Keiser Graphics

As promised here is the Corel Painter tutorial on how to create repeating patterns. I think after this I will show how to incorporate all of the repeating patterns tutorials and various programs to create something really special. Though I may just do a quick tutorial next week on how to take various scans of a large image and piece them together in Photoshop as I have a painting right now that has been drawn out and is right at that step in my process. I figure I might as well get some of my own work done while I am sharing various tips and strategies in the digital art world.

Anyways let’s start with a piece of artwork that we want to turn into a pattern. Here is a piece that I created a long time ago with some Dover clip art and some painting.

First let’s open up the patterns window, to do this go to Window, Library Palettes, and Show Patterns.

Now use the selection marquee tool to select the image, it looks & works exactly the same as Photoshop’s selection marquee tool.

From the pattern window click the little triangle to the right and select capture pattern.

A dialog box opens up with several options for your pattern and a preview.

By adjusting the horizontal or vertical shift you can see how it changes your pattern.

You can adjust your patterns the same way in Photoshop by opening the cloned source window and changing the horizontal or vertical offset.

Now in Corel from the patterns window you can scale your pattern down or up and control the horizontal or vertical offset. I scaled it down.

From the brushes dropdown menu, choose cloners. So now that you have any cloner brush picked (and you can adjust the settings of your brush however you like), and your pattern picked in the pattern window you are ready to paint with your new pattern.

Now I felt that this pattern should have been a tiny bit bigger, so I adjusted the scale in the patterns window and then painted this.

By now you should all be pros at making repeating patterns in Photoshop and are probably wondering why should I ever learn to make patterns in Illustrator. There are several reasons you might want to make a repeating pattern in Illustrator instead of Photoshop. First you can make your patterns from vector images, (which I know I still need to go over that, maybe I’ll do that next week and then the following week show you how to make repeating patterns in Corel Painter) instead of raster images. Next you can make very precise patterns quickly with less work then it is to make a precise pattern in Photoshop. Third you can utilize making a pattern swatch in Illustrator to use over and over again in various vector shapes that will never get pixilated or loose definition regardless of how big or small your final image may be.

So let’s get started.

First in illustrator draw a square with the rectangle shape tool. By holding the shift key while dragging the mouse you will create a perfect square. Now we are going to draw some guides to that square. Go to the menu and hit view rulers and snap to point.

Now from the rulers on your screen click and drag the mouse out to a point on your square, the icon will change when you are on a point. Release the mouse button and you will see a new guide perfectly lined up with your square. Do this for all four corners.

Next let’s scale down your original square while holding the shift key to make it smaller. Let’s turn it into a rhombus.

Rotate the square 45 degrees by either using the rotate tool and holding the shift key while rotating or going through the menu transform rotate and typing in 45 when the option dialog box opens up for you.

Now I know this is diamond and not really a rhombus. No problem first reset the bounding box.

Now select your diamond and scale it, hold the alt key while you scale from one of the sides. You can now make this a true rhombus.

To start making the pattern we will need to be able to select the individual corners on our rhombus so hide the bounding box for a little while.

When the mouse hovers over a corner the icon changes to look like this:

Select your rhombus by the left side corner while holding the alt key and move the object till the left side corner is right on top of the right side corner and release. You now have two rhombuses side by side.

Hit Cntl D (Option D for those of you using a Mac) and you will see more and more rhombuses starting to line up. (You can also perform this transform by going through the menu and object, transform, transform again.

Now select your row of rhombuses and grab from one top corner and put another row beneath it.

Here you have a repeating pattern! You can do this with any shape in any kind of fashion; now let me show you how to create a pattern swatch with it.

Delete some of your rhombuses till you have just a few within your guide lines from earlier.

Turn the bounding boxes back on, select all of your rhombuses and scale them till they fit perfectly within your guidelines.

Copy some of your rhombuses so that you have them overlapping each side of your guidelines and color them in a checkerboard pattern.

Create a box with no stroke and no fill that perfectly fits on your guidelines. Move this box to the back of the artwork.

Select all of the objects including all of the colored rhombuses and the clear box. Go edit define pattern and give a name for your pattern when the dialog box opens up.

Now open your swatches window and you will see your pattern swatch there, select it and try making a circle with your new pattern.

And that’s it; you can now make vector patterns with ease. There are plenty of great uses for it, remember that ziptone pattern we made with Photoshop, with Illustrator we can make a true precise ziptone with tiny little circles. Here is an example where I used that rhombus pattern with a brush pattern I made (I’ll show you how to do this at a later time as it is a little complicated) to make a pretty text box.

My husband suggested I put up a few tutorials on my blog. I’ve spent the last couple weeks thinking about what kind of tutorials to do and where I should start. I figured the first tutorials should be relatively simple and then later tutorials would build off the earlier simpler tutorials. I still wasn’t sold on the idea of doing tutorials as there are already a lot of great resources of tutorials out there, but my husband thinks that people will like this in my blog. I’m not one for not trying new things so here is my first tutorial. If you like it you can thank my husband.I figured a fun spot to start is with repeating patterns. They can be made in Illustrator, Photoshop, and Corel Painter. They have many wonderful uses, and I wish they could be used in InDesign (though I have up to Adobe CS3 so if they are used in CS4 disregard my last comment). For those of you who don’t have these products you can usually download trial versions for free. Now should you want them but not be able to pay full price, go enroll in some classes at your local community college. Then buy the software at the student price. Then fail the class (or pass it if you really care). You still end up paying substantially less than full price for the software this way.

Back to repeating patterns. Let’s start with Photoshop as this is the simplest way to create a repeating pattern, but take note this pattern will be in raster format. (Damn, I should have started with a tutorial on raster vs. vector format, I guess I’ll go back to that next week.) In Photo shop I wanted to create a halftone pattern that you might use for shading in a comic book the old fashioned way. At one time you used to be able to easily purchase all kinds of halftone patterns called ziptones on clear film that you would then transfer onto the paper like a rub on decal. Now days this is accomplished with a computer with much more ease. Note I am working on a PC, for any using a Mac replace any ctrl button with the option button.

1. Open a new document, make it the resolution that your final piece will be in with a transparent background. I made mine 72 dpi and 1 inch by 1 inch.

2. Create your pattern; here I am making a halftone pattern with little dots through out the image.

3. Select an area where the pattern repeats.

4. Go to the menu and pick edit>define pattern. You will be prompted to name your pattern.

Now you can close the new document, you don’t have to save it or anything. Now that you have your new Photoshop pattern you might be wondering what you can do with it.

5. Open up a new document, use what ever settings you feel like. Mine was 72 dpi and 3 inches by 3 inches with a white background.

6. Select the paint bucket tool. At the top of the window you will see a bunch of options for the paint bucket tool. Hit the dropdown menu for the option of foreground and pick pattern. From here you can pick the pattern you made earlier. By clicking on the drop down menu right next to the foreground drop down menu. Now use the paint bucket tool and you will see your pattern fill up the entire page area.

7. You might be thinking hey this is pretty nifty, but wait there is more. Select the pattern stamp tool, now if you don’t see it click on the tiny arrow at the bottom of the clone stamp tool in order to pick the pattern stamp tool. The icons for these tools are almost identical.

8. Now that you have this tool selected go to the top of the screen where you have all the different attributes of your tool. You will see that it has all the brush attributes and at the end there is a drop down menu to pick your pattern much like the paint bucket tool.

9. Now you can paint with your pattern that you made earlier. Why don’t you experiment here with your new pattern and possibly make a few more? No need to ever pay for a ziptone again, and now you are limitless on what kinds of patterns you can use. You can see in my example how I used the dot pattern on the edges of the little sprites wings.

Wow well this seems like a pretty complete tutorial by itself. Next week I’ll do another tutorial on repeating patterns in Illustrator. Repeating patterns in Illustrator are very versatile and they are easier to make them perfectly line up. I’ll show you how.