How to Make Plaids and Checks

 I skipped writing last week. I'm trying to get back into a once-a-week posting schedule but it doesn't always happen. This week, I want to share some ways to make plaids and checks. If you're a subscriber, you'll know that the next them is plaids and checks. (If you aren't a subscriber, you can become one here.)

I'm going to create my plaids and checks in Photoshop but these techniques should work in other similar programs. I also have a tutorial from 2015 that's fun for "complex" plaids so check that out. Let's start with checks.

In Photoshop, create a new square canvas. Mine is 3inches square. Using the Shape tool (it's the little rectangle icon), create a square that's half the size of your canvas. To do this, click once on your canvas and a menu will pop up. Type in your dimensions. You'll have exactly the right sized square and it'll look something like this: 

In order to make this a checkered pattern, I need two squares aligned to the top left and bottom right corners of my canvas. To get this perfectly aligned, I use the Alignment tool. Select your square. Click on the three dots (circled in the image) and select Canvas. This aligns your shape to the canvas, not to other objects or shapes. Select Left and then Top (1 and 2 in the image).

So now there's one half of the pattern. Do the same thing for the next square but instead of selecting Left and Top, select Right and Bottom. You'll have something that looks like this:

Now I want to make this a seamless pattern. To do that I first rasterize the squares. Right now they're a vector shape. Right-click on the layer and then click on the Rasterize Layer option. Merge these two squares into one layer for a transparent pattern, merge all the way with the white background for a solid black & white pattern. I want mine to be transparent so I'm going to turn the visibility of that layer off by clicking on the little eyeball.

Select the whole canvas and go to Edit>Define Pattern. A little menu will pop up where you can name your pattern. I called mine "transparent check". If you don't do this, it'll have a sequentially numbered name (mine was Pattern 758) and that's just useless.

Click OK and there's your pattern! You can use this with the Fill tool (bucket) or as a Layer Style (fx) or as a Pattern Fill layer in the Adjustment Layers panel. I'll use it as a pattern fill layer on a new canvas to test it out. 

In your Layers menu, click on the half black/half white circle icon to open the Adjustment Layers panel and select pattern (circled). You'll get a menu of patterns. Since this is my newest pattern, it's the last one WAY at the bottom. Click on it and tinker with it. I changed the scale of mine.

 And that's it! You can use the pattern with a clipping mask. You can add it to an existed layer and change the opacity or layer styles like multiply or screen. 

Creating a plaid is only slightly trickier. 

To start, I'm going to make a rectangle that is the same height as my canvas. It can be any widths. Right now, mine is 1in by 3in. I'm going to align it to the right and center using the method from above. Now I'm going to make a few rectangles of various widths but all of them will be 3 inches tall.

Here are my rectangles. Each one is the same height as the canvas and they're all aligned along the center. At this point, I rasterize each layer. Then, selecting all four layers in the layers panel, I duplicate the layers. While they are still selected, rotate them 90 degrees.

It's starting to look like a plaid! I have one set of vertical stripes and one set of horizontal stripes. I'm going to change the opacity of the horizontal stripe and test my pattern. Select all of the layers that you want in the pattern and go through the steps from above.

It's not the most exciting plaid ever but it works. 

Now here's where the fun starts! Go back to the original file and change the colors of the rectangles. You can make it as colorful as you like! 

Once I added my colors, I decided to change the opacity of the vertical strips to 75%. It makes for a more realistic pattern. I tested it with a Pattern Fill Adjustment Layer. And I changed the angle to 45 degrees.

And that's it! There are so many ways you can arrange rectangles to make plaids. Here's one more plaid and the tile I made to create it.

These are simple plaids. You can get far more complicated if you'd like! Look for inspiration, too, and just break down plaids into square patterns. And have fun with it! 

AND...you can save these patterns as JPGs to use in other programs, like Procreate. I do that all that time! 

Happy plaid making!!