This time it’s from my other gallery Siamkatze , thank you Redbubble!! I’m sooo excited!! :D ...
This time it’s from my other gallery Siamkatze , thank you Redbubble!! I’m sooo excited!! :D More Than A Word /
How to create a seamless repeating pattern in Illustrator. / Okay, I have finally gotten round to putting together a basic tutorial expl…
How to create a seamless repeating pattern in Illustrator. / Okay, I have finally gotten round to putting together a basic tutorial explaining how to go about creating a seamless repeating pattern similar to my Reggtro pattern. The reason I chose this pattern is because it is quite straight forward, yet not the easiest, and anyone with some basic Illustrator knowledge should be able to whip one up in no time. Before I start I would just like to say, as with most things, there are many ways to achieve the same result and this is just one of them. I encourage you to explore for yourself the different possibilities, and if anyone would like to share their techniques or would like to know how I achieved any of my other patterns please don’t hesitate to add it to the comments below. I have used Illustrator CS2 for this tutorial but you should be able to recreate this in almost any version of the program. For those of you proficient in Illustrator here is the basic breakdown. Read on for a more detailed explanation. 1. Create a new 400px by 400px document 2. Create a straight vertical path from the top of the artboard to the bottom and place it 50px on the X axis. Give it a 5pt stroke 3. Apply a Zig Zag effect with the settings of Size 40px Ridges per section 1 and smooth points. 4. Apply a Transform effect with the settings of One (1) copy, Reflect X, Move horizontal 100px 5. Apply a second instance of the Transform effect and use these settings One (1) Copy, Move 200px Horizontally. 6. Draw out an ellipse centred on the bottom left corner of the artboard 7. Apply a Transform effect to the ellipse with these settings. Two (2) copies, Move 200px Horizontally. 8. Apply a second instance of the Transform effect with these settings. One (1) copy, Move 400px Vertically. 9. Make a duplicate of the ellipse we just created and set its centre point to 100px on the X axis and 200px on the Y axis 10. Apply a Transform effect to the ellipse with these settings. One (1) copy, Move 200px Horizontally. 11. Crete a 410px square with a fill of your choice and no stroke centred on the artboard. Send it to the bottom of the layer stack 12. Apply your choice of strokes and fills to the ellipses 13. Create a 400px square with no fill or stroke and send it to the bottom of the layer stack. 14. Select all and drag everything to the swatches palette. 15. Hide layer 1, create a new layer and create a shape. Select its fill and apply the newly created swatch to apply your pattern. Congratulations! 1. Create a new 400px X 400px document / You can use any size document really. The reason I use a 400px square document is just so it is easier to keep any maths straight in my head, without having to resort to the calculator. 2. Make sure SMART GUIDES are turned on. / This makes it as easy as possible to align you paths. / 3. Create a straight vertical stroke going from the top to the bottom of the artboard. / Click on the top of the artboard and hold shift wile dragging to the bottom to constrain the line to a perfect vertical. You should see the endpoint snap to the edge of the artboard as you get close. 4. For the sake of this tutorial, give your path a stroke of 5pt so we can see it easily. / You can use any sized stroke(s) and combination of strokes in your own design, this is just so you can follow along. 5. In the context sensitive toolbar at the top of your screen, make sure your path is 50px on the X axis, 200px on the Y (assuming your transform anchor point is set to center) Has 0px width and is 400px High. / 6. With the path still selected, go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag… Set the size to 40px, Ridges per section to One (1) and turn on smooth points. / Feel free to use your own settings here, just be aware that to make the pattern tile, you must use odd numbers for the Ridges per section setting, this way the path will enter at the bottom in the same place it left the top. / 7. With the Path still selected, go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform… Set the settings to / One (1) copy, Reflect X, Move horizontal 100px / You can play around with these setting too. Try moving the Horizontal setting to 50px, now you will have an overlapping path giving you a twisted look. / 8. Again, with the path still selected, apply another instance of the Transform Effect. Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform… / You might get a warning telling you that you already have a Transform Effect applied, select apply new effect and enter these settings. One (1) Copy, Move 200px Horizontally. / 9. Now we have the basis of our pattern. To add the other details we will start by creating an oval centred on the bottom left corner of our artboard. / With the Ellipse tool selected move your cursor to the bottom left corner of the artboard and you should see the word intersect appear next to it. Click and drag while holding Option (alt on a PC) to draw the shape from the centre. Draw out an ellipse like the one shown below. The size isn’t important, just make sure it is centred on the corner of the artboard. / 10. Now we need to make our copies of our ellipse. With the Ellipse still selected go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform… and apply these settings. / Two (2) copies, Move 200px Horizontally. 11. Apply a second instance of the Transform effect with these settings. One (1) copy, Move 400px Vertically. 12. Create a new ellipse or copy the one we just made and place it inside the wavy lines. The centre point should be 100px on the X axis and 200px on the Y axis 13. Apply a Transform effect with these settings, One (1) copy Move 200px Horizontal If you copied the original ellipse you will need to delete the second instance of the transform effect and change the first instance to One (1) copy 14. We are now ready for some colour. For our background we simply draw out a box that is larger than the artboard. It doesn’t matter how much larger as any excess will be trimmed when we generate the pattern, just make sure it extends past the boundary of the artboard. A 410px square centred on the artboard would do fine. Give it a fill colour of you choice and no stroke. Move this layer to the bottom of the stack. 15. You can colour the ellipses any way you want, I used a combination of different sized strokes set to inside as well as a fill. You can see my settings in the screenshot below. You can see that I have also used a dashed line for one of the strokes. 16. If you have made it this far well done! We are only one step away from generating our pattern. We need to define which part of our design will be used to create the pattern. To do this we create a new square shape the same size as the artboard (400px X 400px) and make sure it has no fill or stroke and is at the very bottom of the stack. This is the layer that tells Illustrator where we want the edged of our pattern to be. 17. To actually generate our pattern it is as simple as selecting all our layers by clicking on the radio button next to layer 1 and then clicking and dragging everything to the swatches palette. / Alternatively you can select all by holding down command (control on the PC) and hitting A and then selecting EDIT > DEFINE PATTERN / To make it easier to see I have deleted all the unused swatches before dragging in our new pattern. 18. If everything has worked we should now have a pattern to apply as a fill to whatever we want. Hide layer 1 by clicking on its eyeball icon and create a new layer. Make sure the new layer is selected and draw out a shape, make sure you have its fill selected and click on our new pattern swatch to apply. / I have applied our new pattern to a 400px square. / To alter the pattern you need to make sure your Transform palette is visible WINDOW > TRANSFORM (or shift F8) Click on the small button on its top right corner and select Transform Pattern only. 19. Now by using the transform palette we can resize and move the pattern as well as rotate and shear it. I have entered 200px in the Width panel to half the apparent size of the pattern which shows us how it looks when tilled. Congratulations! You have now created a perfectly repeating pattern. Now that you know how its done, go and get creating. I would love to see any work that this tutorial has inspired so please drop me a Bmail to let me know what you have created, or better yet, post a copy of your work here for all to see. Admittedly this tutorial is pretty messy as it is my first one. If anyone has had trouble following my instructions or has any related questions or suggestions please don’t hesitate in commenting below. Happy patterning.
I’ve entered this over at Naked & Angry – if you like it please do vote for it!
For the past four years I’ve been experimenting with different ways to make interesting and attractive repeating designs out of photograp…
For the past four years I’ve been experimenting with different ways to make interesting and attractive repeating designs out of photographs. Would you like some to use? Last night I put 115 of them on a free tiling patterns page, to see what other people will find to do with them. They’re 300 pixels on a side, which is plenty for some applications: Photoshop textures, CD covers, giftwrap, scrapbooks, web design, decoration in 3D environments (Second Life, video games), posters, bookmarks, and design elements in larger compositions. In web pages you may want to reduce that to 150 or 100 pixels and cut the contrast if you want to lay text over it. Please feel free to use them as you see fit, and alter them as needed for your application. If you find them useful, I’d love to hear about it.
Thank you so much hosts of “Bricks,Blocs,Tiles and Mosaics” for featuring me this week. I was very surprised and thrilled….:)) / !http:...
Thank you so much hosts of “Bricks,Blocs,Tiles and Mosaics” for featuring me this week. I was very surprised and thrilled….:)) / This large wall mosaic is at Ventura Harbor Village at the entrance. / Ventura, Calif. / january 2009
The Last Fish” / / was featured in the group “A…
The Last Fish” / / was featured in the group Art Inspired by Dreams about 18 hours ago!!
Thank you very much , Jessie,Argeni and Danilo, for continuing your great work and for featuring 2 of my pictures in this group of wonder…
Thank you very much , Jessie,Argeni and Danilo, for continuing your great work and for featuring 2 of my pictures in this group of wonderful artist, I feel very blessed and this is a great start off for this new year 2009, hope all the artist of this group will have a prolific year! / Featured works: “peek a boo where are you” and ” the terra cotta tile roofs”
Recently I was inspired by mosaic artwork to create a digital mosaic from a portrait image. See Pixel Portrait...
Recently I was inspired by mosaic artwork to create a digital mosaic from a portrait image. See Pixel Portrait by me. The method I used was time consuming and a bit laborious so I thought I’d share a simple and faster method that, although it has its limitations, creates acceptable results. Important Notes This tutorial will be using a Photoshop filter from the Stylize category called: Tiles. This filter tries to replicate the look of a mosaic of square tiles; with the varied placement and tile spacing. For ‘Pixel Portrait’ I wanted a uniform grid of tiles with control over the tile spacing so I didn’t use the Tiles filter. But after experimenting with the filter later I found that if the Offset percent variable is about 4 or lower, the filter produces a uniform grid. This limits the size of the tile spacing which is the limitation mentioned earlier. If you want crisp vector-like tiles in your finished artwork you should avoid resampling the image as this introduces anti-aliasing which softens the edges; spoiling the clean effect. I suggest deciding the final image size and resampling your image, before you start the transformations. Preparing The Image 1. Adjust the contrast and brightness if necessary: Image>Adjust>Brightness/Contrast Mosaic Filter To replicate the plain tile look of a mosaic we need to convert our continuous tone image to blocks of solid colour/tone. 2. Filter>Pixelate>Mosaic Adjust the cell size until the squares are the size you like. Make the number an even number, e.g. 20. This is important for the next step. Calculating Squares We need to calculate how many squares we have horizontally across the image. 3. Image>Image Size Check the Pixel Dimensions section at the top and note the width in pixels. Eg. 840. 4. Divide the width in pixels by the cell size used in the Mosaic filter options. E.g. 840 image pixel width by 20 mosaic filter cell size = 42. / 42 is the amount of squares horizontally across the image. Foreground Colour Before we apply the Tiles filter to create our mosaic we need to change the Photoshop foreground colour to a colour e.g. bright green for a black & white photo or a tone e.g. 50% grey for a colour photo. This will allow us to select the ‘grout’ between our tiles and put it on a separate layer for later colour selection. E.g. if the ‘grout’ is black or white and the tiles range from black to white we will have difficulty in separating the grout from the tiles and thus, selecting it for whatever reason. 5. Click on a relevant colour in the Swatches palette. This will change the foreground colour to that colour. Tiles Filter 6. Filter>Stylize>Tiles Number of tiles: 42 / Maximum offset: 1 to 4 % (5 and above adds randomness) / Fill empty area with: Foreground colour What we are trying to achieve is: the Tile filter matching the blocks we created with the Mosaic filter, so all the ‘tiles’ are one block with no part blocks showing through. That is why it is important to calculate the number of tiles across the image. You should now have your mosaic image with colour/tone ‘grout’. Separating The Grout We need to separate the ‘grout’ from the tiles. 7. If the Background layer is locked: Double click the layer. / Click OK. This changes the Background layer to Layer 0 and unlocks it. We need to select the ‘grout’. 8. Magic Wand tool: tolerance 1. / This will make the Magic Wand select only 1 colour. Select the ‘grout’. We need to hide the ‘grout’. 9. Select>Inverse (Ctrl+Shift+i) Click Add Layer Mask at the bottom of the Layers palette. This hides the ‘grout’ and leaves the resulting area transparent. We need to create the separate ‘grout’ layer. 10. Click ‘create a new layer’ icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Double click the Layer name and call it: Grout. Click a suitable ‘grout’ colour/tone on the Swatches palette. / This changes the foreground colour. Press Alt+Delete to fill the layer with the foreground colour (or Ctrl+Delete for the background colour). Drag the Grout layer below the Mosaic layer. You should now have the Grout layer showing through the masked area of the Mosaic layer and the basic image completed. Converting Colours/Tones To convert a black & white image to a one hue image: Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U) Check the Colourize box. This converts the image to a colour but only in the one selected hue, e.g. shades of blue. Adjusting the Hue slider lets you choose a particular hue. The Saturation slider controls intensity of colour and the Lightness controls brightness. To convert a colour image to a black & white image: Image>Adjustments>Desaturate (Ctrl+Shift+U) This is a basic form of conversion but suitable for this project.
Congratulation! My design has been accepted and is now viewable for voting and commenting… it has been advised to tell my friends and o…
Congratulation! My design has been accepted and is now viewable for voting and commenting… it has been advised to tell my friends and others to get voting through guerilla tactics otherwise known as shameless self-promotion. So if you love me and even if you don’t… jump onto the bandwagon and get voting for Tribal Life... it took me forever and then some to get this seamless pattern tiling… and I’m stoked on the finished product… now help me get it printed :)
I have a spa bath. N-yah-hah! N-yah-hah! No, that was nasty of me. I’m sorry you don’t have one too. / However, like all things that …
I have a spa bath. N-yah-hah! N-yah-hah! No, that was nasty of me. I’m sorry you don’t have one too. / However, like all things that retain their new gleam for a while mine has started to look as if a bit of elbow grease wouldn’t go astray. / I scoured the supermarket shelves, and found the very product. So today I undertook the task. How easy could it be? / Following instructions I filled the bath with cold water to just above the jets. Fine so far. Next instruction was to pour 50mls of this super duper liquid in. 50mls? Hmmmm. How to measure that? I didn’t want to use a medicine glass as I was a little worried that the toxic (and no doubt spa bath cleaner is toxic) residue might kill the next person who was taking medicine from the glass, hopeful of a cure. / So I poured a bit in. Then a bit more. Well, more has to be better, I figure. Now this is where I fell down. I should have read the next bit, rather than skipping to the following step which said, turn all jets on for five minutes, and turn the exhaust fan on as well. That meant pressing the button for the jets on the floor of the spa, and the button for the side jets, and clicking the switch for the overhead fan. Easy. / I wandered out to read the Sunday paper, and wait for the five minutes to pass. However, of course I had to go back and have a look. I must admit I got quite a fright when I did! / Foam was generating itself at a frantic rate, rising up a full foot and more above the bath, climbing the tiled walls, and spilling out onto the floor and making its way across the floor tiles towards the door. / Now I didn’t want to turn it off – I wasn’t about to waste all that water, nor the obviously more than 50mls of spa bath cleaning stuff. So I cleverly scooped up armfuls of foam and hurled them in the general direction of the basin. However, in no time at all it seemed, the basin was full with a peak of white thick suds rising like some crazy giant sized ice cream sundae. / I really needed a bucket, but where to put the suds? The window has an insect screen, so I couldn’t chuck bucketfuls out there. At a complete loss, and watching more and more foam rise and rise, I did what anyone would do, and went in search of my camera. / I took a shot just to prove it had happened. I don’t know why my family all seem to think I tend to exaggerate! / At the end of the seemingly never ending five minutes, I groped under the foam and located the two buttons to turn the jets off. I swear the foam still seemed to grow. / I then consulted the side of the bottle for further instructions. That’s when I read the bit that said, after adding 50mls, ‘Foaming may occur’. You’re telling me! / The next bit was to let the water out of the bath. Now it was a cold winter morning, the bathroom is tiled and therefore even colder than the rest of the house, I could barely see the bath, let alone find the plug, and with all the suds, I had to lean into the froth, jumper sleeve pushed up as far as it would go, and grope for the plug. During this little exercise I realised that the coldness around my ankles was the foam that lay a good six inches deep on the floor seeping into my shoes. I bravely held my breath, plunged my face into the toxic suds, and found the plug. Standing up I found I had a coating of suds on my, er, chest area, as well as a wet jumper sleeve. / The water slowly drained out of the bath. I knew this from hearing it, as I couldn’t see it for the froth and bubble. The water was gone, but the suds lived on. I once again did what any sensible person would do, and went away! / Finally I was brave enough to return and found the suds has somewhat dispersed, and the big clean up was now required. This took paper towels, cloths, a mop, a bucket, and a heap of swearing. / The bath looks pretty clean, and I’m considering writing to the manufacturers to tell them that, if the bit they put in this stuff isn’t toxic, they should patent it for bubble bath manufacture. Its certainly the most effective part of their cleaner – in fact, I’ve never seen a clearer representation of advertising hype. ‘Foaming may occur’ – all I want them to do is change that to ‘Foaming WILL occur – take cover’.
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