Pattern design is something I have always been interested in, (I actually made repeat patterns for my final major project in my Art Foundation) and have been meaning to make more but never seem to find the time when concentrating on picture books.
Anyway, like everyone, I’ve had some time recently to reflect on what I want to do more of and making patterns was one of them. I have made a little tutorial on how to get started and although I did mess up a bit (which I will explain), it’s actually really simple!
First, I decided what I wanted to draw. I had picked these Forget Me Nots the day before and I love the colour and tiny delicacy of them, so decided to go with that.
First, draw out a square and fill it with your design but be careful to not touch the edges.
I then picked out some colours and mixed them until I was happy.
Next, paint your pattern. You could also just draw the lines here and then colour digitally.
Then measure exactly halfway and cut your image into quarters. This is obviously a lot easier when working digitally (and part of the issue I ran into later) so if you are more comfortable working digitally, do it!
I had to re-scan mine and cut it digitally as my first attempt didn’t quite repeat properly, but got there in the end.
Draw a larger square on another piece of paper. You then take each quarter and move it to the opposite diagonal of the larger square. (Bottom- left to top- right, top- left to bottom- right etc.) Then fill in the middle space with more pattern, still being careful not to touch any edges.
Then scan it all in, clean it up and you have you’re repeat tile!
The obvious problem I had here was that I was using a thick paper stock (Saunders Waterford smooth paper), which I love to paint on but then when scanning, my squares had very obvious outlines. If you were working just in pen or pencil on a thinner paper, this wouldn’t be such a problem. Anyway, I cleaned it up in photoshop and ended up with…
My repeat tile!
I then tested it to check that it repeated (which thankfully it did) and played around with colour.
And here it is repeated.
I hope that was helpful and inspired you to go out and make your own patterns!
Feel free to comment or message me with any questions you may have and I hope everyone is doing ok and staying safe.