Drawer

Repeat Pattern

On A4 paper I followed the hand drawn method of making a tile, which I scaled down in Photoshop.  I first made motifs based on the wild carrot seed head, and tested the block on tracing paper.  I thought the central motif too large, and would have to resize it. 

Repeat Pattern - image 1 - student project

I decided to try again with another idea - using two autumn plants in the garden; mallow flowers, still attractive to the bees, and dandelion clocks.  I notice it is upside down in the photo!

Repeat Pattern - image 2 - student project

 This is the tile I ended up with. Next I printed off a copy of the tile onto A4 200gsm drawing paper with the inkjet printer. 

Repeat Pattern - image 3 - student project

 

I coloured the motifs with watercolour paint.  The printer ink did not run very much, but I was careful to keep off the black lines.  

After the offset etc process, and adjusting at the joins a few times, I learnt a lot about Photoshop.  I have tried many times in the past to get pattern making to work successfully (!) but by combining this Skillshare class by Lucie and another class by Angela McKay I was able to get the gremlins sorted!  So thanks so very much Lucie for starting me on the right path.  Also with pandemic lockdown in progress I had plenty of time to reach my goal.

Repeat Pattern - image 4 - student project

 

Next step is to try Spoonflower!  It would be great to have a piece of fabric with one of my designs on it.

Postscript

Here is another version of this pattern.  Before I coloured in the A4 print I made of the pattern tile, I tried to introduce colour by painting on tracing paper that I laid over the A4 print.  I layered this colour layer with the pattern tile.  I had difficulty at that point with erasing and recolouring the joins created by the offset process.  I also could not get the colour layer to line up, but decided that I quite liked the off-register look.  (I do a lot of printmaking.)  After finishing the first tile, I had another go at cleaning up this file.  Good for getting the whole process of repeat patterns into my brain!

Repeat Pattern - image 5 - student project