How to Develop Elements for Surface Designs
This 2-minute video was first posted in August 2020. In it you’ll learn how to quickly develop secondary images and designs to complement the subjects of your work, both now and to draw upon in the future.
Here is a rough transcript:
How to Develop Elements for Surface Designs
While we at Sketch-Views and Littleviews specialize in pet portraits, we also create repeatable surface designs on products such as coffee mugs, fabric, and scarves.
Unlike the art of producing a single composition (such as a portrait), surface designs refer to repeatable patterns that, when connected, can cover large areas, like cloth or wallpaper.
Surface designing often combines main subjects with multiple secondary or subordinate subjects. The secondary subjects are used to fill in spaces not covered by the main design.
Karen’s inspiration for Sketch-Views’ fall 2020 scarf collection were butterflies and flowers where butterflies are found.
As seen in neighboring gardens, butterflies, bees, and other flying insects gathered around groups of small, white flowers, which she drew, then arranged in secondary groups.
It takes time to develop secondary objects! To stretch your imagination, use your computer to distort your initial vision, no matter how beautiful that vision might be. The effect is like squinting at an image, which causes main objects to drop away and new patterns seem to emerge.
Sketch while squinting to develop a library of secondary elements. These can be used in traditional compositions, such as in pencil sketches or watercolor paintings, as well as in computer graphics.
After time, your library of images will become a great resource for adding elements to current and future work.
Links
- Video discussion about using Adobe Illustrator to manipulate your designs: Top 3 Secrets for Surface Pattern Design Success
- Video pep talk on how to get started: Surface Pattern Design: Five Amateur Mistakes (and how to fix them) | Elizabeth Silver
- Video showing how a fabric collection was developed by manipulating background elements: How to Design Fabric – Surface Pattern Design
- Article for those of you who want to create surface designs, but do so by hand instead of using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop: How to Create Pattern Repeats by Hand
Contact
- This video tutorial was written and produced by Karen Little and was published in August, 2020.
- The video, hosted on YouTube, is free for inclusion on non-commercial websites (or other media) with permission and attributes to Littleviews.com.
- Would you like us to create a video-article for you? Ask!
- All other material on Littleviews and Sketch-Views (with noted exceptions) is copyrighted on the date of publication or as noted in credits.
- Questions? Ask Karen Little at Karen@littleviews.com.
