Transform Your Art into a Pattern: Make Seamless Repeat Patterns in Procreate

1. Intro: Hi, everyone. I'm Chrissy, and I'm a Freelance Illustrator from Ireland. I make bold and fun work for all kinds of clients from packaging to editorial and more. I also love to make patterns. Patterns are so fun and versatile. You can make them for stationary or things like greeting cards, products, or clothes. They can be as simple or as complicated as you like in any theme that you could possibly think of. They're just fun to do. So I developed this class to show you how easy it is to create Seamless Repeat Patterns. In this class, we'll focus on two basic Pattern Repeats, a Block Repeat, and a Half-Drop Repeat. First, we'll learn a bit about each type, and then I'll guide you through a demo of each one so that we end up with two final Repeat Patterns. We'll learn what makes a successful pattern. Tips to help you work smoother on Procreate. I'll show you a little Procreate Twist to make all your future patterns more accurate. I've made Templates of my design if you want to follow along with me. Or you can use work you've already made and follow the steps to Transform it into a Repeat Pattern. I've made a simple Guide that combines all the steps to make these patterns so you can have easy access to the techniques anytime. All you need to get started is an iPad with Procreate. This class is suitable for beginners who are new to Procreate or for anyone who wants to improve their pattern making skills. By the end of this class, you'll be able to use these basic techniques to make all sorts of amazing patterns for your portfolio, for clients, or for your own products. The world is your oyster. So grab your iPad and let's start making some patterns. 2. Our Project: Thanks for coming along to this class. Our final project will be to make two Repeat Patterns using the techniques that I showed you in the demos. We'll be making one Block Repeat Pattern Tile and one Half-Drop Repeat Pattern Tile. To start, we'll learn a bit about each of the pattern repeats we'll be using. Then I'll guide you through demos showing you all the steps to make each one. You can follow along with my design or make your own. You'll need an iPad with Procreate, and I recommend grabbing a pencil, paper, scissors, and tape if you want to follow along with the Practice Exercises, but those are optional. I've made a few resources to help you with your Final Project. You can find these in the Projects and Resources section. These include a Color Palette for the class, Templates of my design for you to follow, and a simple Guide that combines all the steps to make these patterns, so you can have easy access to the techniques anytime. To import the Pallete into Procreate, open the Color Panel, select Palettes. Then click the plus. Choose New from file, and navigate to where you saved your file. Click on the file, and it'll automatically import into Procreate. Then set it as default. To use the Templates, go to Wrench, Add, and Insert a photo, and you pick your template. Then go to Layers and use the slider to lower the opacity of the layer, so it's not distracting when you start to draw. When you've finished your Project, upload your Pattern Tiles to the Project Gallery. And if you have any questions, please post them in the Discussions section below. So head on over to the Resources section to download everything you need, and I'll see you in the first lesson to start making some patterns. 3. Let's Learn About Patterns: Hi, everyone. Before we dive into the Class Project, I want to explain the two types of Repeat Pattern we'll be making in this class. A Block Repeat is the simplest style of repeat. It has a simple grid structure where the design is spaced and aligned equally. Because of this, it's easy to plan out designs in this style. It works well with abstract geometric and symmetrical designs. To make a Block Repeat, you take your design and cut it into quarters. Then swap the top row with the bottom row. After that, swap the right column with the left column. Then you have a Final block Repeat Tile. When this is tiled out, the pattern will look evenly spaced and aligned. If you want to practice this yourself, you can do these steps with a sheet of paper, a pencil, scissors, and some tape. This can help you get used to how the different sections need to be arranged to make the pattern. Check out the Projects and Resources section to download the easy Guide that I made for you, which has all these steps listed together. This is slightly more difficult to plan than a Block Repeat. A Half-Drop is when your design is offset by half the width or height every second row. It usually repeats to the bottom with the right hand tile being offset by half, so it looks like it's repeating in a diagonal pattern, and it works well with complex designs as it can disguise the repeat border which creates more of a variation to the pattern. To make a Half-Drop Repeat, take your design and divide it in half vertically. Swap the right column with the left. Now, divide the new right side in half horizontally. Swap the top with the bottom. And that's your Half-Drop Repeat. You can practice this yourself with a sheet of paper, scissors, and some tape and get used to how the sections are arranged. And again, all these steps are in the Guide if you want to download it. You can use these two styles of repeat to make all sorts of other patterns. Now that you know the basics, let's dive in and make our pattern. 4. Drawing The Base Design: Now that we know a little about the patterns we'll be making in this class, let's get started by drawing our Base Design or Motif for out pattern. If you want to use artwork you've already made, you can skip to the next lesson where we start to learn how to turn our design into a Repeat Pattern. But if you want to follow me, continue with this lesson. The first thing we're going to do is set up our Canvas. Click the plus here. Then click this icon to create your own Canvas. Then we'll make this Canvas 4,000 by 4,000 pixels. Make it the biggest size you can because you can always size down, but you can't size up without degrading the quality. I'm going to keep this at 300 DPI. But keep an eye on how many layers there is and pick a happy medium that works for your project. In Color Profile, we're going to keep it RGB. But if you're working with a client, it's best to ask if they need RGB or CMYK files first, and then you can work to their specifications. That's all we need for now. So, let's name our Canvas. Click Create. And now we have our Canvas ready. Now, go to the Menu bar, hit the Wrench, go to Canvas settings, and we'll turn on the Drawing Guide. Click in to edit it, go to Symmetry, and we're going to make it a Quadrant grid. But make sure you turn off Assisted Symmetry. You can change the color of the grid if you like, but I'm just going to keep it as it is. Then hit done. So, to start, we'll pick a theme for our Design. I like to start by doing a Brainstorm. Just pick any topic you're interested in. I love food, so I'm going to brainstorm some of my favorite kinds of Japanese foods. Write as many things as you can, because it will give you more to choose from when we're deciding what elements to draw in the design later. You could do something floral or an 80s vibe, a seasonal one, animals, or even a face. If you're ever having trouble coming up with ideas for projects like this, then check out the lesson Ideas For Getting Ideas in my Overcoming Burn Out class where I go into all the ways I come up with and keep track of my ideas. Now, look at your brainstorm and see if anything stands out. I'm getting drawn to the sushi, so I'm thinking maybe I'll sketch a couple of my favorite and make a design out of those. I think a pattern where the elements are more uniform in size will be good for this, but you can do whatever you want. You can have one main element with smaller elements for decoration, or a busy design with lots of little things, a mix of different size elements, or even a symmetrical design. If you want to use symmetry for the design, then check out my class Relaxing Patterns where I go into more detail about how to use the Symmetry Tool. Now I'm going to sketch out the Base Design. You can follow along with me if you want and use the Template in Resources, or you can make your own. If you want to use the Template, then go to Wrench, then Add, click Insert a photo, go to where you've saved it, and import it. I like to lower the opacity of the layer, so it's not distracting. Then you can draw your design on a new layer. If you're not following my design, make sure that none of your drawing touches the edges. Keep your drawing in the center and have a clear border around the edge. I've also made a Palette, which you can download from the Resources section if you want to use it. So we've already made a new layer, so now we're just going to draw. So that's the first one, and now moving on to the rest. And now time for shrimp. I've made this one a bit bigger to vary the size in the design a bit, but not too much as I want to keep the Final Pattern more uniform, like I said before. You don't have to follow the Template exactly, you can make it your own. Just remember to stay away from the edges and you'll be fine. Now, turn off the Template and the Line layer is done. You can delete the Template layer now that we're finished with it. I'll be using the Selection Tool to block out my drawing in greyscale before I add color. You can also use the Color Fill instead of dragging the color from the Color Calette. Now I'm going to add some shadows. So that's our greyscale done. I did a quick Color Test of the sketch using colors from the Palette I made from this class. You don't have to do this, but feel free to make a Color Test, too, if you like. I always think it helps. So I'm just going to use that plan to color this now. So that's the Base Design for our Pattern done. Head on over to the next lesson to see how we'll turn it into a Repeat Pattern. 5. Final Project 1: Block Repeat: Now that you have the Base Design made, I'm going to show you two ways to turn it into a Pattern. If you're using a design you've made previously, the only thing you need to watch out for is that none of the details are touching the edges. So make sure to have a blank border or plain flat color around the edge. Now in this lesson, we'll start with a simple Block Repeat Pattern. First, we're going to come out of the Canvas and duplicate it. We'll call the original 'Artwork'. Then make a Stack by dragging one canvas on top of the other. This will keep all our work for this project together neatly in this folder. Call the new canvas 'Block Repeat', and this is the one we'll be working in now, go into that canvas. And we're going to merge our artwork layers together so that we can do the next step. All we want is the Base Design by itself, so we can go and delete the other layers, it's okay to delete this stuff here because we have a copy of all of this in the original Artwork canvas. Now, we'll duplicate the design layer. Name it 'Master' and turn it off. This is just in case we make a mistake and we need to use this layer again. Now, on to making the Pattern. We're going to do the steps that we talked about in Let's Learn About Patterns, but with a Procreate Twist. We're going to duplicate this layer three times so that we have four layers. One, two, three, and four. Then make a new layer and fill it. Pick any color. I like to use white. Duplicate that three more times so you have four layers. And move them underneath each Design layer. Now we have four pairs of each. So, now it's time for the Procreate version of cutting your design into four. Choose one pair, select the arrow and go to Snapping and make sure magnetics and snapping is on, and all of these Sliders are turned all the way up. Then we'll move the first pair up to the top left corner, using the Drawing Guide to see where we should move it to. Wait for the Yellow Lines to show that it's aligned properly and then let go. Then we'll do the same for the next pair. Move it up to the right and wait for the Yellow Lines. Then the third pair to the bottom left, always looking for the Yellow Line to make sure that they match up. And then the last one we bring all the way down to the bottom right. And this is what you're left with. Doing it this way is actually easier and ends up more accurate than if you were to cut the design into four. Then we're going to select the background layers and delete them because we don't need them anymore. Merge the four Design layers together, and we call that our Block Repeat. And this is your finished Block Repeat Pattern Tile. Now, we have to test the Pattern to make sure that it's aligned properly. Duplicate the Block Repeat layer and turn it off to save again just in case. Then select the arrow and size it to fit the top corner. Again, waiting for the Yellow Lines to show that it's aligned correctly, and now we're going to tile it out. Duplicate this layer and move it over to the other corner. Then duplicate it again and move it down. Duplicate one more time and move it into the last corner. And zoom in all the way in to check that each tile is aligned, and there's no weirdness going on where they join. And there you have it our pattern's good to go. And now you can even merge these layers together and tile it even further to see how it looks. Zoom in and check around to see that there aren't any brakes in the art, and you're done. Then when you've checked everything and know your Pattern works, you can turn off all these test layers and turn back on the original Block Repeat layer so that we can save it. Go to Wrench, hit Share, and save it as a JPG, a PNG or whatever you want. Hit Save Image, and that's it. You have your very own Block Repeat Pattern, and you can upload this tile to any pattern sites you want. Now, upload your tile to the Project Gallery with any questions or comments you have. Block Repeats can often work better with simple designs, and if you have a more complex design, it might work better with a Half-Drop. So continue on to the next lesson and we'll learn to turn our Design into a Half-Drop Repeat Pattern and see how it compares to the Block Repeat. 6. Final Project 2: Half-Drop Repeat: It's time to learn the second way to Turn Your Art Into A Pattern. A Half-Drop Repeat Pattern. We're done with our Block Pattern, so we'll go back out to the Gallery and duplicate this Canvas. Then call the new one Half-Drop Repeat. Open it up, and we're just going to delete the layers we don't need except for the 'Master' layer. And we're going to start again with this as the Base Design. Or if it's your own design, remember that none of the details should be touching the edges, like I mentioned in the last class. To make it a Half-Drop. What we need to do is duplicate the Master twice and turn off the original again to save it just in case. Make a background layer, like for the Block Repeat. Duplicate it and put one under each of the Design layers to make two pairs. Make sure all your settings and Snapping are selected like in the previous lesson. Again, we're going to follow the steps from our Let's Learn About Patterns lesson with the Procreate Twist. Select a pair, drag it to the left. And wait for the Yellow Lines. Take the second pair and drag it to the opposite side. Now, we'll duplicate the pair on the right. Move one of these up until we can see that Yellow Line. And move the other pair down. Then zoom in to make sure that you can't see any of the background color coming through. This is why I like to use white so that I can easily tell if the tiles are matched up. When we're sure they're aligned properly, we can delete the white layers. This is what the Pattern looks like at this point. Now we're going to draw more elements to the Pattern to fill in these gaps and make it seamless. You can bring in our Template for the Half-Drop Design if you're using it. Go to Wrench, Add, Insert a photo and then bring in your Half-Drop Template. I'm just going to bring the layer to the top and bring the opacity down a bit. Now, merge your Design layers together and call it 'Half-Drop Step 1'. Make a new layer, and we'll start to draw in this one. And now, I'm going to draw some edamame beans. I had this written in my Brainstorm. So look through yours and see if there's anything you'd like to add to your Design. The idea behind this next step is to fill in any funny looking gaps, which is what makes the Pattern seamless. Just remember when adding in these extra details that your drawing still doesn't touch the edges. When you've done the line, switch off the Template layer and delete it. Then finish off drawing any extra details. Then I'm going to color these new bits the same way that I did before, selecting and filling the flats in greyscale, and then coloring it like my Color Test from the previous lesson. Adding a highlight to finish. And that's done. The next step is to select our new Design layers and group them. Then we'll duplicate that, turn it off and call it 'Master 2'. Then move it down out of the way next to the original 'Master' layer. Now, merge the other group and merge it again with our 'Half-Drop Step 1' layer. Now we're going to go one step further than the practice example to make the Pattern even more seamless. Make a new layer, fill it with white again. And put it beneath the artwork. Duplicate it and the design layer and make them into pairs again. For the last time, we'll move one pair up, again, wait for the Yellow Line, and then we'll move the second pair down. Oh, you can see here now that's not right. So I'm going to do that and try that again. Select the pair again and move it up and keep an eye on the Blue Nodes. Sometimes it can snap to the wrong spot, so make sure that it's aligned and has the Yellow Line. And the same with the other pair. Keeping an eye on those Nodes again, Now, when we zoom in, there's no gap, so we know we've done it right. Delete the white backgrounds again. And now, we'll merge our final two layers together to make our Final Half-Drop Tile. And now we test it. Duplicate the layer and turn one off for safe keeping again. So take this layer, and like with the Block Repeat, drag it to the top left corner. Duplicate it and drag it to the right edge. But you can see here that it doesn't match up. Because it's a Half-Drop, you need to move the tile down halfway, and see how it's matching up now. That's why it's called a Half- Drop. Duplicate that layer. Move it up, and again, wait for the Yellow Lines to know that it's placed correctly. Then go back to another full layer, duplicate that one and move it down. Finally, duplicate the top left tile again and drag it to the bottom. Then zoom in to check that everything is aligned. Move it around and you can turn the layers on and off to see that they're not overlapping. That's it. You've got your Half-Drop Pattern. Now you can merge all of these tiles. I'm calling it 'Half-Drop Pattern' to keep track of the layers. Duplicate it and turn one off to save it. Like we did for the Block Repeat, you can tile this version out further to see how it looks. What's interesting is once you've tied your Half-Drop once, it now acts like the Block Repeat, and you don't need to offset the Pattern anymore. So that makes it a bit easier to tile out now. You can repeat this step as much as you want to see how it looks, and when you're happy, we're done. Now to save it. Turn off all the extra layers and turn back on our Half-Drop layer. Go to Wrench, Share and Save as whatever you want. And you're done. Here's how it looks compared to the Block Repeat from the previous lesson. You can test your Pattern out both ways and see which suits your art more. And now you know two ways to make your art into a Seamless Pattern. Upload your Final Tile to the Project Gallery so I can see how you've done. Next up is a quick Bonus Lesson, where I'll show you how you can set up your Patterns to print your own Products. 7. Bonus: Print Your Own Products: If you want to print out your Patterns to make Products yourself, here's how to set up a file to do that. Make a new Canvas. So as an example, I want to print out a cover for an A5 notebook. So I'm making this 306 by 158 millimeters. I always make the Canvas slightly bigger than it needs to be to include a Bleed. 'Bleed' is extra space allowance on the edge of your document, and that will be cut off during production to make a clean edge. Name it A5 notebook cover and click. Go to Wrench. Add. Insert a photo and pick your Pattern Tile. I'm going to show you the Half-Drop Pattern Tile first. Then just size it down however much you like. I'm going to stick with this for now. Then just tile it out like we did in the previous lessons. Remember, this one is a Half-Drop, so you need to drop each tile down halfway. Keep going and keep duplicating until you fill the space. Also, I still have all the Snapping settings on so it locks the tile into place easily. Now we'll do the Block Repeat Pattern. So go to Insert a photo and this time, pick our Block Repeat Tile. Size it down however much you like, but it's easier to stick to where it locks into the grid. Then duplicate it and tile it out. The Block Repeat is a lot easier to do. And here, we have two options for a notebook cover. Choose which one you want and Save it as whatever file you need for printing. Now you can print out your own Patterns and make all the lovely Products of your dreams. 8. Wrap Up: Thanks for hanging around to the end and finishing this Class. By now, you know all about making Seamless Repeat Patterns. You know how to make a Block Repeat and Half-Drop Pattern, and you can use the techniques we learned to make your very own Products. I hope you enjoyed this class and make a bunch of fun stuff with your new pattern knowledge. Remember to share your pattern tiles in the Project Gallery, and if you're sharing your Project online, tag me and use the class hashtag so I can get a peek. You can follow me here and on Social Media to get updates about future classes. Please leave a Review if you like the class. It really helps me get seen by more people and lets me know what to improve on for future classes. Thanks so much again for taking this class. See you soon!