Melissa Wiederrecht Generative Art

How to Make Super Easy Tessellating Patterns in Illustrator + Free Templates

Hey, Jane!  Great first attempt!  Love the bright colors. So I stared at the pattern for a long time and opened up the template (3-way, yes???) to try to recreate your design.  It looks to me like you drew your paths about like this: <img src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/parentClasses/3f1e1e80d4d0dffb85f6bc7c8fb49792/9d3264b9" class="zoomable rounded-image-wrapper" alt="9d3264b9" /> If I may, I would recommend you draw the paths more like this (only the green lines shown below, not the red lines): <img src="https://static.skillshare.com/uploads/parentClasses/3f1e1e80d4d0dffb85f6bc7c8fb49792/d69f269c" class="zoomable rounded-image-wrapper" alt="d69f269c" /> The reason for this is that when you draw paths directly on top of the red lines, you end up cutting the tessellating shape into pieces.  To make the really interesting tessellating shapes, you need to draw new lines that start and end where the red lines do, but don't also draw the red lines as well.  Does that make sense? Great first attempt, and it is a really cool pattern! Melissa

Thanks Melissa for taking a look.  I am uploading a couple of screen shots without the gradient and with thicker strokes so it is easier to see - I am not quite sure why it cut like it did although I can see now that my lines tail off (probably had the pen on pressure sensitive)?

Although I was working very fast because I had to go out so on reflection, I think I missed a step when I copied the path.

Ahaaa!!!!!!!!  I see now!  It's a really cool pattern.  So I think what happened is you just grabbed your path and added a gradient.  Check video  6 again... the one that shows you how to extract the full shape before you fill it.

Awesome job!  Love the pattern.

And it looks like my attempt at analyzing the pattern to decide which template you used were wrong.  Greatly Humbled.

Although I just realized, maybe you meant to leave them as half circle-ish shapes.  It's cool like that too!  My apologies if that is the case ;).  I was assuming you meant to fill the whole space between the lines (the shape in your second screenshot above).

No you are right I was trying to fill the whole space - I have found my error, I was clicking with shapebuilder when I should have been dragging across both bits.  But I like both versions!

Yay awesome, it looks great!!!  Love it, love it, love it.

It looks like 3D... like the white parts are sticking up and the darker parts are shadows.  So cool.

<img style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/b6b7fde9" alt="Making Tessellated Patterns - image 1 - student project" srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=600,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/b6b7fde9 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/b6b7fde9 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" loading="lazy"><img style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/caf07078" alt="Making Tessellated Patterns - image 2 - student project" srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=600,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/caf07078 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/caf07078 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" loading="lazy"><img style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/d6df4589" alt="Making Tessellated Patterns - image 3 - student project" srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=600,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/d6df4589 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/a264639fe528e26bf079ae10980f0af5/d6df4589 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" loading="lazy">First attempt.

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