I learned a lot taking Shannon's class on sketching for surface designers and put the knowledge to use with my favorite birds: seagulls! I tend to get really detailed when drawing, which is not always what I want for my patterns. I love simpler works with cute animal characters, so that was what I was going for.
I only did rough pencil sketches, which I then drew again in illustrator. I used to live trace, but honestly, my drawing skills are better on the computer than by hand. It feels like I have more freedom to change proportions and details this way. 
I didn't even scan the sketches but only took a photo with my phone, so excuse the quality ;-)

Drawing in illustrator somehow comes really natural to me. What took the most time was actually finding a cohesive repeat. In my first ones the birds were almost invisible which is why I made them bigger, and finally it all came together on a dark wavy background. Here's my final design (which a local fabric store already wants to license, yay!):



Thanks for this class, it was really helpful!