Repeating Patterns for Painters #3

Last month I demonstrated how to make a really simple repeating pattern called a Block Repeat in Photoshop, using the magical ‘Edit > Define Pattern' and 'Edit > Fill’ process. 

I used a cute bunny rabbit motif as one example and a painting of some coloured primroses as an example of a pattern that needed some follow-up repairs to its 'seams'.

Now I’m going use the rabbit again to show you some more Photoshop magic that can make your repeating patterns more interesting! 

Instead of placing our motifs on a simple grid, we can use the Offset Filter to position them for either a ‘Half-drop’ or a ‘Brick’ repeat.

These two types of repeat are so alike that we’ll only need one set of instructions for the two of them.


To make a Half-Drop or Brick repeat:

1. Begin as usual by scanning, cleaning up/tidying your motif.

2. Use the Magic Wand to make the background transparent and Save.

3. Jot down the dimensions of the Image in pixels.


For the Half-drop repeat:

4. Canvas Size  > anchor Middle Left > change the Width to 200%. Leave the Height at 100%.

5. Layers > Duplicate layer

6. Filter > Other > Offset – make sure that ‘wrap around’ is ticked.

7. Enter: Width – no change, Height – ½ the number of pixels that you wrote down > OK

You should end up with a tile like this for a half-drop repeat

For the Brick repeat:

4. Canvas Size  > anchor Middle Top > change the Height to 200%. Leave the width at 100%.

5. Layers > Duplicate Layer

6. Filter > Other > Offset – make sure that ‘wrap around’ is ticked.

7. Enter: Height – no change, Width – ½ the number of pixels that you wrote down > OK

This is what your  'Tile' will look like for a Brick Repeat

For both the Half-drop and the Brick repeat:

8. Layer > Flatten (make your background transparent again if necessary.)

9. Adjust the size of the ‘tile’ you have made if necessary and save it, making sure you use the word 'tile' in your file name for future reference.

10. Edit > Define Pattern

11. Open a new, larger document/file.

12. Edit > Fill > Choose the pattern you just defined > OK

This is the Brick Repeat - the rows are staggered horizontally, like bricks

This is the Half-drop Repeat - the columns are staggered vertically

By now you have the knowledge to make patterns with three different types of layout and the more you practice using the offset filter, the easier it will become.

Hot Tip! One of the problems I had when I first started using Photoshop was that I’d be following instructions, but at some point along the way, whatever I did, nothing would happen, nothing at all; it was if I’d somehow locked myself out!

The most frequent reason for this is that I hadn’t noticed that the layer that I was trying to work with was locked! This still trips me up occasionally but it’s quickly rectified and it’s probably wise to keep checking this as you go along to avoid frustration. 

But sometimes the layer isn’t locked and yet, when I’ve wanted to use the paintbrush to tidy something up – nothing happens. I can’t explain why this happens, but occasionally the ‘opacity’ button in the top bar seems to slide back to 0%! So, although I was in fact actually painting, it wasn’t showing up because the colour was transparent!

The third thing to check, if neither of these reasons are what's holding you up, is that you haven’t somehow inadvertently left a marquee tool selecting part of your image. If that’s the case, you’ll only be able to work on the part that is selected. That one has caught me out a few times!

There seem to be a lot of things to keep your eye on in Photoshop that weren’t there in my old photo-editing program.

And, if you’re anything like me – more interested in the resulting design than in the mechanics of creating it – it can seem as if there are too many things to think about. But it’s a bit like driving a car – at first you need to think about everything you’re doing with your eyes, your hands, your feet . . . but after a while it all becomes automatic. I think Photoshop is a bit like that!

Next time, we'll be looking at my favourite type of repeat - the Ogee or Diamond repeat.

In a way, it's a combination of Half-drop and Brick. I discovered the easy way to create this repeat almost accidentally, by adapting some other instructions I came across on the internet!

So, till next month -

Practise as much as you can and enjoy making some wonderfully exciting patterns! I'd love to see them if you'd like to email them to me to post here!

Click

HERE

to download a .pdf of this post, 

condensed into 4 pages

 in case you want to print it out.

Repeating Patterns for Painters #2

Last time, we looked at examples of the various categories of repeating patterns -

It’s not usually at all difficult to sort patterns into these categories. 

But there are other ways of grouping patterns that may not be as easy to see at a glance. One way is to look for the way the motif is repeated. Sometimes it’s easy to see how the repeat has been worked out. Other times you really have to search for the repeat. And making a repeating pattern like that requires a certain amount of skill and practice.

So what are the main ways of organising the repeats?

There are Block repeats, Half-drop repeats, Brick, Diamond, Ogee, Mirror and Tossed repeats . . . And the simplest of these is the BLOCK repeat.

A BLOCK repeat is made by positioning the motifs side by side and directly above and below one another.

It can lead to a very regular, regimented, even, effect and works well with geometric patterns. You can make a simple Block repeat quite successfully by dragging your motifs across to the work area manually but using Photoshop's 'Define Pattern' button will ensure greater accuracy and probably saves a lot of time in the long run.

The BLOCK repeat arrangement can also be used for the most complex patterns and this is where many hand-painted designs are likely to feature.

Whether your motif is simple or more complex, the method for making a BLOCK repeat is the same. But when your pattern is more complex, there will be some additional steps at the end.

So we’ll begin with preparation instructions that will apply to all types of repeats –

PREPARATION

1. Scan your motif and clean/tidy it, using either the eraser or a paintbrush with your background colour (often white).

2. Make the background transparent: making sure that the layer is unlocked, use the Magic Wand to define the background area. (If there are light colours in your pattern, make sure the Tolerance of the Magic Wand is set low enough that it doesn’t select the pale colours as well as the white background!) 

Press Delete – this should give you a transparent background which appears as a chequerboard effect.

3. Adjust the size of the ‘tile’ if necessary.

4. Save either as a .png or a .psd and name it as xxxxx _tile.

bluebunny_tile.png

1. A REALLY SIMPLE BLOCK REPEAT

1. With your saved ‘tile’ file open, click on Edit > Define Pattern. You can give the pattern a name when the dialogue box appears or simply let Photoshop name it for you with something like Pattern 45.

2. Open a new, much bigger file, at least four times as big as your ‘tile’.  Click on Edit > Fill. Choose the pattern you just defined: > OK

And, as if by magic, you should have a ‘sheet’ of repeating patterns.

HOT TIP! I filled the background with green before I added the rabbits as I've found from experience that it comes out more even that way.


2. A MORE COMPLEX BLOCK REPEAT – where the pattern fills most of the ‘tile’. 

This is the 'tile' for the pattern below

For this we need the help of the very clever
OFFSET FILTER.

1. Prepare your ‘tile’ as steps 1 – 4 above.

2. Image > Image Size: write down the dimensions of your tile in pixels. Close Image Size.

3. Go to Filter > Other >Offset, make sure that ‘wrap around’ is ticked.

4. Halve the dimensions that you wrote down and enter them in the appropriate boxes > OK

5. What you will see are the horizontal and vertical seams as they will be when you repeat your tile and they will probably look an awful mess, something like this:

Now you need to spend some time tidying up the seams. There are various ways to do this:

a) Use the clone stamp and/or smudge tool and I’ve read that in CS4 ff. the ‘Content Aware’ fill is useful for this task.

b) Prepare some small individual motifs on a transparent background and ‘place’ them at intervals over the seam to hide the join.

6. When you are happy with your repairs, use the Offset Filter again to check them and if necessary, repeat steps 3 –5 until you are satisfied.

7. Layer > Flatten.

8. Steps 3 – 4 as above, in PREPARATION

9. Repeat Steps 1 – 2 above, in SIMPLE BLOCK REPEAT.

When I made this pattern, I didn't really know how to repair
the seams and you can still see faint lines where the tiles joined.

Good luck - and don't forget, if you have any difficulties following these instructions, please say so in the comments and I will try to find a solution for you!

Happy Pattern-making!

Click

HERE

to download a .pdf of this post, 

condensed into 4 pages

 in case you want to print it out.

Repeating Patterns for Painters #1

Floral Repeating Pattern made by the 'cutting up paper' method

Six months ago I began an online course in Surface Pattern Design. 
I had wanted to learn how to make repeating patterns from my floral paintings for a very long time. I wanted to make patterns that had a hand-painted look, similar to so many of the Liberty prints and the fabrics used in Monsoon clothing and accessories that I love.

I had to some extent succeeded by the ‘cutting up paper’ method, combined with some tidying up in paint.net. But I felt sure there was a better way and when I saw that making ‘technical repeats’ in Photoshop was included in the course, I thought it would be the answer. Sadly, it wasn’t.

But I did learn a few things about Photoshop – apart from the fact that it's a tremendously finickity program! – and with lots of help from fellow students, online tutorials and forums, plus three books that were Christmas gifts, I’ve finally found ways to do all the things I wanted to, ways that work!

So, with a very big thank you to all who have helped and encouraged me on this sometimes very frustrating journey, I’ve decided that over the next weeks and months, I’ll pass on what I’ve learnt.

First of all, perhaps we need to sort out what is meant by a ‘pattern’. 


The phrase ‘surface pattern’ is often used to describe any sort sort of ornamentation that decorates a plain
surface. But as I pointed out in ‘Hard-wired for Pattern-Making’,  the dictionary definitions often suggest an element of repetition. 

This is the first definition that Google provided:

pat·tern  

/ˈpatərn/

Noun: A repeated decorative design.

Verb: Decorate with a recurring design.

And I shall use the word ‘pattern’ to denote a repeating pattern or recurring motif.

We’ll begin by looking at the various types of patterns and next time I’ll give some instructions for making some of them, beginning with the simplest so that you can build your skill, post by post. I’ll be available to answer any queries and if I don’t know the answer, there’s a good chance I’ll know someone who does!

A watercolour painting that I'll use as a motif to demonstrate how to make a repeating pattern in Photoshop.

I shall assume that you have painted or hand-drawn motifs that you would like to make into a repeating patterns and that you notice and record in your sketchbook (or with a camera!) the patterns that surround us – in Nature, in buildings and so on. I shall also assume that you can’t wait to get started with learning how to make some of them into patterns for a variety of uses – fabrics, wallpapers, giftwrap and a million others!

The first thing to say is that there are many different kinds of patterns. 

There are the obvious categories, such as 'floral', 'geometric', 'ethnic' . . . some of them overlapping. And there are three classifications you may come across, with which you may not be quite as familiar. These are ‘organic’, ‘graphic’ and ‘conversational’.

A 'Geometric' pattern - but also an Islamic one, therefore it could be classified as 'Ethnic' too.

This pattern, named 'Jungle', is not truly 'Ethnic' in that it came from my imagination rather than an ethnic source. But I think it has an 'ethnic'/'tribal' feel about it!

Organic simply means a pattern that contains elements from Nature, generally with flowing, curving lines. Florals could be a sub-category of Organic but because they are so popular, Florals have a category of their own.

'Seaweed' - an example of an 'Organic' pattern

Graphic, on the other hand, indicates clean, more likely straight lines but could include curves if a floral motif is treated in a graphic way. It can often be very similar to ‘geometric’.

Although the motif for this 'Jungle' pattern was hand-drawn and the motifs are arranged  to represent flowers, it is the nearest I have come to a 'Graphic' style.

'Conversational' is a strange way to describe patterns that use motifs that don’t really fit into the other categories. It could be a little ‘character’ or object, anything from bunnies to boats to buses!  It’s not an area I have explored much as yet but here is one that I did as coursework:

I put two motifs together for this exercise in 'Conversational' patterns - both the frog and the water lily stand alone as hand-painted greeting cards.

In the next in this series of ‘Repeating Patterns’ posts, I’ll cover the most common types of repeats, together with instructions for how to create the most straightforward one in Photoshop.

Meanwhile, here’s a list of basic things you’ll need to know how to use or, at least, how to find in Photoshop:

1. Open/Close File. Open New File to the size you want. Resize: canvas size.
2. Show/Hide Grid, snap to grid. Guides – how to use them, Snap to guides.
3. Colour palette – how to swap background/foreground colours.
4. Cascade Windows. (Windows > Arrange >Cascade) Show Layers, History, Colours.
5. Change the % view of your open window. Fit to screen.
6. Layers – hide/unlock. Send to back/front (under Layers > Arrange)
7. Adjust Tolerance/Opacity/Brush Size
8. Tools: Move, Rectangle, Crop, Clone Stamp, Paint Bucket, Magic Wand, Gradient Tool, Ink
        -dropper tool, Text tool.

And please, don’t be afraid to ask if you don’t understand something I’ve written or if you have a question that I haven’t covered. 

Together we’ll make some glorious painterly patterns!

As an experiment, I've made this post into a .pdf file that I'm hoping you can download if you're interested in keeping these 'how to' posts -

Click

HERE

to download a .pdf of this post, 

condensed into 4 pages

 in case you want to print it out.

Chip it, Pin it, Photoshop it!

 
Half way through the first module of ‘The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design’ and I seem to have given the impression that it’s all brilliantly useful. 

But while there’s some truth in that, isn’t quite ‘the whole truth’.

There are two strands of the course, running in parallel.
On the one hand there are the topics covered and accompanying creative exercises through daily blog postings. And, on the other hand, the weekly ‘Bonus Technical Workshops’, consisting of instructions for using Photoshop and Illustrator in relation to surface pattern design.

So far the three topics – Inspiration, Sketching and Colour – have seemed to be pitched at the level of someone who hasn’t done much art at all, or possibly a graphic artist who has become stale or lost confidence. Much of what is suggested is very similar to what I've been doing for years and even to suggestions I’ve made in various past blog posts.

That’s the downside.

But on the positive side, it’s good to get to know a great and varied community of artists from all over the world, all sharing a passion for pattern. And, partly because of this, I’ve been able to find something positive to explore and put into practice each week so far.

In Week 1, I found analysing a motif very rewarding and it has set me off down a track of creating a 'store cupboard' of backgrounds for future use in pattern designs.

A kind artist from Hong Kong suggested I try clingfilm and I'm so glad she did!

In Week 2. the lesson on organising our sketches, persuaded me to do something I should have done a long time ago – filing all my loose sheets of ideas away in lever arch files, now all classified and neatly labelled for quick access!

In Week 3, I learnt about creating a colour palette from any photo or image online. This is a commercial ‘color picker’ provided free of charge by an international paint company.

HERE

you can see my 'books' of colour chips from images I've found on the Internet (including my own!)

The colours have the names of the paints, rather than the pantone names and numbers but I believe we are going to learn to do this in a more professional way, using photoshop, later. But if you want to have fun making your own colour palettes, it's free and all you have to do to get started is drag a 'chip it!' button to your toolbar, in a similiar way to the Pinterest 'Pin it' one. 

GET CHIP IT

I hope you're not thinking by now that I'm a terrible 'know-all'! I have plenty to learn - that's why I'm on the course. But here's an example of why the early exercises, such as going out looking for patterns in the environment, are a bit 'old hat' for me. Below is a cushion (pillow - on the other side of the pond!) that I screenprinted in the 1980's from a sketch of some cobbled paving slabs that I had made on our first family holiday in Wales  - in the late '70s!

The Bonus Technical Workshops, on the other hand, are proving highly challenging for those of us who aren’t familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator. So much so that one artist bravely started a thread on Flickr called ‘Help needed for Photoshop’ and this has been invaluable in providing us with the means to help one another overcome our difficulties. One artist, though, has, at least for now, given up trying to fathom these workshops as she has ‘hit a brick wall’ and several have mentioned buying a book about it, which is something I may resort to myself - though YouTube tutorials have also been useful.

Not my usual style but colouring a line drawing is as far as we've got so far and it may have possibilities for fresh ideas!

I have persisted – all of Saturday afternoon and early evening and the same on Sunday! – and have found my own way of doing things that didn’t work when I followed the instructions. Now I’m practising these processes daily, hoping they’ll become automatic before we move on to the next workshop!

It has all been taking me much more than the 10-12 hours a week that was mentioned in the FAQs so I’ve decided not to bother with the ‘Creative Exercises’, such as taking photos of patterns, if I’ve been doing them, or similar, for as long as I can remember!

To sum it up, although I’ve felt frustrated at times, it’s not all bad news! On the whole, I am glad I signed up for this course.  But it’s been very much up to me to look for ways to make it useful to me personally.

And if ever I find myself with nothing urgent to do, I can always have fun, adding to my collection of  'Patterns I like' on a Pinterest board . . .

Late Summer - a Pattern of Pink Anemones

Here I am in the middle of Week 2 of the ‘Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design’ online course.  

And I'm pleased to say that, even though the course, so far, has mostly covered what is, for me, ‘old ground’, I am managing to learn some very useful things from it!

Last week’s theme was ‘Finding Inspiration’ and for me ‘finding inspiration’ has never been a problem - quite the opposite. This week’s theme is ‘Sketchbooks’ and, putting the two together, I have sketchbooks full of inspiration and ideas going right back to my schooldays – ie more than half a century!

What I’m really looking for is the technical knowledge to make these ideas into surface pattern designs without needing to resort to the rather cumbersome, and often inaccurate, tracing paper and scissors method that I’ve been using so far.

And towards the end of last week, I found that a couple of the exercises we were set were really useful and they have already begun to provide me with some answers!

We were asked to take a pattern we liked and break it down into its component parts or motifs. I took a William Morris design of which I’m very fond and was surprised to find how many different motifs it contained! In particular, I hadn’t noticed the little squiggly grey leaves in the background (No.1) and ever since, I've been noticing less obtrusive, background patterns all over the place, where I’d never have noticed them before! 


Putting that together with some instructions on how to use Photoshop to ‘layer’ a design and, helped to take that one step further with a YouTube tutorial I hunted down, I was able to use sketches from some photos I’d taken in Week 1 to create this ‘layered’ pattern.

Here's the background 'leaves' layer:

 The page of sketches -

And here it is all put together -

I coloured it digitally to save time as I wasn’t at all sure that my experiment would work. So the colours have come out far brighter than I would have liked. (But then I don't know how it looks on anyone else's screen - to me it looks garish!)

When, this week, we were asked to use all sorts of alternative painting tools – such as sticks – to help us ‘loosen up’, I opted for crumpled up newspaper, a piece of old towelling and the rough side of a synthetic sponge to create some paint effects.

 

These, believe it or not, may well be good, useful material for pattern backgrounds of the future. 

In fact I've already used the blue one to create a new version of the Anemone pattern. I also toned the colour down a bit in Photoshop and used it to create a new Messenger Bag on Zazzle –

Dark Blue Messenger Bag with Pink Anemones by helikettle

By the way, I don’t much like Anemones. They don’t have a fragrance and I think they can look a bit mournful, maybe because they flower as summer draws to a close. So I’m really looking forward to moving on to create a pattern from a sketch or photo that I’m really enthusiastic about! 

.

Is this cheating?

Elizabeth White's book about Starting and Running a Greeting Card Business  cautions against selling at Craft Markets, advising the artist to seek out instead Craft Fairs, where the price of admission is quite high, as there will be more likehood of finding customers who are willing to pay a good price for a greeting card. So last weekend I visited our local monthly craft market to see if this was in fact true. I had explored the market when I first moved to Abergavenny some years ago and thought it seemed a very dreary affair, with nothing very interesting for sale and very few customers and had never been back since. This time was a little different. There were several stalls offering products I liked, such as this one, and there were a lot more people browsing. However, I didn't get the impression that much money was changing hands and wondered whether at least some people had come inside to get out of the cold wind and heavy, sleety showers! I didn't stay long.

Yesterday I was chatting about this with a friend from Norwich, who told me that she had just visited a craft fair in Norwich, where she had found stalls offering goods that she would have liked to buy if she had been able to afford them, but also a great many 'products' ranging from the repetitive to the downright awful. One stall that fell into the 'awful' bracket offered photographs on canvas blocks or framed behind glass and, although the stall-holder insisted they were photos, they looked more like really bad oil paintings! My friend does not use a computer and deduced that he had 'touched up' his photos with oil paints. That may be what he'd done but it's also possible that  he had used the 'artisitic' menu in Photoshop (or one of its free equivalents), something I had noticed but never really explored. But last night, when I'd finished editing some of my recent photos of the last of the wallflowers in my garden, I decided to have a little 'play on my computer' and was astonished by what could be achieved with the click of the mouse!

This is the original photograph on a mug - I like the fine detail of the veins in wallflowers' petals in close-up when you hover over them in the 'store' -

Wallflowers Mug by helikettle
cheap coffee mug with zazzle

- so I went on to make a mousepad and some slip-on Keds shoes.

But in some ways I prefer the 'oil painting' effect - it somehow bears more likeness to the way I see the world, even though my eyesight is near perfect - except sometimes, when it comes to reading the microwave instructions on the backs of frozen ready-meals! It seems to highlight the lights and darks (is this what people mean by 'tonal balance', a phrase I keep coming across recently?) and, in my view, there's a vibrancy that a sharply defined photograph often lacks.

So, with some misgivings about whether I was 'cheating', I went on to make a set of notecards and uploaded them to the online stores -

'Wallflowers' Get Well Soon Notecard by helikettle
cards from zazzle

I suppose it's the finished work that counts, not necessarily how it came about, and I like the way these turned out - but I still feel a bit as if I've cheated. It was an interesting experiment but I don't think I'll be doing it often!