattern. I'm working more efficiently this way, giving me back a lot more time. I've brought back the 250 pixel pattern because I want to talk about adjusting the stroke width at the most basic level. Now that my lines are in place, I can easily adjust the look of my pattern simply by adjusting stroke size. Because all of my strokes were aligned to center and the offsets were based on that center line, not the overall width of my line. I can easily adjust the width without upsetting the pattern itself. So I can go in here and I can either select the group overall if I want to change all of my stroke width. Or I can go into each of the individual layers and change them to individual stroke width. The only thing that you need to keep in mind is that the top and the bottom most lines always need to match one another. So let's say that I want to change the size of this overall. I have my group selected. I can just use my width slider to make that change. I'm going to bring that back to 250, but I can just as easily make sure that I'm selecting anything but that top and the bottom. Or again, if I do that I change them both. I'm going to select this second line and then choose every other one until I get to the bottom. And then just change these. I very quickly change the look of my overall pattern just by changing the stroke width. Now, what if I want to add additional lines to those I've already created? For example, I want to add some thinner strokes in between these 1,000 pixel strokes that I have here. Again, I need to make sure that the top and the bottom strokes always match, but these act as buffers for anything in between. I can add a line anywhere in between these two, and the pattern is still going to tile correctly. I'm going to open this up and select this first line. I'm going to command J to duplicate it. And I'll change its stroke color to pink. Let's also change the stroke width to 500. Now I want this to be in between these two lines. So I'm going to select it. Hit Enter, and I will go down on the vertical 1,000 I don't need to duplicate it. I'm only going to add one line because you don't actually have to match on both sides. And I'll click okay. Now for those of you on the ipad anywhere I'm using the Move Duplicate dialog box, you can use the Power Duplicate and transform studio. So I already have this in my assets here so that you can see how it's going to tile. I'll select my gradient tool and my pattern tester here. Let's go back to the Assets, and I'm just going to click to add this. And you can see that's tiling just fine because anything that I add between these two buffers is automatically going to work the same as any other line. So this is the benefit of working with strokes rather than fills. I can easily adjust their size, I can vary them, I can add additional strokes. I can even remove strokes between these two without having to worry about causing issues with the overall pattern. Or worse, having to start over again. As long as my strokes are set to a line to center and or space the way that I want them, I can create a number of different patterns by starting with a simple base layer of strokes. Now that we've looked at the basics of creating a single line, in the next lesson we're going to take a look at how we can quickly add additional color to that line to create a totally different pattern. I'll see you there. 4. Multi Color Basic Linear Pattern: Working with strokes to create your lines rather than large blocks of color fill, not only make it easier to create the scale that you want, it also allows you to more quickly add additional colors to your lines and change your overall pattern. Let's take a look. I have a linear pattern here that I created with a 500 pixel stroke. I'm going to start by adding some additional colors. I've grouped up all of my strokes, and I'm going to command J to duplicate that. I'll change the stroke color, because remember, these are all strokes not fills to pink. And I want to change the width of that stroke to 350. That way the orange underneath is peeking around the back. And I have this pink line. I'm going to do that again. I'm going to command J to duplicate it, that pink line. I'll change the stroke to the slightly darker red color. And then I'll change the width of that stroke to 200. All right, let's do it one more time. I'm going to create a pin stripe. I'll duplicate that group, change it to off white, and then change that to 50 pixels. So I started out with a pattern that was just a bunch of orange stripes, but by adding different layers of color, I was able to easily change it. Now I could make additional adjustments to this. Let's say that I want to make this stroke, instead of 500, I can make this, say, 600. I could turn one of these off and see how it looks. I can swap things out, maybe change the colors. But the point is I can get a number of different combinations simply by making changes to the individual groups that I create. This is the benefit of creating variations on your original line this way, rather than say creating them on the appearance panel where you're stacking strokes up on top of one another on a single stroke. Each of my strokes is in their own group. Not only can I quickly add additional lines, I can make changes. I can create multiple patterns, and I don't have to worry about disrupting the pattern itself. Had I done this using the appearance panel, I would have to start over from the first line. Because once you create your pattern, you can't make changes to individual strokes using the appearance panel on multiple lines. In the next lesson, we're going to take the basic line and tilt it on its head to create a diagonal pattern. I'll see you there. 5. Basic Diagonal Linear Pattern: In this lesson, we'll take what we've learned and turn it on its head to create a diagonal pattern. Now it may seem as easy as simply rotating an existing horizontal or vertical pattern, but there's a much more foolproof and efficient way to approach it. Let's take a look. So I've pulled in the standard horizontal pattern, so I can show you why simply changing the existing angle of a pattern isn't necessarily the best and most efficient approach to creating a diagonal one. I have this 250 pixel stroke pattern from the first lesson. And I've gathered all my strokes up into a group which I'm going to rotate to 45 degrees. Now the first thing that you're going to notice is that we have large gaps where these strokes don't go outside the canvas. Now I can grab this handle, hold command down, and just drag out. But I'm still left with these large gaps which are going to cause a problem. When I go to tile this, I'll open up my layers and I'm going to select this top layer and duplicate it. And I'll just drag it up to snap it into place right about there. And then I'll do the same thing with this one. Now this may seem like it's going to tile just fine. I actually have this pulled into my assets already. I'll go ahead to the pattern testure and pull that in. If I scale down, you can see that I'm getting this weird box around here. And I had these little bow tie shapes, and that's because there's nothing in the corners. Diagonal patterns require very specific spacing of the lines, as well as two very distinct spots where you have to have lines in your final pattern. Let's clear this canvas and start over from the beginning. When creating a diagonal pattern, the very first step is to create your beginning stroke between the longest point on the canvas. In this case, it's either the diagonal from here on the top left to the bottom right, or from the top right to the bottom left, depending on what direction you want to create your diagonal. That stroke is then going to be duplicated and offset both up and down on either side of it. And because it's the longest point that ensures that all lines stretch beyond the canvas on all sides so you have no gaps. I'll grab my penol and I'm going to use a 250 pixel stroke that's set to this orange color. I'll start at the top left corner again, I'm making sure that I hover until I see that dot. And then I'll go down to the bottom right corner. And again, I'm going to wait until I see those cross hairs and click. And now I have the longest point created on my canvas. For those of you on the ipad who don't have the hover feature, when you place your first line, it's not a bad idea to check the placement of your nodes. So with your node tool selected, just zoom into the corners where you've placed them. In my case, the top left corner in my transform studio should show 0.0 for the x and the y. And then the other side, the bottom right, should show 4,000.4 thousand and as long as I see that, I know that mine are correct. You can also with snapping on, kind of grab them and snap them into place and visually see that they're okay. Once that line is in place, the others are fine. As long as you're careful how you offset them. I want to point out something about the ends of the stroke, because these go off the canvas at the corners. They're snipped at the top and the side, creating a point both here and on the other side. That's going to become important in a bit when we complete the canvas. When you're creating a diagonal pattern, there are several things to keep in mind. The first and most important thing to remember is that unlike the lines in a horizontal or vertical pattern, every line in a diagonal pattern has another line that helps complete it. If one of those lines is missing, you're not going to have a complete pattern. And this is going to become really important when it comes to adding additional lines to your canvas after you create your base, which we'll talk about in the next lesson. Second, your stroke width should be evenly divisible into your canvas. This is just like any other geometric pattern where repeated motifs that aren't evenly divisible into the canvas aren't going to tile correctly. The third is that your final tile should always have lines at the furthest corners opposite of your original diagonal. If you don't, these are going to form little gaps. So I'm going to go over to the pattern tester. I have one in here. You can see that there's nothing in the far corners which are going to help complete this shape. So if I scale this down, I get these little bow ties here that are creating a gap. For the rest of this, let's get into the canvas and start creating a diagonal pattern. So I've changed my stroke to 100 pixels. Because when it comes to creating thinner diagonals like this, the only additional thing you need to keep in mind is that your offset should be a number that's equal or greater than your stroke width. As well as evenly divisible into your canvas size. So I have this 100 pixel line here. Which is evenly divisible into my 4,000 pixel canvas. Because my original line is going off the corners of my canvas. I want to duplicate this and offset this both to the right and up, and then down and to the left, because this is like any other pattern. If your motif goes off both sides, you're going to need to duplicate it twice. In this case, we're simply moving it twice. I have this line selected. I'm going to hit Enter. For those of you on the ipad, you can do the same thing using the transform panel and power duplicate. Now I want this to be evenly distributed and again, I want to use an offset that is a multiple of my 100 pixel stroke width. So I'm going to go with 200. I need to move this to the right on the x axis first, so that's going to be plus 200. I'll key that in here. And then I need to move it up -200 That number is always going to be the same. And I'll hit Duplicate. Now from here, if I just click on Number of Copies and drag up, I can copy that same offset to the very edge. If I zoom in here, you can see that I have that little point right there that's going to help create or complete rather the gap on this side. I'll click okay. Let's go ahead and select this again. And this time I want to go down into the left on the horizontal. I'm going to key in -200 because I'm going down on the y axis and I want to Keen plus 200, so again it goes down. I'll hit duplicate. And I'll complete the pattern until I see that little point on the very corner. And I like to zoom in when they're small like that, just to make sure there's not even the tiniest little gap there. I'll click okay. I'll pull this into my assets here, and then we'll test the pattern. So I'm just going to click on this to add it. And if I zoom out, you can see it tiles perfectly. There's no gaps. I don't have any of those little bow ties. I can zoom in and move around, and this looks good. So let's talk about thicker lines now. I've found through creating numerous diagonal patterns, that when it comes to creating thicker lines like this, your best bet is to stick with that stroke width like 250, 500, or 1,000 And stay within canvas sizes that are multiples of those like 1,000 2000, 3,000 4,000 and so on. From there, the same rules apply as thinner lines. Again, the distance you offset your duplicates should be equal or greater than the stroke width. So this is a 500 pixel stroke width. So I would go with an offset of either 500 or higher and stay with one that divides evenly into my 4,000 pixel canvas. Again, that leaves me with 501,000 or 2000. Just like with the horizontal on the diagonal, the higher the number, the wider the gap between your lines. The lower the number, the more dense your pattern. Again, I have this 500 pixel line here and I need to duplicate and offset it to the right and up, and then to the left and down to complete my pattern until I see my corners. So I'll select my line and hit Enter. Now again, I could go with 500, or I could go with 1,000 or 2000, I'm going to go with 500. So I'll key in 500 on the horizontal to send it to the right. Now you can already see right here, I did not change the cap on my stroke. I'm going to hit cancel and bring it back. And do that, remember on diagonals that can cause a gap. So make sure that you're changing this to a butt cap. I'll re select that and enter. I'm going to key in 500 on the horizontal and negative 500 on the vertical. That's going to send it to the right on the x axis and up -500 on the Y. I'll click Duplicate. And then I can just click and drag to complete it. And you can see I have my little triangle there. That's going to complete the gap right here. I'll click okay. I'll select that again and hit Enter. This time I need to go to the left and down. So I'm going to key in -500 and then 500 on the vertical. I'll click Duplicate and finish that off. Now it's important that you use the same number going up as down, because remember what I mentioned, all of these lines have a complimentary line that helps complete it. You need to make sure that they're all spaced the same way. I'll click okay. And now my pattern is done. I've pulled the pattern into the pattern tester, and you can see what this looks like. It's scaling and tiling perfectly. Now I want to show you the difference between this 1,000 pixels and 2000. So this is 1,000 pixels, you can see it's much less. And then 2000 pixels is even more so. And that's the power of starting with a stroke where you control the offset and the distance, you automatically control your scale as well as the density of your pattern. Now that we've created our diagonal lines, let's take a look at ways that we can make variations on this original base pattern. I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Variations on Diagonal Patterns: While creating diagonal patterns can be a more complex process. Making variations in those patterns is relatively simple, so long as you keep a few things in mind while making them. Let's take a look. Let's go ahead and create another diagonal pattern together just so that you can watch the process again. And then we'll make variations on that diagonal base pattern. I'm going to select my pen hole, I want to make sure I have no fill. And I'll grab this orange, red as my stroke. I'm going to change this to 250. I'll start at the top corner again. I'm making sure that I get that cross hair there. I'll click and then go to the bottom corner and do the same thing. And I have my initial line. So my stroke width is 250, which means that my offset should be 250 or higher And a number that divides evenly into my canvas. So 250, 501,000 or 2000. Remember, it has to be both. So even though 250 actually divides into say, 750, 750 doesn't divide evenly into 4,000 So you want to make sure that it's both greater equal to your stroke width as well as evenly divisible into the canvas. I'm going to select the curve and hit Enter. And I want to go to the right, and let's go 500. I'm going to make a more dense pattern, so I'm going to the right on the x axis 500, I'm saying positive 500 And on the vertical, because I want to go up, I'm going to key in negative 500. And I'll click Duplicate. I think I'm going to change that. Let's go ahead and make it even more dense, 2250 and minus 250. It's much closer together. I'll click and drag until this is complete. And you can see I've got my little triangle here that's going to complete that over here. I'll click okay. I'll select that again, and I want to hit Enter again. For those of you on the ipad, you can do the same thing by using the transform panel and power duplicate. I used 250 here, so I need to use 250 on the other side. This time I want to do -250 on the horizontal, positive 250 on the vertical. I'll click Duplicate. And then complete the pattern by clicking and dragging to add my copies. And click okay. And I have my little triangle here, so I know I'm not going to get that gap. Let's turn the grid off. Now that I have my base in place, I can easily gather these up and make the same variations in stroke width, as well as adding additional strokes and colors as I did with the patterns on the horizontal or vertical. One of the easiest variations that you can make on a diagonal pattern is to change the size or color of all of the strokes. Once you have a base pattern in place, now I'm not going to demonstrate color because that's pretty obvious. I can just collect all my strokes and change that up here in my Swatch panel. Let's grab this group. And this time I'm going to just change the stroke width. So I'll make this 100 instead, because we're working with a center line, a stroke, and the original offset is based on that. Again, making changes are easier than if I was working with a fill. So I can select all of my lines and I can change this, and this will still scale perfectly. But what if I want to change the width or color of some but not all of my strokes? It's actually pretty easy, so long as you remember one of the rules that we talked about in the last lesson, that lines on this side of the center line help complete lines on the other side and vice versa. I've adjusted the pattern a little bit and changed not only the stroke width, but also changed my center line and these two points to a darker red. Just so that we can look at the anatomy of this tile more easily, remember that these two points help complete this one. This is technically one line. These are all considered part of the same line. The remaining lines are completed by their counterpart on the opposite side in the order that they go up from the center line. If I want to change this line to pink, I need to make sure I'm also changing this one. Because if I don't, I'm going to get a weird color gap. I'm going to end up with something like this. Or if I scale down, you can see that because I didn't change this line to pink, It's still orange here. In my final tile, it changes to pink and then goes back to orange. Now this technically tiles seamlessly, but this isn't what I'm aiming for. I actually want this entire line to be pink. What I need to do is take that line right there, because that's two lines up from the center, just the same as this one, and change that stroke to pink. Way, when I go back over to my pattern tester, it's automatically going to fill in those gaps. And I have a multicolor line that doesn't have any weird color blocking to it. The same thing applies to stroke width. I can change the stroke width of certain lines, leaving others as is. But I always need to ensure that I change the width of the counterpart. In this case, I changed the stroke width of this one, which is one up from the center line to a smaller size. I would need to make sure that this one in red, which is again one up from the center, is the same size. If I don't, what's going to happen is I'm going to get something like this. Which is going to give me a gap where I have this one set to this stroke and this one set to this stroke size. In order for this to tile correctly in the way I intended, I need to make sure that this line is set to the same stroke. So this one is set to 100. I need to change this one to 100 as well. Now if I tile this pattern, it's going to correct that initial issue and it tiles just fine. We've talked about changing existing lines, but what if you want to add new lines to a diagonal pattern base like this one? Well, just like changing lines, you need to remember that every line has to have a counterpart on the other side to complete it. So when you add one to this side, you have to add its counterpart at the same offset on the other side for a complete pattern. Additionally, in order to ensure that your lines are the correct length, I recommend starting with a duplicate of your center line. Remember, this is the longest point on the canvas, you can make any adjustments to it that you want changing its color or stroke with. But by starting from this point, you'll ensure that you don't have any gaps. I have one of my original diagonals here, a 500 pixel stroke, which is offset by 1,000 I want to add an additional thinner line between these two existing strokes. So I'm going to start by duplicating this middle stroke. You can see that here in my layers. And I'll change the stroke to pink. I'm going to change the stroke width to 250. Now I want to move this halfway between these lines. I'm going to select it and hit Enter to get the move duplicate dialog box. I want to go down and to the left. Let's start with the horizontal, because I want to go to the left. I'm going to key in -500 because I want to do half of the original offset. Since I want it halfway between on the vertical, I need to go plus 500 because we're going down on the y axis. And now I'm halfway in between. And I can hit, okay, if I were to leave this as is where I only create the one line and don't create the complimentary one here between these two. Because again, it needs to be the same offset. I'm going to end up with something like this where I have a break because I didn't create the line right here. So let's go back to this pattern now. I don't need to start from the center again. I already know I have the right length. I just need to duplicate this one and offset it. I'm going to hit Enter to get the move Duplicate Dialogue box. Now I want to move or duplicate this one and move it between these two. That's a total of 2000. I'm at 500 here, this is 1,000 and then another 1,000 This time I want to go on the horizontal. I'm going to the right, so I'll key in 2000. And then on the vertical, because I'm going up on the y axis, I want to key in -2,000 And that's going to put a duplicate in the exact spot where I need it. So if I go back to here and pull that in, you can see it completes that line because this line is in place. Let's take a look at that one more time. Let's add a line here and then make sure we add the complement on the other side. I'm going to select this line and duplicate it. Let's go with a different color stroke. This time I'll choose this darker red. I'll make it 250 as well. Now I want to move it halfway in between these two lines. I only need to move 500. I'll hit Enter, and I'm going to go to the right 500. Because I'm going on the horizontal axis, the x axis to the right 500. And I need to do -500 to send it up on the Y axis. And I'll click okay. Now again, I don't need to start again from the center. I'm just going to select this one and hit Enter. I want to move it here because that's where I'm going to end up completing the pattern. Again, I have about 2000 pixels I need to move because there's a 1,000 pixel offset, I'm already at 500 here to move it, another 500 would be 2000. I'll key in -2,000 because I'm going to the left on the x axis, I'll go plus 2000 on the vertical and click Duplicate And okay. And now my pattern is complete. I can select this and drag it in to my Assets panel. And as soon as it's in place, I'll go ahead and test it. So I can just click on this, and you can see that that's tiling perfectly because I added the two lines that complete one another on both sides of that center line. One final note about adding lines to your diagonal pattern. While the offset of the initial strokes that make up this base diagonal pattern should be evenly divisible into your canvas to ensure that you have the shell of the pattern. Anything else that you add beyond that can be offset to any point as long as you make sure that you add its counterpart on the other side. So let me show you what I mean. I'm going to select the middle line and duplicate it with command J. I'll change the stroke to pink and we'll just change this to 250. So I'm going to offset this 675, which does not evenly divide into 4,000 I'll start here negative 675 and then positive 675 on the vertical. Because again, I'm going down on the vertical. And I'll hit okay. Now I need to add the counterpart on the other side. So I'm going to select it and hit Enter. And I'm going to need to move it up here, which is an offset of 2000. Because remember my original base canvas is offset by 1,000 I'm going to key in 2000 to send it to the right. And then -2,000 to send it up on the y axis. So I need to hit Duplicate. So I have two lines there. I'll go ahead and select the pattern Tile. And pull it into my assets. And then as soon as it's in place, I'll go ahead and test it. And it tiles just fine, even though I didn't use a number that's evenly divisible into 4,000 Because again, once your base is in place, you can add lines anywhere as long as you also add their counterpart to complete them. In the next lesson, we're going to take our straight line and bend it, creating fun weighty patterns. I'll see you there. 7. Wavy Line Pattern: Over the next two lessons, we're going to move away from the straight line into the realm of the wavy and zig zags. These present their own set of challenges when we're creating a pattern. Let's start by taking a look at the wavy line. I've created a 500 pixel grid on my 4,000 pixel canvas. Because I want to use the pen tool to create a stroke. And then my node to, to add additional nodes at exact points along it. Once it's in place again, I'm making sure that snapping is on and snap to grid is set. So that when I do hit the intersections on the x and the y axis, designer will let me know where to add my nodes. I'll select my pen tool and I'm going to set my stroke width to 150 pixels and aligned to center. I'll click anywhere here. I'm just going to hover over and remember you'll get a yellow dot when you're at the exact intersection. You can also see the green and red line that I get when I'm where I want to be. I'll click to add the first node. And I'm going to shift click to add the last one. Now I want to add nodes in between. I'll select my node toll. And when I get to those intersections where I want to add my node, I get a little yellow dot and I'll just click and add them. Now for those of you on the ipad, again, those of you with hover should get something similar to this. Those of you who don't, again, do not find it to be a problem to add nodes along those intersections. As long as I have snapping on you can always check and make sure they're where you want them to be. Once you've created the nodes, now again we're creating a wavy line here. And right now, all of my nodes in this stroke are sharp. And you can tell that because they're square. That's not going to allow me to create nice, smooth curves. So what I want to do is, while this is selected, I'm going to click and drag across to select all of my nodes. Go up to convert here in the contextual menu and choose Smooth. The most important thing to remember when creating both the wave and the zigzag pattern in the next lesson is that in order for your pattern to tile correctly, your two end nodes always have to meet at the same point, because they're going to become a part of either the wave or the zigzag. We're about to make a selection of nodes and drag them up to create the wave. When we do that, we either need to select both of these or leave both of them de selected, so that they either stay in place or get moved together. I'm going to select every other node starting with the second one. And there's a couple of ways that I can do that. I can select the first one and then shift click to select the rest. Or I can hold option down and click and draw around the nodes that I want to select until all four are selected. For those of you on the ipad, you can either click and hold your finger down on the canvas to keep selecting. Engage the shift key on the command controller to do the same thing or use option on the command controller, just like I did here. And click and draw around the nodes that you want to select. With those nodes selected, I'm going to go to one of them because once these are selected, if I drag one, the rest are going to follow. I'll hold shift down to keep them where they're supposed to be on the y axis and just draw up and I'm not going to go too high. I find that when it comes to these wave patterns, the deeper you go, when you pattern them, you get an almost holographic effect that can be guided distracting. So I usually make mine deep enough that the wave is obvious, but shallow enough that I don't get that effect. But go ahead and experiment and see what you like best. Now that the first line is created, I want to begin tiling it. And I need to start up at the top, just like we did with the horizontal. I want to bring one up to the top and have one at the bottom. That completes it. Now, we use the alignment options to do that in those videos, but in this particular one it's not going to work because it's a wave. So what I want to do is make sure that snapping is on. I'm going to hold shift down and just drag up until it pops to the center of that selection. So you can see it. I get the red line and the green line, and basically you want the middle dots here to be on the corners of your canvas. So now that I've created this one, because it goes off the canvas, I need to make sure that I create one at the very bottom to complete it. So I'll hit Enter, and on the vertical type in 4,000 because I'm going down on the Y axis, I'll click on Duplicate. And then, okay, I'm going to move to my layer stack and switch the order of these. We're going to use these two key layers to help align the rest of the waves once we put them in place using alignment options. And the order that you click them matters when it comes to that, I'm just going to make sure that my bottom is on the bottom layer and the top one is on the top of the stack. I'll select that bottom one and I'll click Enter. I'm going to go up -500 on the vertical. Now, because I'm going with -500 I should be able to tile this easily without having to align it later. You can see it's following the grid. I end up with a total of eight copies. I'll click okay. Now I can test this to make sure that they're aligned fine. Visually, they look great, but let's just check it. I'm going to select the bottom layer and shift. Click to select the top, I'll go to alignment options and just choose a ligne vertically. And actually they were all slightly off. So it is a good idea to check that just to make sure that everything is tiling the way that you want. The topmost and the bottommost wave matter the most in this pattern. Because they complete one another, it's important that they're always at the exact spot they're supposed to be so that they can effectively do that. But anything that you place in between can be placed however you'd like. So I made sure that these were aligned vertically so that they were spaced, but you don't really have to do that. But let me show you an example of one that doesn't have the top and the bottom aligned correctly. So if I grab my gradient toll and I zoom in or out rather, you can see that because I didn't have those aligned, I get that weird little break. I actually want to have it completed so that I have something like this where I no longer have that break because the top and the bottom were aligned the way they're supposed to. One other example I want to show you is this one where the mill waves aren't evenly distributed. This works just like the regular horizontal pattern, where if a line is missing or they're set differently, the pattern will still tile correctly. So long as that top and bottom one are where they're supposed to be. It doesn't apply the same way it does with the diagonal where you have to have a line on one side completing the other. This works just like the regular horizontal pattern. So let's test the pattern that we just created. I'll grab the pattern tile and I'm going to drag it into my assets here. Once it's in my Assets, I'll just click on it with my Gradient tool and you can see that everything looks good. Now, just like the horizontal lines in the first lesson, we can add color to each of these lines in the same manner once everything is in place. So I have them all selected and I'm going to group them up. I think I'll change the stroke to something like 250. I tend to keep below a certain stroke width because I find that the larger you go, you end up getting these weird sort of puffy lines. And I don't like the way that I look. So I'm going to change this to X goes 200. Now I'll duplicate that group and I'm going to change it to a different color. I'll pick this pink. I want to make sure it's a pink stroke and not a fill. So I'm going to turn that fill off and I'll bring this down to 150. Then I'll do that one more time. I think I'll go with the off white stroke and make this something more like a pin stripe. So 50. Remember we're working with strokes that are aligned to the center and the offset is based on that. So you can make changes not only to the color of your stroke, but you can also change the width of your stroke without worrying about causing issues with your pattern. Now I can bring this into my pattern tester and it's going to tile just fine because we didn't make any adjustments that would otherwise change the layout of the pattern itself. So I'm going to skip that. I've brought this back to its original state, so I can show you one additional adjustment that you can make. In addition to adding multiple colors or changing your stroke width. You can also go into the individual lines and play around with their nodes to get a slightly different pattern. Just make sure of two things. The first is, be careful not to move the nodes on either end of the canvas separately so that they remain exactly matched on either side. If you move one, you need to make sure you move the other one exactly so there's no gaps. And then of course, make sure that if you make any adjustments to either the top or the bottom line, you make the exact same change to the other because they complete one another. Let's go ahead and stick with some of these inner lines. I've selected that one and I'm going to shift click on this one and I'll drag to select these two. And maybe grab my transform handle up here and twist these. I can grab these two and I think I'll turn that off and just drag these up. I can drag these two down. I'm just being random about this, but you can make any change that you normally would with a node tool. Again, as long as you keep those two things we just talked about in mind, this pattern is just about as forgiving as the horizontal and vertical one from the first lesson. With those few exceptions, as long as you keep them in mind, you can have fun with the patterns and see what you can create. In the next lesson, we're going to create the last linear pattern in the class, the zig zag. I'll see you there. 8. Zig Zag Pattern: While similar to the wave pattern and how you create it, the zigzag pattern presents a new challenge and an additional step because of its sharp nodes. Let's take a look. Once again, I have a 4,000 pixel cannabis, and I've engaged a 500 pixel grid. I've used the penthol to create my stroke, just like I did for the wave pattern. And I've added nodes at every intersection between the first and last node. But here's where we have to add another step. For the most part, the zig zag is created the same way the wave is, with a few notable exceptions. To create our zigzag, we're going to be working with sharp nodes rather than smooth ones. So we're not going to convert these. Remember, in order for the pattern to tile seamlessly, the two nodes on either side need to match up. There can be no gaps. I'm going to select every other node, starting with the second one and start dragging up, just like I did with the wave pattern. And watch what happens as I drag up. I get a gap here on either side, and that gap will end up in the pattern. Once I have this in place, just like with the wave pattern, I can begin adding my nodes all the way across. But because I've moved these two outside, I'm also going to need to add end nodes here to the sides of my canvas. So I'll just click until I get those dots. Add the nodes all the way across, making sure that I add them to the very ends as well. Now if you remember with the wave pattern, I started with this node, I started with the second one. But if I do that, let's just click this one and start dragging up. It's going to begin to create sort of a straight line there. And if I change the join to pointed so that I have an actual zigzag, you can see it's very distinct. I'm going to bring that back. I'm going to change my join before I do anything to mitre join so that I get points rather than curves. Instead of selecting this one, I'm going to start with the very edge here. I'll select this. And then again shift and I can select all the way across or I can hold down option and draw across. Now that I have those selected, I'll hold my shift key down, drag up again, I'm not going to go too high. And you can see that these two will meet up exactly where they're supposed to and complete each other in the pattern. Now I can add the rest of my lines exactly the same way that I did with the wave pattern. I'll just select this. I'm going to shift and drag it all the way to the top until it pops to the middle of the selection. Just make sure it's right where it's supposed to be. I'll select it and add its counterpart on the other side. So I'll key in 4,000 and duplicate. Now I can add all of the lines in between. And just like with the other, I don't have to have them aligned evenly. I can add them however I want. But I'm going to go ahead and first make sure that this one's on the bottom. And then starting with that one, I'll hit Enter on the vertical, go up 500, holding down Duplicate. And just go all the way up again, It may visually look like they're aligned, but it's always a good idea to check. So I'll click and then shift, click the last one. Go up to my alignment options and choose a line vertically to space them. In this case, it was perfectly fine, So I'll click Apply. As far as making any color and stroke weight adjustments, the same thing applies here as the other patterns. You can make your stroke weight adjustments very easily because everything is aligned to center, Therefore, it'll tile correctly no matter what you do. The main thing that you need to remember is that the topmost and the bottom most complete one another. So any changes that you make to one have to be made to the other in order to have your pattern tile correctly. You can also play around with the depth of some of your zigzags, the way we did with the wave, making some deeper than others. Again, anything you do to all the lines in the pattern will be fine. Whatever you do to single lines in the middle is fine. You just need to keep in mind again that the top and the bottom lines need to complete one another. And then finally, of course, make sure that your two sides are always meeting up. In the next video, we're going to wrap things up with a few final thoughts. I'll see you there. 9. Final Thoughts: We're at the end of class and I thank you for trusting me with your time and creativity. I hope you enjoyed this installment of the Pattern Toll kit series. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the class. So please consider leaving a review as it lets me know what I'm doing well and where I might need to improve. Plus, leaving a review and sharing a project not only helps future students see what they'll learn when they take the class, it helps more students find the class. In addition to Skillshare, I also have a Youtube channel where I share short form tutorials that compliment my suite of classes. Here you can find the link to it in my profile and in the guide provided with class. Speaking of my profile, I have lots of classes in the works here on skill share including many more in the pattern Toll kid series. So if you're not already be sure to hit the follow button on my profile. So you're always kept in the loop as to what's coming up and when new classes are published. And finally, I welcome you to join my free community for digital creators. The creator collage. We're a group of creatives of all skill levels, with experience, and a wide range of digital applications. You can ask questions, share your work, learn new tips, or share your own, all in a friendly, non judgmental environment. You can find out more in the link in my profile or in the class guide. If you have any questions about what you've learned here in class, please don't hesitate to reach out to me either in the discussion below or at the E mail provided. Again, thank you so much for joining me here in class and happy creating.