I Turned Brown Blobs Into Wallpaper

So I’ve been learning to make repeating patterns. This is something I’ve wanted to learn for years and Im really glad that Im finally doing it. I would love to one day know that my patterns are in peoples homes as wallpaper and it would be amazing to see them printed on products in stores.

The process to create a pattern varies with each one, this is how I made this seashell pattern.

First I used some acrylic ink and painted a few seashell shapes. I chose a colour i wanted to use up because I knew id be changing the colour once I brought it into my computer. I scanned the image.

I then used Photoshop to remove the white background from the image. This is done in a pretty specific way and I use a tutorial I found online from Christine Nishiyama called “Quick Tutorial: How to Remove a Background from Line Art in Photoshop” I end up forgetting how to do this almost every time so I refer back to her blog post over and over again.

I now have an image that is made of transparent pixels of one colour. So no matter what I put behind them, they look like they are painted on that surface.

Now comes the fun part, I take this image into Procreate and start creating a pattern with it. I learned how from a Skillshare class called Half Drop Patterns in Procreate: Complex Elements and Custom Actions by Di Ujdi

One of the most important parts of a pattern is its colour scene and I take time to create one. Often doing research and looking at sites like https://coolors.co/ and https://www.pantone.com/ Then once I have a basic scheme I change it as I create the pattern.

When I write it all out, it seems kinda complicated. But I guess the simple things are sometimes the hardest to create.

This pattern is available as wallpaper and fabric, click on any image in this post to check it out.