Textured Patterns in Affinity + Fresco: From Vector Brushes to Pixel Persona

1. Textured Patterns in Affinity Designer & Fresco: Are your vector patterns looking a little flat? Maybe you're struggling to make your patterns feel lively and full of depths. That's why I created this course. Together, we will learn how to create automated patterns with a flexible vector base and different texture elements. In this course, we will be drawing a repeat pattern from start to finish, mainly affinity designer with optional Adobe Fresco tips. Both softwares are for free, so there's no subscriptions and no extra payments. You will learn how to bring your patterns to life using textures from vector brushes, from the pixel persona, and from custom assets. This class comes with unique free resources. We have special vector based textures created all by me and curated color palettes to make your patterns richer and more vibrant. Let's jump in and start creating together. 2. Getting Started: Hello, affinity fans, and welcome to class. Finally, we are dealing with some texture in affinity and I really hope that you will enjoy this course. What do you need to start? Of course, you need any version of Affinity Designer. It could be V one, V two, or lately they also released V three about that in a few seconds. You can use the iPad version or the desktop version. All those versions are for free, by the way, as of October 2025. I will be doing my demonstration as always on the iPad, and also something optional is to use Adobe fresco, which is also available for the iPad, and it's for free. There will be a special lesson dedicated to Adobe fresco where I am explaining why I like to mix and match both softwares. And then, of course, you need a drawing pencil. I will be drawing on the iPad, so I am using my Apple Pencil. For my demonstration, I'm using the following Affinity Designer version. I am drawing on my iPad in V two, Version two, 2.6 0.4. As of October 2025, this is when I started recording this course. You may have heard that we have a brand new version of affinity, the Affinity Studio, which will be probably referred to as the new V three, which is Version three. It was officially released on October 30, 2025 and currently is just for desktop. It gives you a whole studio experience where you can combine the vector persona, the picture persona, and the layout persona, affinity designer, photo and publisher in just one app. Right now, when I'm recording, it's actually already November 2025. I heard some information that the iPad version is coming only around the middle of 2026. This is why for this course and for a few next courses to come, I will be sticking to my old iPad version V two, which is completely fine. You will recognize this new affinity by the new affinity logo. Now they brand themselves as affinity, I think affinity by Canva. Because they merged with Canva last year, it's a new logo on a bright green background. If you would like to find out more about this new Affinity Studio update, I have a dedicated video on my YouTube channel, and you can also read about it on my official blog, for example, on Substack. Again, this new Affinity V three version is completely for free. You can download it from the official affinity website first, like I said, for your desktop only. No, back to the course about our project. So our deliverable will be to create at least one repeat pattern in affinity designer that will have texture. So the keywords here are, it has to be an affinity designer. I don't care which version you're using, and it has to have some elements of texture. I did the combining vector with pixel based or raster based elements. It's completely optional to also use Adobe Fresco to create our base vector assets. I will show you step by step how I do that and there are a few really cool advantages because Adobe Fresco has something that affinity designer doesn't have maybe yet. That's why I like to mix and match both because it gives me a very unique outcome. I have texture underlined because it's really important. It's the core thing that I would like to teach in this course. We have a few texture choices for this course. We will be, for example, experimenting with adding in texture to our patterns that come from assets, and they can be also vector based assets, which they have their own flexibility that we will be talking and the second type of texture is texture coming from the pixel persona because Affinity Designer, lets us combine vectors with pixels in one software. So we will be talking about, for example, characteristics of pixel elements, its limitations, but also its advantages. And last but not least, there's texture that you can get from using vector brushes. We will chat about the properties of vector brushes, where to use them, how to use them, and how to create multiple pattern variations for more efficiency in your pattern design work. I think that this course is for more intermediate students. So prior beginner experience with affinity or with Fresco will be very handy. I have beginner friendly courses about Affinity Designer and I have also a free a playlist on my YouTube channel, like starter lessons into the iPad interface. But I would like to underline that all my courses are usually very beginner friendly, and I am sure that you will be able to follow along and learn as you go. If you're active on social media, you can go, for example, to share your final work on Instagram, and then you can use the hashtag magical vectors. And if you're in one of our Facebook affinity support groups, you can post it there and ask for a critique. Don't forget that this course comes with a few unique resources. You can download a new assets set, which will contain special texture assets. They're all vector based, and also a few color palettes to choose from. Regardless whether you're using the iPad version or the desktop version, this has to be downloaded on Skillshare, will be under projects and resources. And if you're taking this course on Gum Road, it will be part of the course somewhere ready to download for you. And then you have to save it to your device storage, for example, on the iPad or on your desktop computer, and you have to go to the assets studio and import them from the place where you save them from. And then it's going to be very easy. They will magically show up in your asset studio and you can use those assets without worrying about any copyright infringement. You can use them for personal projects, as well as for commercial projects. I would only like to ask you if you are replicating the exact same pattern that I'm creating, not to use it for sale. Don't put it please on Spoonflower or red bubble or sell it to clients because it's still my intellectual property, but you are more than welcome to copy it exactly the way I do it for learning purposes so that we can do it step by step and speed up your learning process. Thank you so much for taking my course and happy creating. I can't wait to see what you come up with. A 3. Texture vs Software Choice: This lesson, I would like to give you a quick introduction into the software that is out there. I would love to explain why I use Affinity Designer and why I also like kind of combining techniques in between software in particular Affinity with Adobe Fresco. And we will talk about the vector versus texture options in those types of software that I am using. I you probably have taken my classes before. I'm a big fan of Affinity Designer. There are two kind of methods of creating patterns. There's the live pattern preview. I have a free tutorial about it on my YouTube channel, I created also dedicated tutorial for Affinity creative sessions if you would like to have a look at it. It's also a very valid method of creating patterns in Affinity. But over time, I created my automated templates for pattern design. For example, templates for Half-Drop Repeat or my favorite diamond repeat. And this is what I like using because it's very easy and you create your pattern in no time. And then it's very oh, let me show you the view of this pattern, for example, it's very easy to move around your elements and to see that you're creating your pattern in real time and you're able to see if everything is spread out evenly. And then what you export is just the original canvas shape. This will be your pattern tile. I know that a lot of people are also using Procreate to create patterns. So here you have a sneak peek into my Procreate. I use it exclusively for sketching. I even have some client projects lined up here. I like my textures brushes. I used to well, I kind of tried creating patterns and Procreate, but I didn't like this technique. I think I was too much afraid that I would make a mistake when I'm creating my repeat. And then there will be a conflict because it is all raster. Based then maybe I'll have an issue with the quality of the pattern at the end. And switching to Affinity was a really great choice for me because it happened in my career that a client wanted to purchase something that I created like two years ago, and I was able to adjust the file very easily in Affinity because most of the artwork that I do is vector based. So I will be sketching Procreate, and if you have Procreate, we can do that together. So we can sketch our assets for the pattern and Procreate. But that's it. We will not be focusing on patterns and Procreate. And then why do I also mix up Adobe Fresco? There will be separate lesson about that. It's because I really like creating assets, vector assets in here. And this is where we kind of segue into the topic of vectors versus texture. When you click here onto the brushes studio in Affinity in Adobe Fresco, then you will see that there are pixel brushes, but when you scroll down, there's also vector brushes. So just like Affinity Designer, this is where we have two types of software for the iPad. That have both vector personas and Pixel Persona sort of built into the software. In Affinity Designer, when you click on the Affinity Designer logo here, you see the designer Persona is for vectors. And then when you switch to pixels, you have a few other tools that show up on the side, and this is where you can play with Pixel brushes and add raster based textures which can really add interest to your patterns. And then another thing in Affinity or actually, Adobe Fresco is that some of those brushes are really handy, really unique. It's something that Affinity Designer doesn't have yet that we'll also discuss. In the next lessons to come, they have vector brushes that work as a form of a blob brush. So you create your vector shapes, let's make this. Yeah, this is how I create my assets. You create them as a vector shape that has only fill but doesn't have a stroke, which is the outline, and they have blob brushes with very unique outline textures, so to say. So if you would like to avoid very smooth, polished vector shapes, you could consider creating some of your assets. They're kind of messy because later on, I clean them up in Affinity. We will do the same together. They add more interest, and this is why the trade off is that, okay, you have to work between the two softwares. But the big advantage is that you can create something unique. And recently, I had a client contacting one of my agents. They noticed one of the artworks that I created. I think I drew some dinosaurs, and they were created with those brushes in Fresco with this uneven outline. And I thought no one would notice that in the end, but they did. And I was able to negotiate a book deal with them to illustrate a book. So sometimes walking this extra mile, taking the extra effort can pay off, especially if you're into exploring, developing your style further. And Fresco, as of, I think, 2025 is for free, so you don't have to pay for this software at all. And Affinity will be soon for free, as well. There will be an announcement soon. So you will be able to use all the advantages of Affinity Designer outside of the subscription model. I am discussing here the iPad options because I love creating on the iPad. I also have an explainer video about it on my YouTube channel. So I will not be discussing why I don't create patterns in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. I had to use it for work to edit some final files for my clients, but it's just my personal opinion. I really don't like it. I don't think it's intuitive at all. I like Affinity and I wish all the publishers and licensing clients actually switched to Affinity or accepted it more readily and now that it will be so accessible, maybe they will take that into consideration. So we said that we have Vctors and pixels in Affinity, and we also have Vctors and Pixels in Fresco. So we will be creating our pattern between those two softwares. Some further examples here, I created a greeting card design. I was working on a vector base. So if I click on that kitty, you will see the nodes, you will see the anatomy of a vector shape with nodes that are very easily editable. I'm able to change the color of this cat, just to show you very, very fast. Recoloring is super easy. But when you have a look at the head of this cat, you will see that there's a pixel layer that is clipped inside. The details, if I zoom in, you will see they are made out of pixels. And in this way, I am combining the best things out of the two worlds, so to say, the same on the flowers, the same on those leaves. And this particular greeting card design also drew attention of my agent because texture really, really adds interest. Another example is this Halloween illustration. There's a mixture here of a vector bay. So again, from the node tool, this whole pumpkin, or the CD is a vector shape. We also have this orange texture, for example, if we open the pumpkin, we have even a few pixel layers, which can also work in different blending modes. For example, this shadow layer here is the base color of the pumpkin set to multiply with a lower opacity. And then this little highlight is normal. And somewhere here, I also have screen blending mode over here, for example, to add a little bit of light. Now, something that Fresco doesn't have. That's why even if I create my assets in Fresco for the interesting outline, I still export everything to Affinity Designer because Affinity has something very unique namely vector brushes. For example, if we go back to the node tool, this little item here, it might seem like it's again, a pixel based shape. But this is actually a curve. A curve means it's a vector shape. From the node tool, I'm also able to recolor very, very fast, very easy and change the shape of this decorative element. This is, of course, I'm showing you an example from just an illustration for kids. But this is something that you can also apply for pattern design. For example, here, that's my test pattern here. Here you can also see an automated template for Affinity, and we can, for example, go to this shape here and we can see it's actually made with a vector brush. But it does look like as if it was basically made with paint. I think it's a gouache brush. So to sum up, those are all the options that we have. I think that Affinity is the most powerful software out there that allows you to utilize both vector shapes as well as raster texture to sum up also, there's vector shapes which are super scalable, very easily editable. There are Pixel layers. So we have the Pixel Persona and the designer persona, which can be combined in one software. Adobe to compare has separately Adobe Illustrator for vectors and Photoshop for raster based design, Affinity has everything. It's like two and one. And the third thing is that we have those unique vector brushes which will be also experimenting with during our class. And this is why I recommend that you create the pattern with me in Affinity Designer. Previously, I taught patterns focusing mainly just on vector shapes. It doesn't mean that they are simpler. You can still play with layers of color to create depth. But most of the courses that I released so far kind of focus on vectors up to 100%. That's why this new class introduces a new approach where we will be able to experiment a little bit, get out of our comfort zone, and also see how pixels behave in Affinity Designer because there are a few things that you have to take into account technically, and we will be discussing all that. 4. Inspiration, Sketching, Colors: In this video, we will talk about the inspirations for our pattern, how to choose your motives. We will also chat about the class resources, your task, and how to basically brainstorm or maybe create a mood board for your pattern. And then finally, we will be sketching the assets that will build our pattern. So something that I would really like to underline as we go through this course is to really, really focus on your needs. So ideally, if you have a portfolio, maybe you have a website or you have your own shop, let's say, your own spoon flower or on red bubble or you're selling maybe assets or patterns from the creative market, I would like you to treat this course as an exercise, especially if you're learning from the start how to apply textures to your patterns. So on one hand, this will be an exercise, but on the other hand, have it at the back of your head, so to say, that it should serve your needs. So for example, you might be someone who's creating patterns for kids. Then just have a goal in your mind that this will be for your kids patterns portfolio. But also you could focus on the seasonality, seasonal patterns. For example, agents, potential clients. They look on a regular basis for seasonal patterns that is spring versus summer versus autumn or fall and winter, or we will be creating like a weather pattern. It could be with snow, it could be with wind, it could be with rain. And depending also what color palette you choose, it could reflect exactly those seasons. Let's have a look, for example, at this one. It's a pattern that could be for kids. It's also pastel, but I might also adjust the colors so that it feels more autumny or it feels more like for winter. And for the class resources, I will be also giving you some elements that will help you to create your patterns. So for starters, your task is to create a pattern in Affinity Designer. So I would like to ask you that your end pattern tile is created in Affinity Designer, ideally for the iPad. But as you know, most of the steps that I'm showing here, you will be also able to replicate those steps on the desktop version of Affinity Designer. Now, optionally, you can choose Adobe Fresco to create your vector assets, your vector shapes. It's just an option. I warmly encourage you to take a look at the Fresco video so that you can hear about the advantages of using those blob brushes in Adobe Fresco, it's for free. And then I would like to ask you to create your pattern by using vector elements. So I would like your base to be still vectors for the scalability and for the flexibility, and must a must must must for this class is to decorate it with different textures. Again, create a repeat pattern Affinity Designer optional using Adobe Fresco. You have to use vector shapes with different textures. What kind of texture elements can you choose from? So you have a choice of using Pixel layers with pixel based texture that will be clipped, for example, to your vector base. You can also try using vector brushes with me. They're really fun. They look like pixel based textures, but they're super super scalable and much more flexible. And you can also use pre saved assets. Example, here in this document, I will go somewhere to the site to show you what I have prepared for you. In the class resources, there will be, again, a folder. It's going to be called WS Veronika Stallac textured patterns, and I will be giving away for you to use to experiment with textures that are vector based, but they look as if they were really drawn with traditional media. So for example, this one here, if I drop it onto my canvas when you zoom in or you go to the Node tool, you will see that it's actually a vector shape. Again, it will be very easy to scale it without any quality loss, it's built of a lot of very, very tiny vector shapes. But you see it has all those speckle elements. When you zoom out, it actually looks as if it was made with some sort of a charcoal brush, I think. This one, the same. If we click on the Node tool and any of the shapes, you will see it's actually a vector shape. But yeah, some elements can be also moved here separately, but it's a vector asset. Everything is vector based. So all those textures will be made available. This is a fun one. This one is a little bit scratchy. Again, when you zoom in, it imitates traditional media. Those are textures that I created by myself. So there's no copyright infringement when you're using them, feel free to use it for personal and commercial purposes. It's just not allowed to sell them in your own shop. So this is still my intellectual property, but I hope that you will have fun using them. Then you probably know it from my previous classes. Actually, let's rename that. This will be prepared neatly for you when you're ready to download them. I have a few, for example, let's take this one, insert. I have a few color palettes. This is the one that I like the most for the wintertime, but also for kids patterns, it's a little bit cool tone, so it's very good for the winter season type of patterns. And the advantage of it is that, for example, if we take this soft texture here, we can just sample the colors very easily here from the color studio and this sampler tool or whatever it is called. Super easy. So I got into the habit of saving my color palettes in this way because then you can save it as vector assets. You can just put it next to whatever you're working on and you can scale it up so that it's a little bit bigger and recoloring is very, very easy. So it's the same blue pattern, but I have a few that offer different types of colors. If you would like to choose a pattern that is more, I think this one is called vibrant spring. You don't have to necessarily create a pattern that is just for autumn or for winter. I have one for spring. I think this one is it's like a pastel Halloween exactly. Like the one that I used for those ghosts here. And this one is very good for Christmas. I think this is my classic exactly classic Christmas, color palette. This one is mainly for autumn. It's also a little bit pastel, let's say. It's called this one is for the summer. I think I was creating a desert or Arizona inspired illustrations for one client, and I saved up this color combo. So, have a look at those color palettes, download them. You probably remember how to do that from the asset studio over here. You go to the Hamburger menu here, the three horizontal lines, and then you have to add to the category by importing it. Import category. Those have to be saved onto your iPad storage and for that, I really like using just the Files app. Here I have a dedicated folder for all my assets. They have this extension dot AF Assets and then all you got to do from Affinity Designer, you have to import them first. So you have to click on Import category, and then you have to find the folder where you saved your assets, and then you just click on them and they get imported in no time. So I'm not going to do that. You can also complete this by adding additional subcategories and you can edit them in your own way. It's very, very handy. And when we select all those things that I just put on my workspace here, when we delete them, we still have them at our disposal in the library, feel free to use them as well. Now, depending what kind of pattern you would like to create, I would first like you to identify your target season, or you can just follow the project that I will be doing in this class, namely I will be doing those kind of snowy rainy clouds. But you can go for any type of season. Feel free also to use Pinterest for this initial inspiration. For example, if you type in maybe something like autumn colors because if you type in autumn or fall patterns, you will get very specific ideas by artists, and you might be tempted to, you know, to copy it and we shouldn't do that. Autumn colors may be something like weather because I will suggest that for our project, we do draw some sort of clouds so that we experiment texture. And you just have a look what's out there. Maybe you see uh if I want to have a good seasonal pattern for autumn for my portfolio, maybe I can combine those clouds. First of all, the colors will have to be different, a little bit more orange, a little bit more olive green. There are also some other colors that you can try out here. You can screenshot them, and maybe I can combine it with raindrops. I also have here we will, of course, doing this together. But one example here, is to change it to raindrops. You can also include completely different assets. This one might be for kids for bedtime instead of rain or snow, you can make stars. This one is with rain again. This one is with snow in pink, also very nice for kids. This is part where you can brainstorm either through Pinterest or Google Images. And then when you decided on your season, so to say, then you can go to the tool that you will be using for sketching. And because I will be doing everything digitally, I would like to do my sketch in Procreate. You can also use a completely traditional notebook, and when you're done with your sketching, you can just snap a photo. So from the layers panel, I'm going to hide this and make a new layer. You can use your favorite brush, but I like using just a big, large, soft brush that looks kind of like a pencil, and then I make it bigger. And then I would still recommend that you draw with me some clouds. I would like you to sketch at least three different cloud shapes because then we will be tracing them, drawing them in Adobe Fresco, if you wish also to proceed with me to Adobe Fresco. They might have silly faces as well. They might have eyes. Maybe they're a little bit Kawaii. It also depends on your styles. This is just an example. If it's for kids, maybe they have different facial expressions, or maybe they have no faces at all because you're creating a pattern for adults. Perhaps raindrops as well. We can also use texture brushes in Adobe Fresco for simple lines or maybe also want to remember to create a few star shaped decorative elements that will imitate snow. And anything else that you would like to kind of brainstorm, you can fit it onto your Canvas here. By the way, my Canvas is 3,000 Pixel square. So if you're using Procreate, you just have to hit the Plus button. And if you don't have the size, then you click this plus folder here. This is where you can input your dimensions. For example, 3,000 Pixel square. And depending on your iPad model, you will have a different number of maximum layers. But I'm going to cancel because my Canvas is already created. I have a bunch of sketches in my Procreate app. I treat it as my digital sketchbook. So something from our pinchers board was that there were some berries or some leaves. You can imagine, for example, that there's some wind blowing, but also maybe the wind carries different leaves types, and you will not be obliged to vectorize all those ideas that you have here, but at least you will have them not to forget them, you know? So fill out the canvas. Maybe another type of snow that I can create with the blob brush. It can also be on one layer. It doesn't matter. I also like using different colors so that it's more visible. That was the previous sketch that I created. I wanted whimsical clouds that look a little bit goofy. I needed a reminder, I would like to create something for wind like a symbol for wind and some elements that will be both seasonal and also for different occasions. If I use some stars or maybe even create also an extra acid with a rainbow, then it will be fantastic decorative elements for my kids parents portfolio. And I also wanted to experiment over here just so that you understand what I did in this sketch. I have a cloud shape, and I just reminded myself that I would like to make some scratchy, scratchy elements, so to say, that maybe I will be able to clip inside of my vector shape. So this was basically like some sort of a mental shortcut that I did. So now your task is to create your own sketch. Pay attention to the fact that I'm very loose here. I'm not very precious. I'm not overdoing my sketches. That's why I'm also using a brush with a very fluffy pencil like texture, be loose and jot out all the ideas that you have. Because in the end, when I move to Fresco, you don't have to create all the assets from your sketch, so to say. This is just to jot out your idea. And again, a word of warning, for example, if I type in autumn pattern, be careful to use those search terms to look for inspiration because chances are that when this refreshes, exactly, you will get patterns by other creators. So it's not my goal for you, you know, to copy anything. Maybe you can take a look at what others are doing just to do a little bit of a market research to kind of really reassure yourself that yes, this is the colors direction that you would like to go towards too, but rather avoid typing in autumn pattern or winter pattern because you might get too similar to some other artists, and the goal is to create something original. Okay, so now we know our task, and we created a sketch for our repeat pattern. 5. Base Assets in Adobe Fresco: So meanwhile, I saved up my two messy sketches from Procreate into my Photosap. You just have to go to this wrench tool icon, and then you share image, for example, as JPEC and you save it to your folder. And it's right here, I will be able to import it now to Adobe Fresco. Of course, if you prefer not to use Fresco, you can move directly to Affinity Designer. But Fresco is for free now and let me show you the advantages of creating your preliminary vector assets in Adobe Fresco. First, we need to start a new document, like in Procreate, I will create a canvas of 3,000 Pixel square. We go to custom size. I have it pre saved. But maybe let's go back. You just have to input the Pixels data over here and under print size, you can change 72 DPI to 300. This canvas is created now, we can open it and we also have this gray workspace area around just like an Affinity Designer. Now we have an icon here to import an image, at image, and then photos so this is where I have my two sketches. I will choose this original sketch that I created before. And then by default, it's going to fit into the Canvas in Adobe Fresco, we hit done, and then we can go here to extra settings for our layers properties, and we can change the blend mode to multiply. Plus, we can lower the opacity just a little bit. So this icon here shows us our layers panel. We can also reshuffle the layers by dragging them up and down. So I can, for example, drag this sketch right underneath. Here in the upper left corner, we have our brushes. We can choose from pixel brushes, but we will be skipping those. They're also live brushes. They behave kind of like real watercolors and real oil. It's really, really cool, but it's probably something to test out later. And here we have Vector Brushes. I also have a folder from Frankin tone. I'm using Frankin ton brushes, which also have very interesting line textures. But for the purpose of our class, I would really highly recommend that you test out under Vector Brushes the jitter brushes. There are three brushes in here, all of which are marked as my favorite. You can also star them. Light jitter, medium jitter, and heavy jitter. So if, for example, select this heavy jitter brush, here we see this black circle is our color studio. I would recommend that we test out our colors, our shapes in gray scale. So by default, my sketch from Procreate had those blue, purple, grayish colors. And it also says here that it pulled colors from that image image 1580. So sometimes it's actually useful to import an image that already has the colors that you want. Then they will be kind of automatically imported here to Adobe Fresco. But here under the color wheel I will be basically moving around the very left edge of this square so that I create my assets in gray scale. It has a lot of advantages, one of them being simplicity. I can later recolor everything in Affinity Designer when I know what kind of color palette I'm using. And if I'm using, for example, black color or very dark gray, I can also focus on identifying if the shapes that I like are good because we'll be kind of working like with gray scale silhouettes. Over here, this number will allow you to modify the size of your brush. This is smoothing. I keep it at half. I don't really need extra smoothing for my assets. And this last option here is also meant to allow you to manipulate the brush further, but I'm not going to do that. I want to use the brush as it is. So we had this jitter heavy Jitter brush, and now on a separate layer, we are able to test it out. We can always click on this number and make it bigger. And if we make a smaller brush and create a circle, you will see that it's a little bit more jagged because a smaller brush will accentuate the texture much more. And if I create, for example, a circle shape with a bigger brush size here, then it will be a little bit more chunky. To see that in action, we move to the filter, which is this bucket icon here to the left. And without changing the color, we just fill the shapes in. So that you see what I mean? If your brush size, let's go back to the brush icon, it should remember by default, the previous brush that we were using. If we make our brush smaller, the outline will be a little bit more detailed, jagged, a little bit more I don't even know how to say it tiny, and this bigger brush will give us a chunkier shape. And again, this is the advantage of working in gray scale. I can also click on this sketch and click on the eye icon to make it invisible by working in gray scale, darker gray colors are black. We can see the silhouette better, and we can see if we like this shape better with a smaller brush or with a bigger brush. Going back to the brushes, there's also medium jitter. So if I keep it roughly in the middle, you will see it's a little bit Yep. It's a little bit softer, but it still has this uneven line around. Remember to go back to this brush here. If you would like to draw and you forget to switch from the bucket icon to the brush icon, it will ask you if you really want to fill it up, or it will fill up your entire canvas. And you saw I tapped twice on the screen to return to the previous view. Back to our brushes, the light jitter, I modified the shape to be more or less in the middle. If I fill it up with this packet, you will see it's also uneven but a little bit less. So the most dramatic effect will come from the heavy jitter with thinner brush, chunkier shapes from the heavy jitter with a bigger brush, more subtle effects will be with the medium jitter, and the most subtle one, but still quite uneven will be with the light jitter. I'm not recommending and I'm not sponsored by anyone, but I'm not recommending to buy any extra brushes, but in case you want to see the other ones from Frankintun, this is this Monodorian brush. Let's take a look. Yeah, it's also quite jittery, but I don't know if it's that much different from the free brush. Maybe when it really comes to drawing more details within our illustration. But for the shape outline, I don't think it's really necessary to buy special brushes. There's like a hatch brush that has very bleedy texture, so to say. So if I fill it up and zoom in, you will see it's as if the ink was bleeding through our canvas as our paper. But when you zoom out, you don't really see that. I think the most dramatic effects come from those two, which are for free. Medium jitter and heavy jitter. Now, if I click on this layer, I can delete it or I can clear it. So I would like to clear it. Once I select the layer, it will have this blue outline. Not that you make mistakes and you draw on a layer where you don't want to draw. So I selected my sketch, and I re click the icon to bring it back. What I would recommend is that we start with the shapes of our clouds. So I'm going to keep a relatively dark gray, and I'm going to go for heavy jitter, but maybe a little bit chunkier. So not too small, a little bit bigger. And first, I'm going to draw all my cloud shapes. So I'm doing this to be really sure that the shape is closed. I'm going to focus on different cloud shapes before I close them with a fill color because it basically helps me to save time. Again, I'm not being very, this one go removed, but it's okay. We can fix that. I'm not focusing on being perfect. When all the shapes are there, I go to the bucket tool, to the fill tool, and I fill it up and I can also, of course, make sure that the sketches on top so that I see everything. So the clouds, it's important that they're not touching. As long as they are not touching, they will be recognized as a separate acid. So now I hit the plast to create a completely new layer, and moving along this left line here, I make it lighter so that I can create the whites of the ice. And now I will switch to medium jittery because I want less of a dramatic effect on the eyes. Keeping it more or less in the middle when it comes to the size. This one is really goofy. So you don't have to fill your shapes with the bucket. You can just color them in as if you were just drawing with a marker, so to say. As long as they are not touching, those two eye whites will be recognized as two separate vector shapes. So now this one, and this is why it's so meditative, I wish that Affinity had those types of blood brushes, maybe they will be introduced with the new versions because it really imitates this real drawing that you're also doing in Procreate, for example, but with the advantage that the base is still vector based. Now, a new layer for the eyes, and I'm going to use maybe even black for the features on the clouds, keeping the same medium jitter brush. You see, those circles are not perfect. They're not as if we were using the Affinity shape tool. Suck, suck, suck. This is so cute. Of course, feel free to draw any other features that you might need. The thing is, you should draw whatever you think will be handy because drawing it will just give you more elements at your disposal. But it doesn't mean that you have to use it. So maybe you want to draw some extra facial features on your clouds. If you're not drawing faces on your clouds, then maybe you would like to draw just some extra shapes. I will focus on features, actually, another smile here. Maybe also eyelashes here. So I have the blacks of the eyes and some extra features with the smiles on this layer, and then on a separate layer with a slightly lighter but still dark gray, you can also draw some extra things which are just for you. You don't have to use them. And like I said, if you're using if you're not drawing faces on the clouds, maybe at least some texture dots that you can use. They're also very uneven and they can look very interesting. I don't think that for me, this will be so useful. I'm going to maybe just keep this one cluster here. So if we switch off our sketch, we have our clouds in gray scale, and gray scale also helps us to better evaluate those shapes. Bringing back the sketch, making sure I create another layer. This one and one layer, by the way, will be one group when we export it to Affinity. So now on this one layer, we have a slightly lighter gray just for me visually, so that it's more helpful. I can draw my imperfect raindrops. And I actually learned when people were looking at my children's book portfolio that publishers are really interested in imperfect shapes. Okay, another layer maybe for the wind, but this time, I would like to switch for the heavy jitter for obvious reasons, more texture. Yes, but maybe let's make it even bigger. So those lines, they will imitate the wind. It will be in one folder and a new layer. And I would like to make the same element, but with the medium jitter, just to have a choice so that later on I can just choose. New layer hitting plus. Staying with the medium jitter, I would like to create the shapes of snow, those snow stars. Okay, this will be in one folder. Your sketch is not set in stone, so feel free, like you see to add in some extra elements that you come up with spontaneously. And for the stars, I will make it maybe a little bit smaller. And instead of manually drawing them, I will just draw the outlines of those stars. They can also have different shapes. Just make sure that they're closed because now we go to the fill tool and we fill those shapes. Ah, so this is just a reminder for me that I wanted to experiment with some scratchy texture. So I'm going to go to the heavy jitter. Maybe make it a little bit smaller and on a separate layer so that all that texture is gathered for me in a separate folder. Still making sure that whatever I'm drawing is not touching anything else. I think at this point, I can go to the sketch and turn it off. I'm drawing, maybe let's do it separately. So plus because it will be then divided into a separate folder. This type of scratchy texture, perhaps, and another one that is a little bit more. Circular maybe. Those will be my experimental textures, which you will see when we export everything to Affinity. It will be vector based, so it will give us all the scalability. Okay, I think we are done. Those are our unique vector assets. Again, you can use Affinity from the very start, but look how great this is. And you could still try to replicate it in Affinity, but I really adore those brushes. The software is for free. And yeah, I think it looks very unique. So in the next lesson, I will show you how to import these to Affinity Designer. I hope that you like this part of the exercise. 6. Fresco to Affinity Designer Export: Now we are ready to export our vector assets to Affinity Designer. We can also hit here this area to rename our documents. I'm going to just name it fluffy clouds. I think too, because I already had one sketch made before safe. And as you're working on any Fresco file, you can again hit this arrow here and you can save it again to save your progress. Now, there's an export icon here in the upper right corner. Then we go to publish an export. So we want to export as and we want to change the format to PDF. Pa. PDF is a very unique format that enables to save both the properties of vectors and pixel based elements. I also combines the two worlds together. That's why we choose PDF. And now we want to hit Export and we will be saving this document somewhere on our iPad storage. For all my files, I'm using the Fils app here on my iPad. And I have a special folder. I think I named it just Exports, and this is where I will send this document too. So Export. Now, save to Files and we'll connect with the Fils app on the iPad. Yeah, exactly. I have a special dedicated folder called Exports, but you can save it anywhere onto your iPad, then I hit Save. Export is complete and then we can hit done. And also whenever you go back to the homepage, so in the upper lift corner, we had this little house icon, then your progress will be saved automatically whenever you go back to that homepage. So now we exported everything to our external files folder. And this was, for example, the file that I worked on previously, as I was making a test for this course, all you got to do is click Open document and then locate your folder. So I have here fluffy clouds number two. We keep 300 DPI and color profile RGB, we simply click Okay, and then everything is loading to Affinity Designer. When we go to the Node tool and for example, hit this cloud shape, it's all vector based. I love victors. So one thing that we have to do from the folders here, the layers panel is to make sure that everything is sorted out and grouped properly and sometimes merged. So I'm going to go from the top, and the top is usually the last thing that I drew in Adobe Fresco. So this texture here, one thing that we can do is we can go to the Boolean operations up here, and we can select on the entire folders level ad so that everything is merged together. So it's not a folder anymore. It's one single shape. And I also like to go to the color studio, and switching from HSL sliders. In this case, I go to my gray sliders, and I just suggest I still keep working in grayscale. I have a whole article 0N my blog about the advantages of first creating a gray scale and then choosing your color palette and making your color choices. It actually really, really helps me to save time and to make better color decisions later on. So this texture is done. You can also rename it whenever you want to rename a group or a layer. On the iPad, you have a gesture when you're swiping with your Apple pencil to the left and then a special menu opens, and here you can also rename it. For example, I can rename it to scratchy texture, and I can actually also include it in the class resources in the assets folder that I showed to you. So textures Hamburger menu from the textures subcategory, add asset from selection. And I can add it as my vector acids right away, which I can use for this project or any other project in the future. So this is edited. Now I go to my next shape. Which one is it? It's this texture. I would also like to merge it. So there are a few shapes. Every time Apple Pencil was not touching the screen anymore in Fresco, it created a separate shape. You can leave it like that because if you go to the MOV tool, you can keep moving those separate objects. But if you're happy with it as it is, you can go to the entire group level from the move tool, Bolling operations here and add. Something like scratchy, pencil, texture, and I will choose my recent color, which is this lighter gray, just for me visually. I will add it as my vector asset, add asset from selection. We're doing a little bit of admin, a little bit of housekeeping here, and we are on one hand, preparing our assets for the pattern that we will be creating, but we are also building our library of assets that we can then use for any project, any illustration, any other pattern or client work. So that's already the type of work that pays off in the long run. Again, this one is created from two different shapes. From the group level, I would like to merge it. I select Add again. And because vectors are so easy to recolor from the color studio, I just select the light gray, and I add acid from selection to save it for any future projects. And I make it invisible because I just want to focus on the elements that still need editing. Okay, those stars, I'm not going to save them as assets. I just want to make sure that they really separate, but also complete shapes. So sometimes one element is made out of two elements that should be merged together, but here everything looks good. We can also recolor it a little bit to another gray rename layers. So swiping to the left stars just for my own reference, and I'm going to make it invisible. Now we have those. I'm going to swipe and rename it to snow stars. You don't have to rename your layers if it's going to save you time. I just want to be tidy for the purpose of this class, I guess. And over here, you see that each of those stars is made of one, two, three elements. I'm going to select those elements and merge them from the Bollin operations menu add so that it's only one shape that I will be then able to move around. Because if I click just on this one, I will be moving just one arm of the star. Luckily, they're already sorted in the way I was drawing them, so this is going to be very easy. When you have a layer selected, it changes from black to this dark navy blue color, and then I swipe to the right to select it. And then to merge it, we're refreshing our iPad gestures. Another way is to use the two finger tap. So you select the first layer, and then the last layer and the entire selection. So if I wanted to select everything, I mark the first layer with a two finger tap, last layer, and everything is selected at the same time. So just refreshing the gestures for you. But these are so small. It's just three layers that I can also do that quickly manually. And each of those stars is unique. It has a hand drawn feeling even though they look similar. They still look much more unique as if I just built it from the geometric tool that are available here in Affinity Designer. Making them a little bit lighter. That's why when we were creating an Adobe Fresco, it really didn't matter that we were using the gray scale. It's just to be quick and dirty and then to get to the real work, which is editing, saving, tiding things up. Okay, those are two lines. I'm gonna rename it to win Soft. And I'm going to keep it separately because maybe I would like pea from the move till maybe I would like to kind of reshuffle those lines freely. That's why I keep them. I don't merge them. I just keep them in the folder as they are. I'm going to make it invisible. This one will be with jittery, the jitter brush. Again, each of those lines will be kept separately. I'll make it invisible. Now, here we have S, some of those drops, they're built of two different shapes. See? Those need to be merged with the bullion operation add. I'm just trying to locate which of these also need merging this one. Mm hmm. Okay, here I see something to add. Again, I'm keeping each of those raindrops because now that they're merged, if I'm within the folder, anywhere in this raindrops folder, anywhere I click, from the move tool, I'm able to move them around. So handy. So this will be rain making it invisible, and now we have our clouds left. So for starters, this is the folder with the shapes of the clouds. From the group level, I click the group icon and I ungroup them. Now, for the eyes, I would like to pair the eyes that belong to one cloud. So I'm selecting the pair that I want to pair or group, and then I group it. The same. This is one group, Copela. And this is one group, and now I also want to ungroup all the eyes. Okay. Over here, up, I'm going to use the gesture with two finger tap. I have the eyelashes on one cloud that I want in one group, and I'm not merging them because I still want to have the flexibility to be able to move them around individually, maybe delete one. Okay, the smile stays. The eyes will be one group. And now I go one by one. Okay, these are the eyebrows. What do we have here? When I select it here from the Layers panel, you should also see the selection over here. Double checking. Okay. Those can be grouped as well. And these eyes, as well as a pair, the smile stays individually. Now, this one, this one is a whole smile. I don't need those separate items to move them around. I want to stay I want for them to stay as they are. So those three layers, those three curves, I will go again to merge them. And it's just one layer, it's more convenient and the remaining es here and the entire folder with those features, I would also like to ungroup it, release it, so to say. Now, what do we have left? The extras. See, just the extra details. I think those belong. I can also slightly change their color. Those can be grouped. I can also take it out of this group manually. And now what we have left here are the freckles, which are already in this group because we remove the other detail. Oki dooki. Now we have to merge it by the cloud, so to say. So it doesn't matter where we are here on the layers panel, we have to be on the move tool. And from the outside of our white canvas, we have to make our selection. You will see that the selection will have I think it's a blue outline with a slightly blue fill, and everything has to be selected. You see it also gets selected here in the layers panel by changing the color. And then we go to the group icon, we group it, and this star is ready. The same. So we cannot stay on this cloud that we just created. We have to click somewhere else where we have the other elements that need to be sorted out anywhere else. And then from the outside from the Move tool, we have to make sure that everything is selected. You can double check it by making it visible, invisible to make sure that your selection is correct. And now this last cloud and now I select everything and I bring it together. If you want to deselect, you either hit this X symbol or you click, for example, you tap with your Apple pencil somewhere outside of your canvas on the gray area. And now from the move tool, you see whatever we grouped can be rescaled. If you want to keep the proportions, you have to keep one finger on the screen of your iPad. So those are the advantages of working on the iPad. If you want to change the shape, you're not holding the finger, but if you want to retain the proportions, one finger on the screen, can move these around, and as long as they are grouped, for example, although snow stars are grouped, I can keep either moving them or re scaling them or recoloring them at the same time. Those clouds can also be renamed, for example, Cloud, number, number one, number two and number three, but I will skip this step. So we built our assets, our jittery assets in Adobe Fresco. We exported everything as a PDF and then opened everything in Affinity Designer. We sorted everything out, and as we were going, if there were useful assets or useful textures, we also practice saving them to our assets library. Now we have our assets ready. We are not coloring yet because we haven't decided on the color palette of our pattern. The next step will be to choose our repeat type for our pattern, to choose a template or to build a template with me from scratch. 7. Repeat Type: Diamond Template: I so our vector assets are ready, and now we can start choosing our template or building our template. I would recommend that we go either with a Half-Drop Repeat or a diamond repeat. I also have a few pattern templates saved to my iPad storage. For example, here I have some full drop or a standard repeat, template. Here's a brick repeat. But the ones that I use most commonly is either half drop or diamond. For example, this is my diamond repeat template, and this is what I would recommend that we do together. So if I go to the shape and I select this shape, you will see that we will be building the pattern within a diamond shape. And the reason for that why I prefer the diamond repeat. If we open this pattern, for example, it's also built from a diamond repeat template. So to prove it to you, I have my guide over here. See, we have a shape of a diamond. When we make it invisible, this guide that helped me to build this pattern, we will just end up with our original pattern tile. And then when we export it, it will already be in a standard repeat, but it was built using half drop repeat. So for example, this latest grayish cloud, it is repeated sort of at a diagonal in a half drop repeat manner. But the pattern tile that is the final pattern tile that is exported is in a standard repeat. So if we are testing the pattern, for example, here, I tested the pattern with a bitmap fill, it will be kind of in the correct order. So there are really no issues with this diamond repeat pattern. Now, I have, of course, a dedicated class how to build diamond repeat automated pattern template, and I will make this template available in the class resources for those of you who would like to save some time. Or perhaps you have taken some of my previous classes and you already have this template somewhere saved up or somewhere in your iPad storage. For those of you who are new to this technique, I would like to show you quickly how I create this automated pattern template for the diamond repeat pattern type. First, we have to go to New to create a new document, and then I usually work on a canvas of 4,000 Pixel square. So this is just like a portfolio document that I pre created before. You can also change your document your document units here. We make sure we have pixels, 4,000 pixels square, 300 DPI and RGB color format. Usually printers for pattern design, except RGB and a lot of POD shops such as Red Babble and Pun flower actually prefer the RGB color format. Nothing under margins and bleed, so this is not marked, so there's no margins or bleed and very important, we do not create an artboard with automated patterns. If we created an artboard, this would be marked and this little round switch would shift to the right. We have to make sure that it's not selected and then we hit to create our new document. From the shape tool, we're making sure we are on the rectangle tool and to create a perfect square, we have to put one finger on the screen. This is our perfect square. Let's also on my Halloween color palette, let's choose this hot pink for the fill and maybe we can keep the outline black. But we can go to the stroke studio and we can make it at least five points so that this line is thicker. We also have to make sure that we have this cap line selection at the middle so that the line of the square runs exactly through the middle of our stroke because there's also the option to do it on the outside or on the inside, so we just have to make sure it's aligned in the center, that our stroke is aligned in the center. Next, we have to make sure that our snapping magnetic snapping is on. And then from the move tool, we have to position. You see, I have those guiding lines that tell me that everything snapped perfectly into place. So a green line will show up and also a red line will show up that will help me to make sure that everything is really aligned to this upper left corner. Then as I want to retain the shape of the square, I have to put one finger on the screen and snap it to the other side and see also that those alignment lines show up. Okay, so this is now aligned. Very good. Now we have a perfect square. Next, we need to rotate it here. There's this, I don't know if I can call it a rotation handle. One finger on the screen, 15 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees. Now, still from the move tool, I'm going to position it to this upper edge, so to say, of my canvas. Then I'm going to grab this lower node and place it here. And this should have solved our right and our left corner. So now, this diamond is perfectly positioned in the middle. Okay. It's so called a rectangle, but we created a diamond shape. Now, having this selected, keeping this selection, we go to the symbol studio and we have to change it into a symbol. Three vertical lines, Hamburger menu, add symbol from selection, and it was actually good that I pre selected this hot pink color because now I can really double check that this is the shape that I want. Okay. We can also swipe to the left and rename it as our pattern. Now from the move tool, we have to make a few copies of this shape and place it to the edges of our canvas. The white selection is our original canvas and the whole gray area around is just our workspace. When we want to export our work, the gray workspace area will not be exported. Two fingers on the screen to make a copy. See now I have a copy and I'm placing it to one corner here and I'm looking exactly for those guiding lines that will help me to snap that into place. Again, two fingers on the screen, another copy, hoopla, and I'm placing it looking at my guiding lines to the left. Now I can select those two guys here. You see what is it? Blue selection. I can make a quick copy at a time of those two elements, two fingers on the iPad screen. And we make another copy. Now, in case you don't want to use gestures the way I did for the iPad, you can always have this one element that you want to copy selected, and then you got to go to the three dots menu here, and you just hit Duplicate, and then you create another copy, but I'm going to remove that because I copied everything that I needed. Now, if you've taken other automated pattern courses, you know about the preview mode. This little windshield symbol, if you click on it, it will show you everything that is outside of your canvas. For the diamond repeat, I would recommend that we also extend our pattern to those empty areas here so that we have a better preview of our pattern when we build it and we see how the pattern expands and if it looks well balanced. I'm just going to grab one of the diamonds and from the move tool, I prefer to use gestures, two fingers on my iPad screen, I make another copy. I place it here, and it all snaps nicely in the guiding lines, just confirm it. Another copy, and one more. And one more. Each of those diamonds will be like a mirror reflection of the diamond that we have in the middle. Next, I select all the diamonds that are on the outside. And I will only leave this one diamond, the original diamond that I have in the middle here of my canvas. Another thing that we have to do is to set up our background so that we make sure there are no white lines around. We select another rectangle tool and we just draw Let's maybe see. We just draw a big rectangle that has to be dragged somewhere outside. And you can also make it bigger so that it really covers all the diamonds that we just created. This one is not a symbol. So when you create a symbol, you see this orange line. Also here, this orange line to the left side indicates that it's a symbol, and it will be like a mirror copy of what we are creating. And I flip up to get rid of the outline, and I choose just any other color to show you that this will be a completely different color and will focus on our background only, so I swipe to the left. And I name it background. And now, those guys here that I sorted out to a separate group, I will ignore them. They will just give me the repeat and they will give me a preview of my pattern. All the work will be done on this original this one here. I tried to show you the selection. You see this faint blue line. Hopefully, this will be just this middle diamond. We want to go to the color studio, and we want to flip the fill up so that there is no fill. And I'm going to change the background color. Let's maybe bring the color palette, this one, the wintry color palette that I think I will be using. Let's change already the background color, the fill area from this eyedropper tool to either this blue or maybe the slight blue so that we can see better. And now what is left is just this black outline. You can still edit it to your liking. So for example, if I want to change its color, I just have to make sure that I'm on this empty circle selected, which is the outline. And on top of that, so this is what I've been using so far in my courses, but you can still edit it further by going to the Stroke Studio, and you can change it to a dotted line. And then over here, you can increase the gap, for example, to two. Or three or four, and the dash pattern, you can change it to zero, five, so it's a little bit smaller. Let's maybe also increase the gap. And now we have a guide that looks like this. I know it's just cosmetic, but if this is something that you would prefer, then you can also adjust your guide in this way. And if you haven't done this before, you can also save this template to your iPad storage so that next time you don't have to build it from scratch, but you can just open it right away. And you do it in the following way, you have to go to this Hamburger menu. Experts template. You can rename it. For me, I'm just going to rename it as new diamond. I just want to show you because I already have one template saved up, safe. I save everything to my files folder, just like everything else. I created a dedicated folder called templates. And you see all the other templates are also here extension with the file extension dot A of template, and I just hit Save. And if I would be to go back, maybe just close it with this X, meaning remove it completely before I save. Next time around, I can either open document from template or go to templates, find the folder where I have my template, and then this is this template that I just saved with you called New diamond. When I'm working on it and I'm building my pattern, I am not overwriting it. The original template is still there. I can use it as many times as I want and will always stay the same. I will choose now some random assets maybe here that are somewhere on my app just to show you how those automated templates work. It's good to switch off everything else at first and focus on this original diamond in the middle. If I were, for example, to insert this little monster here and show you how easy it is all we have to do is to place the asset inside of the pattern folder. So maybe now let's add another one. For example. This guy looks happy, and we again, have to place it into the symbol. Since it's vector based, I can also rescale it as I want and maybe one more. This one, everyone looks happy because it's for kids. Now I can also rename this diamond shape to guide, and I can make it invisible. You see, I can just switch off the visibility. And then I can zoom zoom out to see if I'm happy with what I created. I think I can add one more. So this would be my pattern preview, and the fact I will switch on the guides again that we positioned all the other diamonds around. It gives us a good preview, so we focus not only on our original pattern tile, but we can also expand the pattern and see if, for example, anything needs shifting. If you would like to take a more in depth course about automated templates, I have dedicated courses that you can also check out. For example, there's a huge class just about the diamond repeat. 8. Building the Pattern Base: Okay, so now I kicked out the assets that I just used for my demonstration, I will be using the diamond repeat pattern template. So first, we have to build the base of our pattern. And for that, we need to take all the assets that we built in Adobe Fresco. So I'm going to select the first group, and with a double fingertap, I will select everything. Then I will go to the three dance menu and click Copy. Everything is copied now. I'm leaving this working document and I'm going to my template here. I am hiding everything else and most likely the dimensions will be a little bit off. I place myself somewhere on top and then again, three dots, paste. When you import something as a PDF, it might be that the dimensions will be changed. The scale will be changed to preserve the shape of our assets, one finger on the screen, and we just have to size it a little bit down, which is, of course, not a problem because everything is vector based. So we size it down so that everything fits the original canvas size. Now, I will also go to the background layer. And from the fill area, I will change it to another gray color. I would like to create everything in gray scale because I will make my color choices later on. I also have a bit of a cheat sheet here. Those are all the pattern images that I created before. This one is more pastel. I will just orientate myself by looking at something that I created before. I will see if I will replicate this exact same pattern or if I'm going to do something else. This one is with pixel texture and vector brushes. I'll show you how I did that. This one is a little bit more neutral pastel with vector brushes and the same pixel based texture. And basically, those clouds are the same. This is from my Halloween collection. I created this Halloween pattern full of super reciprocal texture, especially on that ghost. And this spooky cloud was part of my marketing mix also for my social media and I built a pattern out of it. This guide is just from our template. So feel free to replicate a similar cloud pattern with me or create something completely unique. It might be another form of a cloud or it might be even ghosts or something else. The um what's the most important thing. The most important thing is that the base will be vector as you will see. This is our vector base, and then we will be decorating our pattern further with different texture types. We're practicing textures in this course. This is the most important focus or objective of this class. I have all the assets, but they're not part of the pattern yet. I like to again select everything and make it invisible at a time. Then I like to work asset by asset when I sort things out. So for example, I am bringing back from the move tool now, the visibility of this first cloud. From this preview mode, when I clip it, I clip to Canvas. This whole square will be our final pattern tile and I like to orientate myself still either within this diamond shape or very close to this diamond shape. Now, here we have our pattern template symbol. You can see this orange marking to the left. I'm taking this crowd, this cloud and I'm putting it inside of my folder. Just like with the monsters. I can also shift the cloud a little bit, maybe rotate it. I still like to go back to the original pattern tile. Cloud number two. We have to bring it inside. See it showed up. You can scale it up or down without any quality loss, rotate it if you want to. Now I'm bringing back the rest to see if everything is nicely balanced, but I will know more when I bring the third cloud into the mix, and then I will also decide whether I need an extra element. Here we have a mirrored repetition of this cloud. That's why I urge you to try to stay within this original middle diamond shape. When we edit this cloud further, we will work on this cloud and not on this cloud. Because this one, if I tap on it, see, it belongs to this group that we wanted not to edit. It belongs into some other folder. It's just a copy. And of course, you can keep editing in here, but I would rather urge you to work with the original middle diamond, so to say. Okay, now let's see if it's really balanced because I think I'm missing something. I think I will add another cloud to the mix. Maybe rotate it a little bit, and then I'm going to grab maybe this guy, two fingers on the screen, make a copy and then from the alignment tool, I will flip it horizontally and just change the angle a little bit. Now, I would like to select the ice of this cloud and maybe shift them. They are grouped because we made all the entire grouping exercise was also for this type of practicality, that the grouped elements are easier to edit. I want this cloud to look a little bit towards this cloud. I think I also want to kick out those freckles. Creating all those extra features, it's optional. You can also delete them. Sometimes it's actually better to keep things simple. The same because it's a mirror reflection, this cloud of this cloud. This little element here got also mirrored. I don't really like how it looks, so I'm going to delete it here. And also from the move to this cloud could be looking down a little bit, whereas, it's so easy with vectors. Whereas this one can look up or maybe towards Papa maybe towards this goofy one here. And maybe we can flip vertically. Oh, that's nice. See, I'm improvising here. That's why, this one is so cute. A little bit kai. That's why it's good to keep some elements separately. Though this mouth maybe I'll make it a little bit smaller. So this guy is surprised and that one is a little bit angry. Again, if you're not sure if you're selecting the copied item or not, just make sure that you're in this original pattern folder. And then when you select it, you see, this is my original. This is just a copy. This is my original. This is just a mirrored copy so that the repeat is created. This is my original. You see the selection. That means this is a copy. Yo. Okay. I think it's spread out nicely. I can still resize it. And finally, I can also make the guide invisible. All the other details, for example, if you already knew that you want to use this rain, you can already start kind of using it. So you can build a few variations. For example, this rain here. I'm going to make a copy of this rain, maybe resize it a little bit. See how that works. You can also move the individual little drops. But again, to make sure that you're working on the original, just tap the folder that will show you which one is not a mirrored copy and move there, making sure that you really have this original that you wanted to edit. You can also remove some of the water drops if you have too much, and then I can select all that rain that I just put in that was created in Fresco and I can group it and rename it as jittery rain, for example, from the jittery brushes that I'm using, I can make it invisible. I can first work on some variations. For example, let's see the option with the wind. Let's bring it back, make it a little bit lighter. Again, working in gray scale. Now it's nice that we have all the lines separately. Clicking somewhere else, clicking again will help us to select it to new. Clicking in, reshuffling the lines. Now we can really see that it was good that we kept those lines as separate. You can also choose those smooth wind lines. So when we were making those variations in Fresco, it was for our flexibility and you don't even have to use everything for your pattern. You can create pattern variations. For example, now, I'm going to group that wind. I'm just showing you to 22. Or maybe jittery wind. I'm just showing you some tricks for more flexibility and efficiency. So we have, for example, one pattern with the wind, one with the rain. And now let's also bring one with the snow. I'm not going to bother too much with reshuffling those elements into different positions. I'll just place them roughly so that you see what I mean with creating efficiency. This one will be Snow, and you can keep refining this pattern. So we can also click from the move tool within those stars, double click to select a star. And then you can just keep moving things around and refining it, but I want to speed it a little bit up. I just wanted to show you that we're creating just a base. We will be refining it with vector texture, but I also want you to create some variations. And this will be our base pattern tile. And in essence, you could simply just recolor everything now together with the background, and you would already have your pattern. But of course, we want to practice adding extra interest into our patterns. So in the next lesson, we start adding in all those juicy textured details. 9. Texture: Vector Assets: Now, I wanted to show you how to add an extra detail by using vector assets that are already textured. So one way is to use those assets that you create by yourself. So we can, for example, bring back this scratchy texture that we created in Fresco, I'm going to recolor it to this hot pink so that you can see better. So you can, for example, create such textures in Adobe Fresco, which you already know how to do. Then export it as the PDF, sort it out, maybe merge it together, and you have your own scratchy, organic textures. And then you can bring it into your symbol. And for example, let's take the smiley cloud over here. This is the body of the cloud. You can just bring and clip this scratchy texture inside, and I was clipped inside and you will have texture that is vector based. If I change it to black, you can also or to white, you will see what I mean or blue. I just want you to see it nicely on the camera, but I think you can see it pretty well. And the same with this texture here, scribbles. You can also clip them to the body of the cloud. I'm going to change it to hot pink. From the move tool, you can change its shape, you can also make duplicates, what's it called more dense. You see? Now if you only wanted this texture to be visible, there's a neat little trick which we will be also using together with pixel brushes. The textures here, I can group so that I can recolor them in a good way. Now if I make this invisible again. Now, when we go to the body of the cloud, we can go to the field tool and we can make the color of the body of the cloud the same color as our background. Right now we're still not choosing our colors. That's why it's this dull gray. But then we can bring back the textures. Da. For example, we can recolor it to white, and then we can go to the eye whites of the cloud and we can make those pink. This is from my Halloween colors, by the way, and we can do something like this, maybe also recolor the eyelashes. And see if we also want to recolor this. We actually also have a third one that we created together in Adobe Fresco. This is an example of using self made textures to clip to your vector base. This is option number one and this is one very psychedelic example. Now, in the resources, let's go back to our folder. I also created a few textures that could look like snow or they could look like rain. For example, this can look like snow. You also have it in your resources. You can just click on Insert. And we can switch off our jittery rain and we can put this I called it scratchy dots. We can put this S, it's like texture that I also made with either fresco or procreate. I don't remember anymore, but it's done by me and it's very organic. It has all those speckles. And everything is vector based. You see? This is all vector shapes grouped together as one texture element. Then we can just zoop make copies. And use the snow throughout our pattern. I actually like this really a lot. Just to repeat, we can clip our vector texture into shapes, but we can also use it outside. When you're looking at the folder, have a look at all the other textures that are included. Those textures that you see here, they could be also clipped inside. For example, this is a texture that is made with charcoal. We can see what's it going to look like when we clip it to this angry cloud. This is the original. When I clicked on it, it could selected. And now I call it fluffy base. I clip it to the shape of this angry cloud. Wow. So cool. You can make it smaller, and then you can make copies or you can just make it bigger. Wow, this cloud is really angry. I'm also changing here, the ice into this hot pink. You can already do a little bit of recoloring, especially if you already know your colour palette, but I also want you to see the changes that I'm doing on the video better. And then another texture that I have here is this one here, let's maybe take it put it into the symbol. It gets this orange line and we're going to clip it, put it inside of this cloud. Okay, that also looks interesting. Change the eyes to some pink. If we need more, we can resize it, make a copy, make another copy, make another copy, and maybe also group it so that we can recolor it more easily. Ah, and the body of the cloud, we can also change it to the color of the background. The same with this guy here, pla. I think I selected everything to be gray, but I have to select the body of the cloud, you see, and now and also those detail elements, I will change it to the color of the background so that it looks as if it was cut out. Now this guy, let's also do something with him, maybe this scratchy texture that we created together in Adobe Fresco, we put it into the symbol. We clip it inside of this cloud. And I would make it a little bit more dense and with two fingers on my screen, I'm creating copies. Sukuk, suck as many as you need. It imitates the feeling as if you are also coloring everything with a pencil that actually looks pretty cool. We can, of course, group everything so that we can recolor it better. I'm going to the body of the cloud and I'm changing it to the background color so that things merge together and I change the eyes to pink. And this is our pattern, and this is our pattern tile. This is just an example. It looks a little bit wonky, but this is how we could add interest and texture by still not doing anything with pixels, sticking to vectors. The big advantage is the scalability and the ability to recolor everything super fast. I have another example of things that you can also buy. And again, I'm recommending Franken tune studio. We don't even know each other. But I keep recommending him. I have, garage elements, texture Peg volume two. I have some textures that I bought because I also love what he's doing. I think he's very talented, the owner of this studio, and if I buy brushes, it's usually from Franken tune. So it's an unpaid promotion. But they have, for example, those Grangi textures, for example, this one. It's beautiful. You can use it in the background of your pattern or you can clip it to your Cloud, and they don't cost a lot. And as you know, if you would like to save some money, you can make your own textures or you can use the textures that you get from my classes. So this is the first scenario building a pattern with vector assets textures. 10. Texture: Pixel Persona: I Okay, but enough of the vectors, let's start working with pixels. So first of all, I need to save my document. The dots, save as, and then I'm going to name it as. For me, it will be fluffy clouds, three because I had a few tests before, save and I save it to my patterns folder. It's again, a dedicated folder that I have in my files app. And now I would still like to keep working on this pattern here, so I'm just going to swipe to the left and make a copy. I'm going to shift maybe this copy. Sure to the beginning, and then I'm going to save it as fluffy clouds four. I will make a variation because I'm not sure if I'm going to keep the one that we did now, but maybe I would like to get back to it, so I will work now on a duplicate here. So I'm just going to quickly open those clouds, select those vector textures that I just clipped. There's the angry cloud got omitted. And I'm going to bring back their color. So first, I have to make sure that all the clouds are selected here, here, here, here. It's easy to do it manually. It's okay. I'm keeping the pink because maybe things will be more visible. I'm keeping this vector snow. But now, what we're going to do is we will explore using the Pixel persona. Right now we are in the designer persona, but when we click on this logo, we can change to Pixel. So let's actually start with the angry Cloud. We have to be in the designer persona to see that we really selected it. If we're in the Pixel persona, there are a few limitations. For example, when I click on the other Cloud, the selection is not visible. So just to make sure where you are, you have to always go back to designer. Locating the original, you can also clip your canvas to see the original better, locate the original cloud, the body of this cloud. And then before I switch to Pixel persona, I like to go right away to this plus symbol. Pixel layer. We click on it. We create a new pixel layer, which is called Pixel, but it also has this pixel symbol with a checkerboard to the left and I will already clip it in, so to say. Then I move to Pixel, and we have pixel brushes here. We also have the MOV tool. Then the second option are our pixel brushes. And the third option for now, what you have to know is the eraser, and we can also choose the same eraser just like in Procreate of the same brush type. So we stay within our it's called the paint brush tool. If you're not sure, there's this little question mark that when you click on it, shows you the entire menu and you can double check what the tools are called. So from this paint brush, we can select our brush types, and when we click on any title of the brush, you see all the pixel brushes that are available here, and you might have a little bit less. Normally, the default affinity folder starts with acrylics. I have a few more because I've been using this program for a long time. There's a lot of, for example, this Frankin tune set is currently my favorite pixel brush set. But again, you really don't have to buy anything new because Affinity has a whole bunch of free brushes that come with this program. So for example, acrylic, Basic brushes, they don't have that much texture, so I would rather not use it for building this pattern because we want to choose something with more texture. Dry media is really cool. So let's stick to the dry media now. For example, we can choose this gritty crayon. And now that we have this pixel brush selected, the most important thing or the most important setting is this one here. You see, this is the size of the brush. So we make it a little bit bigger. We focus on the angry cloud, and the funny thing is that we pre select the color of the pixel brush, not from the fill menu, but from the stroke menu. So right now it's pink. So if I start see drawing with this brush, it will be pink. I want to bring it back, and I want to change it to white. And now I want to explore these brushes and see how they will look that looks pretty cool a little bit of texture. And especially if you're new, if you're very new to those brushes, you're just starting out, you don't have your favorite brushes yet. My big, big recommendation so that you don't forget which brushes are your favorite is to check that, okay, this one was called gritty crayon. Go to your layers, swipe to the left and take a note for yourself because it happened that I was experimenting with brushes, and then I chose a texture, and then I wanted to replicate it, and I forgot gritty. What was that? Gritty, see, I already forgot. Gritty crayon. I think I was saying that you can take notes. So I wrote gritty notes. Gritty crayon. And now we can make it invisible, go to the plus. Another pixel layer, and now we can explore more. For example, we can go to I think Markers was pretty interesting. We can choose. That's the thing. I don't know all of these precious. I play around with their size, and I'm not really using those settings here. That's nothing that you need to know about for now. So it happens that I am actually on the eraser. I have to make sure that it goes back to the paint brush. Don't panic if there's something that you don't see. It's probably because your paint brush switched itself to the eraser. Again, markers. Dry media. Let's find markers. Just the first marker to test it out. Oh, this is really nice and smooth and sometimes you can layer them as well. This is just for you to test. I'm just going to take a note that it's a marker. I will know that it's the first one. I'm going to make it invisible. Another plus pixel layer and 22 from the brush studio, let's go to you have it probably to pressure pixel shader brushes is something that you get if you register with affinity. Let's go back and I also urge you to save on a regular basis with using the pixel persona because sometimes on the iPad, it can crash and then you're losing your progress. Maybe this will be fixed in the future. I don't have it too often that the program crashes, but if it crashes, it's when I'm using the Pixel persona. So if you're happy with something that you just created using a pixel layer, please go back and three vertical lines, just save it. Save your progress. So as I was saying, when you are registering with affinity, here you have your account. You are able, so you're registering with your email, you are able to download some free brushes. For example, the artista, Affinity Designer brushes by Pixel Buddha. So Pixel Buddha, that already implies that those are pixel based brushes. And then you just have to over here, there's this download button. You have to make sure you download them, close. And next time you're here in the Pixel persona again and you go to your brushes. You are able to find them over here pixel shader brushes. And that already gives us a hint. Those will be great for our purposes because they're basically called shader brushes. For example, let's take this noise brush number one. I think I tested it before. Making sure I have the signs died I want. You see the circle, kind of gives you a hint how big this brush is going. Ah, yes. And this is the one that I want. And I remember it because I took a note. So that was noise one. Pa. I clicked Cancel. I think noise one. Now, going back to the designer persona, I want to go again to the body of this cloud and make sure it has the color of the background because now we have only the texture left. This is this great effect that I wanted to teach you and all of a sudden, the outlines of our vector shaped are becoming blurry. Now I can also inside of this folder, check all the beautiful textures that I created before. I can see which one I like the most. You can also, of course, zoom in zoom out. The problem is, actually, it's an advantage, but it's also a problem that a lot of them are really super cool. So you can leave all of them for future reference, you don't have to delete them. But I think I will go with the gritty one, which was from the noise brush number one from this pressure set by Pixel Buddha. Since I like it so much, back to the live dogs, it's safe because with a pixel persona, something might crash, hopefully not. From the designer persona, let's locate our next cloud. It's going to be this one I'm going to zoom in so that I don't make any mistakes. Plus pixel layer, now we go a little bit faster, clip it, and now going to the pixel persona, it should remember our previous settings. We have white color, noise brush number one, the same size. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger because then this texture becomes even more gritty, very pretty. I'm going to recolor the body of the cloud later on. Or maybe now. Actually, let's do it now. This one needs to be recolored to the color of the background. Very good. Our next cloud will be this one. I will show you a different approach. First, we merge the body of our vector shape already to the color of the background. Now plus pixel layer because then you can see the defect better. We clip it. Now we go to the pixel persona. The breast should be remembered and now we can see even better how much we want to leave. Maybe we just want half of this cloud. But I still want those shapes to be visible. Okay. I think I like this one. I'm going to go back and save it so that I'm really making sure I'm not losing any progress. The last cloud, it got selected, I zoom in. I change its color to the color of the background. Now, plus pixel layer, clip Pixel persona, double checking white noise noise the brush that we want, which is noise number one. D Oh, this is so nice. Even though I created such patterns before, but I really, really like this effect, and sometimes you cannot achieve this effect just with vector brushes. So going back, saving and just wanted to show you again that this is the exact technique that I used on this pattern. So this is a ghost. Let's select this guy where. It's just my test. Two, two, let's select this ghost. You see, it's a vector base. I experimented with different textures. This one is a little bit more chunky and this one is a little bit softer. The same with the cloud. This time I use the color black. In this way, it was super easy to create this texture clipped into a vector shape. Now the previous technique is a little bit more graphic as you can see, it is still scratchy. There's a texture element. It's not as smooth as vectors usually are. But pixels, as you know, they feel softer, so to say. Now, let me talk about some limitations of pixels. For example, recoloring is much, much, much harder. For example, for those clouds, I would rather color again. If I wanted, for example, this guy, the angry guy to be black, I would rather create a new pixel layer, go to the pixel persona and change the color to black. I think the brush was remembered exactly, and I would rather do it again. Of course, then I have to change the other elements so that his mouth is not merging too much, maybe. This would be actually interesting, going back to the designer persona just to see what it would look like. For example, this could be white. And maybe his eyes could be to to to something else like that. And now all of a sudden we have an angry black cloud in our pattern. I think I'm going to leave it like this. And I'm even starting to like this gray background. Not everything has to be super colorful like here. So one option is to recolor. There's another thing I wanted to show you. I'm going to create maybe duplicate copy. Make the original invisible. And now I'm going to shift this cloud so that it gets cut by our original campas, okay? And now two to two, we will go back to this original shape. Delete all the textures that we used, create a new pixel layer so that I can demonstrate one challenge to you when working with the pixel persona. Let's also zoom out. Theoretically, this cloud should repeat here also the angry cloud. A here, you see, now what happens when we want to work in the pixel persona and it gets cut outside of our original canvas. We're still on black, the brush is correct. We start to color in and this is what happens. See, this is another limitation of the pixel persona. If I wanted to fix that, does it mean that this cloud can never be positioned outside of the canvas? Of course, it can, but I'm going to delete it and go back to the original one. Before I create anything with the pixel persona that will be I mean, the original element that we're working on. If I know it's going to be cut out, I will first position it somewhere within the original canvas size, then decorate it with my pixel based elements, and then I'm going to shift it because you see that this texture is clipped, but it doesn't matter once it is done, so to say. So this is let's say one limitation. Another limitation would be when drawing with the pixel persona outside of the original pattern tile. For example, I create a dedicated pixel layer, and let's switch off over here the snow. Back to this pixel layer that I just created. Let's switch to white. And let's take this more scarce noise brush and make the snow like this. See, again, I cannot create anything here outside. Of course, it will be mirrored. But maybe I can choose a sticker brush to show you what I mean. If I wanted to create wind If I'm drawing within, again, the brush. If I'm drawing within my original tile, then everything is fine. But the moment I go out, see it's getting cut so I'm going to go back with the elements that were cut back to the designer persona. This is this pixel element that I created. If now in post production, so to say, I want to move it, then it's fine. The problem, it will not be cut when I'm moving it, but it will be cut when I'm drawing it. So in the context of creating repeat patterns, this matters if we want to draw something in pixels outside of our original pattern tile. To say this is very important. Going to remove that, bring back does Victor snow that I wanted. And that's one limitation that I wanted to talk about in this lesson. In the next video, I will briefly talk about recoloring our pixel elements. 11. Re-coloring Pixels: Okay, we continue chatting about the properties of pixel based elements and affinity designer. So one way to recolor is to draw it again. So I wanted to change this grumpy angry cloud into a black cloud, because it's just one simple element, I can still switch between the colors because I didn't delete those textures here on the layers. It was easier for me just to grab my pencil again, create a brand new pixel layer, and to make it from scratch. Now I want to make a copy of this cloud so that I don't destroy the other cloud that I already like. There's another way to recolor our pixel layer in affinity designer. We have to move back to the Pixel persona. Then we have to select the color that we would like to affect, and then we have to add. So when you click on the question mark, it will give you the names of the other settings that you have in this pixel view. We have to apply an adjustment. Over here, there's a whole bunch of options that I haven't explored too much yet myself because I mainly work with vector elements. For example, you can work on black and white, brightness and contrast and some were here towards the middle or even the end, you have the option to recolor. When you click on it, you have this menu, which for me personally is not super handy. You have to make create this adjustment and then you have to clip it into your cloud. For example, lightness is on 0%. That's why it's black. When we go up, you see that we make something brighter. We can also increase or decrease saturation. Here we can experiment with the hue. For example, we can make something green, maybe again lighter, maybe less saturated to make it pastel. This is one way to recolor, but it's not as good as in procreate, for example, where this menu so in Procreate, for example, recoloring our pixels is much easier because you just go to those adjustments menu and you can, for example, choose hue saturation brightness, and you can pump up the saturation or bring it down to turn into gray scale. And I think it's a little bit better. So I think it's something to get used to. I find this a little bit too small, and it only works, of course, if the pixel color is just one single color that can be edited, so you cannot have I mean, you can experiment, but I would rather split colors if I know that I want to recolor them. There's no quality loss, so it's basically just procreate, adjusting hue saturation brightness. If you want to go back to it, remember that this is clipped inside of this pixel layer. That's why there's an arrow that allows you to close it and to open it. Then if you want to get back to this menu, you just click on those symbols here. You can, of course, get rid of them and you can keep working on it. For example, you can keep changing the hue. This one is a little bit more minty. I actually like this one. Then this is something that you can keep as an alternative. Now I can go back to the designer persona. Put it somewhere in the place of this black cloud. Maybe this will be more subtle. Hide the black cloud, and now we have another variation. I can also bring back the color of the e to I think this is just pure black that the other clouds have. And now the only difference is that it's a little bit more minty. Maybe the mouth and the eyebrows, I can also switch them back to black. Now it's just this black sheep type of angry cloud that is just a little bit different in color. Maybe the eyes can be just like those pixels, but I'll go to HSL sliders, make them a little bit darker. Maybe this could be interesting. I just wanted to sum up the limitations of the pixel persona. Remember that if you would like to create a new pixel texture, you have to draw within your canvas. This is very important, otherwise, things will be cut out. But you can also remember that once this is created, if you go back to the designer persona, we take this angry cloud, then you can move it non destructively and everything will be okay. So this is all good. If you want to recolor, you can either create just variations that you say you don't get rid of them, and you create each of them anew. Or you can use this, as you can see here, this adjustment layer, which has to be clipped to this pixel layer and then you can make your adjustments by manipulating hue, saturation, brightness or lightness, and even the opacity. Those are the options. I think that patterns don't have to be super elaborate or intricate and that's why I'm teaching this for pattern design because it's technique that demands a little bit of effort, but it's completely manageable. It means that the effects are completely worth it, even if it takes an additional step and that's why I wanted to show you this technique. Now when it comes to working on texture, let's also make sure to save our file. Now, the one thing that we have left is to discuss how we can enrich our patterns by using vector brushes. This will be in the next lesson. 12. Texture: Vector Brushes: All right. So just to quickly recap, we built our base assets in Adobe Fresco. Then we were experimenting with vector based assets for texture. And then we were getting to know a little bit better the pixel persona and affinity designer. And in this lesson, it is time to learn a little bit more about vector brushes. I'm going just to open an entirely new document. The size doesn't matter so that I can show you vector brushes separately. The vector brushes are available in this menu here under the designer persona. First, you have to switch to the vector brush mode. Then you can go to the color studio, and you can also adjust the color on the stroke side, just like for the pixel persona. Now, all the brushes that are available are super awesome and therefore free, and there's a lot to choose from. They look very similar to the pixel persona. For example, by default, you will have acrylic brushes and also here. In this section, you can change the size of your brush just like in the pixel persona. So when we take, for example, the acrylic stroke brush, making sure that it's black, we can start drawing with it and we will see that we'll get different types of texture results. It takes a little bit of getting used to it and finding your favorite brushes. You also get Artista brushes, victor brushes for free when you register with affinity and you can download them. One of my most favorite brushes is this Hatch three brush. Just make it a little bit bigger. It looks like this as if it was really drawn with pencils. Then we have dry media. So for example, this charcoal dry is very interesting. And I'm drawing in black on purpose so that you can see the texture better. I will draw a few lines to show you what variety we have here, and then I will discuss the properties of vector brushes in a little bit more detail. There's the engraving section. For example, that looks very interesting. Oop. I have a ton of brushes again from Frankintun that I purchased a while ago. I'm going to skip that. You don't need to buy any new brushes because affinity has a lot for free. So for example, dry gouache brush. We just have to make sure that we always in this vector brush menu. Sometimes it can switch back, for example, to the move tool or to the node tool. Then just have to make sure that you go back. And again, here we just the size, and you can get different effects. I'll show you in a second, a few illustrations of mine that use vector brushes, inks, markers. This is more of a dense marker, but it has some texture around as you can see. Some texture is more visible when we change the color. Oil in pasta for example, and the rest is pretty much up to you to play around with all those categories to explore, for example, pencils. This one is really awesome. It's for free and the pencils folder, pencil strokes. I love it because it really does look like pencil strokes. It's amazing. There's also pens, and right at the end, we also have watercolor. Watercolor is really cool. I use it quite a lot in my children's book illustrations. This one is amazing. You see? So it has this texture of a real watercolor brush, actually. So now we can go back to the note tool. Over here one more time, and you will see that, for example, this stroke, the water looks a bit like a worm. It is editable. Editable. Yeah. Just like any other vector shape, it is very easy to re scale, and it pretty much behaves like a stroke. So when we are drawing with the pencil tool, we have the option to draw just with the stroke. So right now, I'm just creating a standard line. And then we can also draw with the pencil tool. Creating a fill. So this black outline is the stroke, the circle that is empty, and the fill is what you have inside. We can also switch off the fill and have only the line, and then we can play with this line through the stroke studio. And those vector brushes, you will see that they're not like this standard vector shape which has both the outline and the fill. They rather behave like a normal line. And along this line, there's this single line that is in blue. There is a clipped vector texture. I think I also have at least one YouTube video on my YouTube account showing vector passes and explaining them a little bit. We have a pause. Let's, for example, recolor this one. We have to recolor on the line side, on the stroke side. C just choose this default blue, for example, and now this other line will be also visible. Everything goes on the line. We can add in additional Nodes by just clicking anywhere on this line. Of course, this doesn't make too much sense because the texture is getting a little bit too weird. But theoretically, we can grow this line, add extra notes, and with the node handles, we can keep editing it. Again, if I want to recolor it, empty circle, stroke. Maybe from my Halloween section, we can change the colors, and depending on the medium that we chose, the color effects will be different. So this green looks very interesting. But just like in watercolor, if we choose lighter colors, the texture might be more or less visible. I guess, with watercolor in general, it's better to choose slightly darker colors so that we can really see those texture effects. Now, some people are not fans of vector brushes because they say they are not real vector brushes, whatever that means. But to me, they are real enough, so to say, what does it mean? It means they give me texture. If I were to try to create this effect with normal vector shapes, it would be impossible. So they do offer really, really interesting textures. That's number one. Number two, they are very scalable. Number three, they are super easy to recolor. What was the word non destructively? Non destructively, so we are not losing any quality. And on top of that, I think this original pattern tile, not a pattern tile, illustration file is again 4,000 pixels square. If I were to go to Export and export it in an original color of 4,000 pixels, let's do that. Save image to my camera roll. And then if we were to export it again, but this time, instead of 4,000, we would choose maybe 14,000. That's a lot. Square. It will generate a new export, which will naturally be much bigger because it's a much bigger dimension. Remember, if you're creating pixel based artwork, for example, in Procreate, you will be tied to your original document size. You can scale it down, but you cannot scale it up. Here, I started with 4,000 Pixel square, but now I am exporting exactly the same artwork in 14,000 Pixel square. Share, let's save this image. And now we will compare if the quality really deteriorated, basically because we scaled this up. So when I clicked on Safe Image, I clicked to save it to my camera roll, so let's find it in my camera roll. Alright. So these are my recently saved illustrations. This one is 4,000 pixels. I mean, it's the original size that I created in, so it all looks great anyway. Now when we swipe to the next image, this one is 14,000, and it's exactly the same. So if we click on this I, we will get the information. It's a bigger file. It's 19 megabytes, but it's 4,000 pixels square, whereas the previous one, we click on the information is just 4,000 pixels square and 5 megabytes. This is working. This is brilliant. Sometimes I create an illustration for my agents and they ask me for higher resolution file converted to CMYK for the client portfolio that they need to print out. I don't have to do everything from scratch or I don't have to, I don't know, export it to Adobe, to maybe edit it up there. Everything is possible in affinity designer. Those are the advantages of those vector brushes. You can scale them super easily. You can export them at any size. You can recolor them. And through the node tool, they have this flexibility. Because they behave like a line, you can also go to the stroke studio, and you can change also the size of the stroke. So to say, which will influence depending what texture is used, meaning depending on what brush you're using. We can go back to this test file. For example, this original watercolor blob, we can make it smaller or we can make it wider. The same with this engravings brush, smaller or much wider, of course. We usually come at some sort of a limit. But when you're working on canvases that are between 2000, 4,000 and even more Pixel square, then you rarely arrive at those limits. These are really, really sufficient. So this is how you roughly use vector brushes, and now how can we use it here for our pattern? First of all, you have to know your favorite brushes. I already have a few. So one challenge for you will be to explore this library, to go to the Vctor Brush tool. For this background color, I would say I would stick to the white because the contrast would be good for me to explore what kind of Vctor brush details I can add in to this pattern. Then you go to the brush studio. Hatching vertical. I wanted to create or recreate those clouds with rain. Look at this lovely texture. And this is actor vector, I don't know, vector hybrid pixel brush that behaves like vectors and has all the flexibility of vectors. So I don't know what's not to like I can start drawing my rain. If I don't like it, I can always go back. I will clip my canvas, so I just see the original pattern tile, and I can make a few shapes. But because everything is vector based, when I switch back, it's super easy to reshuffle everything. For example, this angry Cloud. I would like to move it a little bit here and maybe make it bigger. And now from the node tool, I would like to explore if I need to make adjustments to to those guys here, maybe make them a little bit bigger. Actually, like how it looks right now. Then I can group everything. So this is my vector brush rain. And because it's a line, it will behave like a line in a way, and on this line, we will have this raster texture. We can edit it from the stroke studio. So if you want, for example, change color, we have to do it on this empty circle side. Ooh. That looks nice. I can also make a copy, duplicate and I can keep one in black and one in white so that I can make up my mind later. So back to the vector brush, let's explore one more variation. I really like to do this watercolor. And there's one brush that is called water particles. I'm on white color. This is the size of my brush. I just want to see that can also look interesting. You can make rain like this, even though I think it's too grainy, so I'm going to go back and try to look for something else. There's watercolor bristle. That can be fun, or I can make wind out of it, you know, a very abstract. And unlike with the pixel, I'm just going to demonstrate here, we can still draw outside of our original canvas size, and it will be non destructive. Nothing will be cut. And we can see our whole preview here to double check that everything is really nicely balanced. So this is, for example, one more pattern variation that I can think of, and it's textured. You see, it's very beautiful. So this will be my pattern tile. If I ever want to edit it or make it invisible, I select everything and I group it, and now I can either switch it off, or I could, but then I have to leave the vector brush, for example, to the moveTol and now I can also recolor it, for example. That looks very cute or make it darker. Black also looks great. For a pattern for kids or just plain white. Now, if you have your favorite brushes, the way I have, I have a few favorites here. You can also save them into a dedicated folder. And this, by the way, also applies to the lesson about pixel brushes. So if you want to create a new folder, you go to the brushes studio, of course, three vertical lines, and then you add category. And for example, we can I like to choose zero or one so that my categories are sorted alphabetically, but the numbers will come to the front. And then just for the sake of this demonstration, I'm going to make a new category, for example, new favorite. I would create it and it's empty. I can go, for example, to this watercolor section, and I think I used this watercolor bristle number three brush. If I swipe to the left, a new menu will pop, and I wouldn't move it, I would copy it, copy two, and we're looking for this new category called zero New favorite. And now a duplicate is made. So when we go back to this Oh, this is my old favorites category. New favorites, then we have this brush over here. I also liked what else did I like Is it in patterns? This hatching vertical. So again, swiping to the left, copy two, new favorite. I think also pencils, I really like this pencil strokes brush. Swiping to the left copy two new favorite. And now when we click on this title here, we have access to the whole library. We can go back to this new category that we just created, and this is one way to kind of cheat your way into remembering which of the brushes are your favorite. I have to admit when I first started working with affinity, I felt a little bit intimidated by the sheer number of brush options that were there. But again, one plus is that you don't need any new brushes. Everything is here. You just have to pick your favorites. I also have some favorites for liners. And of course, I also bought some brushes. So this is, for example, by True Grit texture supply. And of course, Frank and tune brushes, I think I only buy from those two sources because not all of the digital shops out there for brushes, not all of them still create for Affinity Designer, which hopefully will change soon, but in any case, there's so many brushes here that I am good. I really don't need anything extra. So I just want to go to the Stroke Studio and make this texture a little bit wider. Super convenient, and I'm going to leave it at that. So we were working with our Fresco base that has a bit of this uneven outline which adds a lot of interest. We experimented also. Just let me remind you with more of our fresco assets. So textures that you get access to in the resources section when you download this whole folder. We also worked here with the pixel persona, clipping textures, for example, to our vector shape. And finally, we also so let's get rid of this snow. We also played around with some really awesome vector brushes affinity designer. And kind of referring back to the very first lesson when I was explaining what software is out there, when you compare all those options in between different types of software Procreate, Fresco, Adobe, then you'll see that affinity has a lot to offer, and luckily for me, I still have plenty of material to teach. I think it has a lot of offer with regard to texture. Some people think just because it's called designer. It is mainly for vector design, which is also true. It's called designers, so a lot of people use it for graphic design with text, you know, for marketing branding purposes. But it's also very suitable for illustration and it's also very suitable for pattern design. So we have one more lesson to cover about pattern variations and about our color palette and recoloring. 13. Efficient Pattern Variations: Throughout this course, I showed you ways to be efficient. So one thing that you can do is you can create different pattern variations with regard to the details. For example, you can create different the card developments that are around your main assets, which for me, are those clouds. You can also create different kind of texture elements. For example, this pattern variation, which I remember I just made a copy and I let it be. You can still go back to those happy experiments, and then you can keep refining them, change color and so on. So you can make it one set of assets. For this pattern, I also created different color versions. Then I also saved up those extra assets. So I'm going to bring this pattern here so that you can see better. I think I created also one with a pink background, one with a green background, and on top of that, I use those cats, those cat assets. To create greeting card design. So when you are creating your patterns, you can also recycle all those things to different types of materials, including marketing materials. For instance, as we speak, right now, I'm running a sale on all my courses through my website. Let's have a look. So this is my website. And some of those assets, they will be part of my branding or my promotional material, you know? This is how I created this banner to announce my Halloween sale, for instance. We can also go together to Instagram. That was at least from today. This is how I created this post about the sale. I was also using the same spooky cloud that I created for this pattern. So one option that you can do is to create different color variations. We haven't talked about color palettes yet. Sometimes you will start with gray scale and you will be happy with the outcome. For example, if I wanted to change this gray color, I have to focus on the background layer, then I have to go to the fill area. Oops. Select this blue color, and I also have to remember to change the blue on the clouds. I have to go back to this original folder. I will open all the clouds at the same time, select just their bodies, and readjust it to this blue so that this shape kind of merges with the background or kind of floods into the background seamlessly. If I want to find any particular color at a time, I can also select this one color, for example, this green and from the move tool, I can go to SAM. Fill color. And it's only this green. So maybe it's a bad example. But if you had more colors, you could select exactly the same color, which is a few clicks using this function. And now I can maybe change the color here to orange. I think those pinks were exactly the same. But you can keep tweaking your pattern. You can keep adding different details, recolor it to your liking. So to change this pattern into another pattern variation, sometimes it's enough to just change the background. So for example, this pattern here with the cats, I mainly changed the background and I just needed to see, for example, if some of this green does not have to be changed to a different color. But it was a matter of maybe 1 minute and I was able to create my own pattern variation. So I think recoloring is clear. Then another thing that we did was we created different types of assets, and this is how you can create similar pattern variations by using different elements. So we had snow. This one, we can create very quickly a pattern for kids, for example, with the stars, there was a variation with this wind can recolor it also very fast. We had a variation with this self made vector texture for snow and all that, you can export. Let me just make sure that this is the original pattern tile. Every time you create a variation, you go to the three vertical lines export. And in this original size, you can click Share and you can save image either to your camera roll or you can save it to files to a dedicated folder. Every time you have a variation. And then perhaps you put everything into one folder, and then you see what you've got. For example, when I was working on those GrampyClouds, I created I didn't bother about color changes at first. I just wanted to create see there's one with the textured rain. There's one with like a dotty line that's also Victor brush. I hope you can see that when I zoom in. And there was one with my own texture. And in this way, I have one, two, three, four different pattern variations. On top of that, I can also recolor to make further variations. So I hope that this small demonstration shows you that you can expand it very, very fast. 14. Final Thoughts: Yay, congratulations. Another pattern design course in affinity complete. I really can't wait to see your final work. I hope that you also fell in love with adding texture to your vector patterns, and I am absolutely sure that you will get fantastic results. As always, in case you're taking this course on Skillshare, you can share your work in the project gallery. You can, for example, show us your pattern tile, or you can screenshot your entire interface. And if you're taking this course on Gum Road, you can share your work on the social media, for example, Instagram, under the Hashtag Magical vectors. Also, don't forget to download your class resources and leave a class review. I would very much appreciate it. Now, we also have two dedicated Facebook groups for people who use Affinity Designer for general illustration and also for pattern design. You can definitely publish your projects there and ask for a critique. So it doesn't matter if you're taking this course from Skillshare or you bought it on Gum Road. And even for Skillshare students, it is a good extra place to connect with people outside of Skillshare. Or, you know, you can also post your own dedicated threat with your own images, and even my students were posting their videos to explain problem that they had, and the whole community was able to help in the end. And in addition, I have some extra resources and articles because I really like writing on my Sap Stag. I call it a blog letter. It's like a blog, but it's also a newsletter. You can get it to your mailbox. I called it the art of growth because it's about illustration in general, life of an artist, and, of course, also affinity designer and using it for work and for personal projects. And I like promoting this platform because it's great also for leaving comments, getting involved. Again, with people who are outside of Skillshare or Instagram, you can leave your comments, start a discussion, or you can also discover other creatives who write their articles. Remember that you can learn with me both on Skillshare my Gumbod courses, or maybe I will also see you on my YouTube channel. I'll see you in my next class. Thank you.