In Depth Process: Rats (Pattern/Surface Design)

Hello all! For this In Depth Process, I am going to go over the tools and materials I used to create my surface design pattern Rats. The process of making it an actual repeating pattern is a bit too long for me to cover here, so I'll mostly be going over the drawing portion. If you're interested in having a tutorial on that however, let me know in the comments below!

MATERIALS:

• Paper
• Graphite Pencil
• India ink pens
• Adobe Photoshop

The most difficult part of the process is figuring out how your drawing will line up enough to create a dynamic repeating pattern. However, after that, it's mostly drawing as usual. I began these drawings on paper with graphite pencils. I drew each rat separately so I could place them individually later on in Photoshop. After sketching, I lined the rats with ink pens and scanned them into my computer. 

In Photoshop, I separated the line work from the white background so I could color the lines any color I want. Again, I did this with each individual rat. Next, I painted in the rats main color under the line work and merged them so the line and paint were on one layer. It was then that I was able to move the individual rats onto one Photoshop file and play around with the positioning. I  only drew and scanned in 3 rats total, but I was able to flip some of them around and tweak some details in Photoshop so I had more variety. The last step I did was painting the tails because the placement of those was really reliant on the positioning of the rats' bodies. 

That is how I painted the initial tile (left image) to create my pattern (right image). Again, if you are interested in a tutorial about the actual making of a pattern in Photoshop, please comment down below. Also, if you have any questions about tips and materials please feel free to comment or email me! 

​-Sarah