How to Create a Pattern using ArtRage and Illustrator

Happy February!  First of all, thank you for everyone who read this little blog in January.  It was my most popular month to date and I love the attention :) I started this blog as a way to fill the time in my day as a stay-at-home mom of two little ones.  Now, I use it as a way to connect with other people who love art and paper dolls as much as I do, as well as a way to keep myself motivated to learn & create.  This is the longest running art project I've ever undertaken -- so thank you for the encouragement and I'll continue to make the best art I can!

And the art today is going to be fun! We're going to use ArtRage and Illustrator to create a pattern like the one I used on the reindeer Santa paper dolls.

Primarily, I use Illustrator to create the paper dolls on this site.  It's no secret how much I love that program.  Occasionally, I work in Photoshop, another program I love for entirely different reasons.  Even more rarely, I work with ArtRage.  I had a brief tutorial way back in 2013 about ArtRage. I like the program, especially for special effects that I can't achieve in Photoshop, but I frequently forget I even have that.  I should make it a goal to use it more this year.  ArtRage is available for virtually every device and the full version is under $50 (there's also a free demo).  Well worth it.

(Just so you all know: I have no affiliation with ArtRage and no compensation.  I just like it and want to share that information.)

To begin, open ArtRage.

I want to use the Paint Symmetry tool today and I find the best way to do that is to start with a square canvas.  Go to File > New Painting (or Ctrl-N).  Make your canvas any square size.  The default resolution is 72dpi, which is fine for this application.  I plan on making this into a vector in Illustrator.  If you plan on using this graphic in Photoshop or printing it, set the dpi to 300.

To open the Paint Symmetry tool, go to Tools > Paint Symmetry and select Paint Symmetry.  Your screen will look like the image above.  The default is four segments.  To add more segments, click on the center wheel and choose Set Number of Segments.  I chose 8.

I'm going to use the ink pen (circled on the left) and black (circled on the right).  The pen creates a nice, smooth line which is what I'm looking for.  You can adjust the size of the pen by using the percentage section of the tool wheel.  I chose black specifically because I'll be auto-tracing this in Illustrator and this give s me the best results.

This is the fun part -- take your pen and draw.  I'm drawing on my Surface, but you could do this with a mouse, too.  It's tougher but can be done.

It's hard to convey in one image and words what happens here.  I draw in one segment, and magically, I end up with 8 segments! You can be as complicated as you like with this.  It has a wobbly, hand-drawn look because, well, it's a hand-drawn.

Once you create a design that you like, you'll need to save it.  ArtRage uses a native file type (.ptg) which is fine in ArtRage, but I need this to be something more flexible. To save your image, go to File > Export Image File.  You'll get a pop-up with several options.  The default is a PNG file and that's what I'll use here.

Next, open Illustrator and the PNG from ArtRage.

Click once on your image with the black arrow tool to select it.  Once you do this, the menu bar at the top with change and include image trace options.  Click on the Image Trace drop down menu (circled) or choose the Image Trace icon (circled in the next image).

In this image, I have the Image Trace menu open.  The icon for this is item 1.  Select the Black and White option (step 2).  Click on the Advanced arrow (step 3) and check Ignore White (step 4).  Click Trace (step 5).  I wish Ignore White was the default setting but it's easy enough to track down.

With your tracing still selected, to to the top menu and choose Expand (circled).  This will give you a vector image. to play around with.

The last part of this is created a seamless pattern.  The current version of Illustrator makes this very easy with its pattern generator.  I can go over how to do this with older versions if there's a need or interest.

To create a pattern in Illustrator CC, go to Object > Pattern > Make.  This will tile your image using default settings.  The default in this case is a grid pattern.  Use the Tile Type and Offset menus to customize your pattern.

And here's one pattern option.  I took the original tile and rotated it so that it was a diamond instead of a square and tiles it using the Tile by Column option.  The pattern generator in Illustrator is great and I could just create patterns all day every day.

Auto-trace is handy, too, especially for hand-drawn art.  The more clear and clean the original art, the better the auto-trace.  That's one reason why I like drawing in Photoshop or ArtRage -- it feels like drawing on paper but the lines are more precise and easier for Illustrator to trace.

Look for another paper doll on Friday.  I sort of accidentally started a careers series.  If you have a career you'd like to see, just let me know! 

Creating a Simple Flower in Illustrator

Today is a day off from school and we really need it!  My oldest is almost over his pneumonia and I'm hoping this last day at home will get him well enough to go back to school.  It's been a tough week for everyone!

For today's tutorial, I'm going to go over the method I used to create the flowers in the Scandinavian inspired Santa paper dolls. I've been using this method since Illustrator CS4 and currently use it in Illustrator CC.  Basically, it should work in most versions of Illustrator.

Most of this takes place in the stroke palette so make sure you have that handy.

Start by creating a circle (hold Shift while dragging out an ellipse to make a perfect circle).  I gave mine a 5pt stroke and no fill. 

Next, go to the stroke panel.  Check the Dashed Line option.  To create wide petals, I used a 35pt stroke with a 60pt dash and a 30pt gap.  The stroke determines the width of the segment.  The dash determines the length of each segment.  And the gap determines the space between each segment.  The closer the stroke width and gap numbers are (in this case, 35pt stroke and 30pt gap), the smaller the distance between each segment.

I like to keep a working copy and a final copy.  In this case, duplicate the circle and we'll work with the duplicate.

With the circle selected, choose a fill color.  I want the fill to be the same.  We're going to combine the fill and stroke to create a single shape.  Continue to keep the circle selected and go to Object>Expand, then go back up to the Object menu and select Expand Appearance.  You get a pop up menu -- make sure you have fill and stroke selected.

You now have the fill as a circle shape and the stroke as an expanded shape instead of a stroke.  With both selected, use the Pathfinder tool to merge the shapes.

Once you're happy with your shape, you can layer and combine it to create a variety of simple flowers.  Different stroke, dash, and gap options will create a variety of different petal types.  Here, I layer the petal shape and scaled it, then added a circle for the center, and made sure that everything was aligned.  This can be made into a brush, pattern, or just used as a shape.

Up next, I'll have another paper doll on Friday!

Illustrator Tutorial: How to Create Lace Panel Brushes

It's been a while since I've written a tutorial.  Since creating the Santa paper dolls, I realized that I had some tings I wanted to share again.  So here's a tutorial I used to create a lace panel pattern brush. I've used this method on several projects, including this one and the cowgirl Mrs Claus. 

Start by opening Illustrator.  This should work in just about any version and would probably work in most vector programs.  Create a new file, any size.

The first thing I want to do is create the panel. I'm going to keep it simple.

Using the shape tool, create a square and circle.  Mine are each 200px by 200px.  With the shape tool selected, click once to get a pop up menu.  From here, you can define the size of the shapes.

Next, select the two shapes and align them through the center.  I circled the center align icon in red.  Once the shapes are aligned, I move the circle up until the bottom line of the square aligns through the circle horizontally.  This is why I wanted the shapes the same width.

Select the two shapes and use the Pathfinder to combine them.  I circled the unite option in the Pathfinder palette.

Once the new shape is finished, go to Object, Path, Offset Path.  Choose a negative number -- this creates a new path inside the shape.  This is where we'll start creating the "lace".

Make sure you have stroke selected and not fill.  Choose any color for the stroke and really, any width.  I'm going to make some dots here but any shape, single color brush, etc, would work here.

I wanted a series of perfect dots for this pattern.  To create this on the stroke, select rounded caps & corners, 0 dash, and any number for the gap that is equal to or greater than the stroke width.  In this case, I have a 14 pt stroke and 28 pt gap.  Once this is finished, to to the Object menu, select expand appearance with the stroke is selected, and then (while still selected) go to the Object menu and click expand.  There's a pop up menu -- make sure both stroke and fill are selected.

There are now a series of perfect circles, all lined up.  To create a lace look, we want to knock-out the purple section from the black section.  To do this, select both the black object and your series of circles, then go to the Pathfinder menu.

Using Pathfinder, select the divide icon (circled in red).  This will cut out the purple circles from the black background.

At this point, I can create the brush.  This shape can be as simple or complex as you want.  I have an example at the end that's more complex than this.

Delete all of the purple circles and you should have an all black shape with circles cut out.

With the shape selected, open your Brushes menu, click on the new icon (it's the small square in the bottom right), and select Pattern Brush.

Illustrator has created a pattern brush from the shape.  At this point, all you really need to change is the Colorization.  I like Hue Shift.  This enables the brush to become the color of the stroke.

And that's it.  Now you have a shiny new custom brush!

The top brush is the one we just created.  The second is a pattern I created.  And the third is the same pattern as the second, but applied to a circle.  Brushes can be applied to any path and the size can be adjusted using the stroke menu.

If you're really feeling it, you can also export the shape and use it in Photoshop as either a custom shape or create a custom brush there.

Anyway, that's how I do it.  It's a lot of steps but not really too complicated.  I'll have a new paper doll up on Friday!