Hello everyone! If this your first class with me, welcome! If you are a returning student, welcome back! I am Jen and I will be guiding you through this creative course. I’m a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and educator based out of the midwest and I run Bella + Sophia Creative studio. If you want to learn more about me, you can visit me online at: www.bellasophiacreative.com and you can check out my youtube channel: The Creative Studio. There, you will get a behind the scenes view of the work I do as a creative freelancer and educator  as well as access to a huge library of additional free tutorials relating to art, design and illustration.

What the class is about 

So, this month I am coming back with another surface pattern design course inspired by the arts and crafts era and designers like William Morris and we will be illustrating and building our repeat pattern using the procreate app.  Morris believed that true art came from the direct observation of nature, which he experienced first in his exposure to the  countryside where he lived and in following years as he established a wild garden in his self-designed Red House in Kent. This home  was decorated inside and out with floral motifs. Morris also collected herbals, which are 16th century books containing accurate plant and flower studies and their medicinal properties, giving him an extensive knowledge of botany.  He utilized these every day resources and books along with a huge dose of of imagination to produce great works of design and ornamental pattern work. 

We will tap into this very idea by tapping into nature and botanical research books to find inspiration for our illustrations and motifs for our patterns. We will  causally but strategically explore nature, photograph it and pull directly from those photos for our own botanical illustrations. I will also share some of my favorite botanical book resources. Once we have sourced our material, we can then begin the sketch process , fine tune our illustrations and begin to build the repeating pattern  all in the procreate app. 

A few of the Skills Students Will Learn 

When it comes to the skills you will learn,  Before we jump into creating, I want to share more about the Arts and Crafts era, share some of the influences as well as the unique chraracteristics of the style when it comes to themes, composition and layout as well as things like the typical motifs and color stories you might see. 

Then, I will walk you through my process for sourcing natural elements - how to tap into your local nature, woods or even the nature you see on your walks as source of inspiration and photograph those sources to tap for illustration inspiration as well as some great botanical focused text books you can utilize. Then we will walk through translating those sources into illustrations and motifs in procreate that can be translated into repeating patterns.

I will share tips on how to draw motifs inspired by the Arts and Crafts era, how to plan your repeating pattern and how to draw a straight repeat using the grids and guidelines we have access to in procreate. We will utilize layers to work through  colorizing and finalizing the motifs in procreate. Finally, we will go through my process of building the seamless repeating pattern in the procreate app. 

At the end of this class, you will have the skills and knowledge to create layered arts and crafts inspired repeating patterns in a straight repeat style using inspiration you can source right out of your background.