Process

Making a pattern is a big project that usually takes a day or two for me to complete. The process is time-consuming, but fun too. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it. So here’s a walk through the creation of my apples pattern.

First step: sketch the shape

Most of my patterns typically start with the sketch pad. I draw a few shapes I think might make a nice pattern, then settle on one that’s just right, and scan it into the computer.

Next, vectorize it

For this I use the “live trace” feature of Adobe Illustrator. It takes a sketch and converts the lines to vector format so that it will scale to any size I need.

Now, the tricky part: making the pattern

This part is probably the most difficult to get just right. With a simple shape like this apple it’s slightly less difficult than some other more intricate designs, but still, a lot needs to be considered.

I set up a photoshop canvas a little larger than the size of the finished pattern I plan to make and then set the guides to roughly the size and shape I want to work with.

Then, it’s a matter of placing each object just right, mirroring each side, top, and bottom so that all of the sides will match up when the pattern repeats. The shaded portion is not in the final pattern, but everything inside the box will repeat. Notice how each edge matches the opposite side of the box.

Final prep before adding color

Now I rasterize the vector images and merge the ones that go together (the four corners, then the middle apples). I erase the edges of the apples so I have nice clean shapes.

In this pattern I decided not to use the outline, but I could by simply separating the white center as a separate piece. In this case I only separated the stems and leaves, but each piece that you want to be a different color you’ll need to cut out as a separate piece. As you can imagine, something like Lani can be much more involved.

Adding color

The next step is to consider color schemes. This process takes up about half of the entire process because color is vital to a design’s success. For web design I fell in love with Color Schemer, but there are innumerable tools out there for you to use to choose color schemes.

Once I have some colors in mind, I create layer masks over the shapes.

Alt+click/Cmd+click between two layers to create a mask. The top one should be the color fill. I do this for each piece, the apple, the stem, and the leaf for each. It takes some playing with the colors to balance everything just right. I try to get 3-5 good color schemes before moving on to texture.

Now here’s where we’re at with the apples:

Adding texture

This would be fine, just a plain pattern, but in my own design work I like to use more textures sometimes. For this I pull out some of my overlays. My favorite is a canvas overlay I made, and then I also use a simple paper texture. For this example I’ll use the canvas overlay.

I pull the image into Photoshop and then resize it to just a little larger than my pattern.

My favorite technique is to use two copies of the overlay: one with a blend mode of Multiply and the other Hard Light below it. Then I take the opacity on the one beneath to about 25%. Then I add a brightness/contrast layer to sharpen the colors because the overlay tends to dull them.

So here it is again, with the color and texture complete.

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Copyright © 2008 – 2010 Natalie Jost