Pattern Design

Pattern design is something I’ve been messing around with for the last few years. Generally, I’ve been using the half drop method. Half drop works well for a scattered pattern, like this Dungeons and Dragons underpants.

Over Christmas I did an excellent course on Skillshare about how to implement a diamond pattern, using Affinity Designer. This technique allows you to make very dense patterns where it is impossible to see where the tiles of the pattern meet. It also works really well if you have elements, like vines, ropes, ribbons or other pattern elements that move across the entire pattern.

I had good fun making some patterns based on game characters that I like, such as this Astarion one:

I’ve done a version of this with a red background too, with the roses in pink which looks good. But thinking about it now, maybe the roses should be white….

That is another great advantage of making patterns this way – it is very easy to change the background colour. The class is by Weronika Salach, who is a brilliant illustrator and pattern designer. I really recommend her pattern design tutorials.

I also made this Lord Gortash pattern, which I am not entirely happy with.

I am working on a new and improved version with a more detailed brocade pattern on a black rather than purple background. I’ve printed this up on a notebook for myself and it’s cute, but I’m looking forward to getting the pattern perfect so that I can print it up on a makeup bag/pencil case like the above.

It’s nice to have a bit of time off from design jobs to make things like this that are fun for me!

I started getting a bit tired of the very digital look of all my recent art, so next I made this witch frog pattern, which (although I did create it digitally) looks like it’s drawn in crayon. I like this design, and think it would go well on stationery.

I still haven’t made a dense pattern where you can’t see the join of the tiles. I might do that next, based on this pattern of wild flowers I made. This pattern has fuchsia and “orange lilies”, which were the familiar flowers of the hedgerows of my childhood holidays in Kerry. I found out later the proper name for what we called orange lilies is crocosmia. I’d like to see how this would come out as a finished pattern.

I think it will come out as a nice dense floral design, suitable for dress fabric. But that’s part of the fun of doing patterns – you never really know what they are going to look like until you tile them.