Layered Illustrator Brushes and Layered Motifs - Techniques for Adding Depth and Interest To Pattern

Have you been learning pattern design and want to take it one step further? Are you wondering how you can make your motifs and patterns more elaborate? Development of advanced techniques with brushes for pattern design in Illustrator is the focus of this course, with the goal of helping you increase your proficiency with Illustrator techniques you may never have considered. You will craft a delightful pattern tile which can be finished in a variety of ways! In this course, you will learn every step, from creating the initial brushes, adding details, to making the multi-layered motifs you have seen. And the techniques you will learn can be used for so much more than florals! Think of your favourite things to draw and imagine using these methods and techniques on them! What you learn here covers many fundamental principles in the general workflow of many surface pattern designers and graphic illustrators. There is just so much to be learned!
You will learn to make art brushes and to use these brushes to make a series of motifs. You will learn how to make brushes incorporating gradients and other elements. You will create a series of coordinate patterns as well with simple and quick techniques.
You may have taken courses on pattern design before, but it is guaranteed that there are new practices and procedures to be learned every day. If you've taken other Deloresart classes, this is just a natural progression in your artistic development. Once you have your repeat pattern done, you can use companies like Spoonflower or Print on Demand sites to design your own wallpaper, fabric or gift wrap, or to create custom products. Wouldn’t it be fun to make fabric and upholster a chair or make baby clothes with your pattern?
As far as prerequisite skills, I would recommend some knowledge of Illustrator with the goal of wanting to learn additional techniques. In class, we’ll talk about both design and technical aspects of creating a pattern. I will demonstrate them at a reasonable pace so that it will be easy to follow along. This course is for all levels; I recommend being acquainted with Illustrator to a certain degree. I suggest Illustrator for this class, as that is what is being featured here, but any other vector software is suitable, so long as it has the same functionality.
The key concepts I will include:
Review of my techniques and variables
An overview of what is trending now
Many other considerations to do with designing repeating patterns efficiently
Approaches you can take in your creative work moving forward
Creating motifs using the blob brush and shape builder
Design layout and pleasing arrangements
Design of a series of coordinates
Working with color swatches
This is a relevant course for you to take no matter what your purpose for the artwork you create. Let’s dig in, so you can be benefitting from your knowledge now in your art practice! Start now and you can be done watching in around an hour, and you could be starting to plan your own future project today!
Intro to Layered Brushes and Motifs for Pattern Making in Illustrator
This short intro will give you an overview of the class.
Lesson 1: Overview, Inspiration and Examples
In this lesson, I will show you how I am inspired to create layered brushes. We will visit a few other artists to see some of the detail they are adding to their brush strokes.
Lesson 2: Gradient and Varied Brushes
Here we will experiment with creating a variety of brushes including a gradient filled brush. Many pointers are shared in my workflow habits.
 Lesson 3: Brushes with Lines and Silhouettes
In this lesson, we will look at creating a layered brush stroke using lines, and we will also explore the use of a plant silhouette to make an interesting brush/motif.
Lesson 4: Two Colored Leaves and Hue Shift
Within this lesson, we will look at another quick little motif design and I will explain Hue Shift in the art brush creation dialogue.
Lesson 5: Building Layered Motifs with Brushes
Building layered motifs is easy with the use of layered brushes. We will dissect one of the motifs I constructed and we will discuss how to make easy changes.
Lesson 6: Motif and Brush Flexibility Ideas
In this lesson, we will explore methods for keeping our motifs and brushes flexible, and what that means in our over-all productivity. This lesson is full of experimentation and progress.
Lesson 7: Quick Coordinate Ideas to Fill Out the Collection
This lesson will explain the steps to producing some quick coordinates to round out your collection. Many different concepts are covered including types of pattern repeats, layering, transparency and more.
Outro
We will conclude everything in this lesson with a chat about next steps.
Concepts covered:
Concepts covered include but are not limited to building brushes in Illustrator, art brushes, mockups, marketing your art, finding online reference, color groups, working with color, layering brush strokes, brush design fundamentals, use of the layer’s palette, the join tool, the blend tool, the width tool, simplifying, scatter brushes, stamping with Illustrator brushes and much more!
 You will get…
around an hour of direction from an instructor who has been in the graphic design business and education for over 40 years
knowledge of multiple ways to solve each design challenge
links explaining key concepts