Figure drawing has always been my crutch so I’ve been re-learning the basics lately. Well I had a lot of practice drawing people back in art school – in fact we had an entire semester devoted to it but after years of relying on digital tools, sadly my skills deteriorated over time (see proof in my art style evolution blog post). Among my resolutions for the year was to hone whatever skills I developed in my early years and pick up where I left off.

I don’t post them online but each night for the past month I would draw human forms in different positions and let Arnold (who obviously is a whiz at figure drawing) check them for flaws. Below are some initial practice sketches from a month ago (waaah, don’t laugh 😳 ).

Now you know why I’ve always been drawing cartoon style, I was pretty bad at realistic figure drawing. Arn is a very strict teacher actually, he would give me drills and make me re-draw over and over until I would get details right. (He *should* hold workshops, don’t you think?)

It really helped me find the right path again and soon, I was able to draw those colored pencil illustrations posted above and this one below.

Kinda leaning (hah! ????) towards figure drawing these days. ?? #illustration #coloredpencils #artph

A photo posted by Cynthia Bauzon-Arre (@arncyn) on Feb 23, 2015 at 10:49pm PST

More soon, guys. I’m also busy working on an interesting personal project which you’ll see work-in-progress pics of in my Instagram.

I was in the middle of turning those vintage camera doodles on the left into a seamless digital pattern for my online stores when I thought, hey this is a good time to make another tutorial. I do know how much you (yup, all 3 of you) like reading about my design process. 😉

Step 1: Doodle, scan, clean up in Photoshop (I’m still using a Jurassic CS3 so if you’re using a newer version, you can disregard this entire blog post huhuhu). Some points to remember:

• save your doodles in grayscale, TIFF format
• clean it up, erase all pencil marks, close all broken lines
• once clean, make another layer for your doodles and change the mode from grayscale to bitmap then change it back to grayscale (this will allow you to easily select and remove the white background)

Step 2: Create a new file for your pattern. I usually start with a 1500px x 1500px file. Paste your cleaned-up doodles into that file and arrange them however you like on the page.

Step 3: Add color to your drawings.

• make separate layers for the background, outline, and fill color(s) so you can easily make variant colorways in the future
• once you’re happy with the colors, duplicate all the layers and place one “untouched” set in a folder and turn off the “eye” symbol to make it invisible for now
• important: leave the background as a separate layer

Step 4: Merge the outline and fill layers of your drawing.

• an additional precautionary step I take is to select the entire file and then go to Image > Crop in the dropdown. This way, tiny pixels that could mess up the next step will be eliminated.

Step 5: Select the merged layer and choose Filter > Other > Offset¹. Type in a number that’s half of your document size in the pop-up. Since my file is 1500px x 1500px, I typed in 750 for both horizontal and vertical instances. Your drawings will scatter to the edges.

• remember to tick “wraparound” in the popup box
• check to see if the images in the corners will connect with one another without gaps. This is why the “Crop” command I added in Step 4 is important. Sometimes tiny, hardly visible pixels will throw the alignment off.

Step 6: Remember I told you to make a duplicate layer for the drawings? Turn on the “eye” symbol and make it visible. Take the duplicate versions of the drawings and arrange them randomly to fill up the blank spaces. This is now your “Master” file. Save it as a .PSD so you can do edits later.

• I like to flip and scale the duplicate drawings to give the pattern a (in breathy voice) casually-thrown-together look. 😉
• see how I’ve left the background color as a separate layer? This way I can easily change it to make a variant of the pattern.

Step 7: Time to test your pattern. Select the entire page and go to Edit > Define Pattern. Type a name for your pattern in the pop-up.

Step 8: Make a new document in US Letter or A4 size (it really doesn’t matter). Create a layer, select it and go to Layer > Layer Style > Pattern Overlay. Select the pattern you just made in the Pattern palette that pops up.

Step 9: Inspect your pattern and watch out for elements that don’t align or are too close to one another. Edit your master file accordingly and repeat steps 6-8.

Step 10: Once you’re happy with the pattern, save your square master file as a JPEG. You can now use that to make fabric patterns in Spoonflower or Zazzle and make some extra pocket money.

I’ve yet to upload it to my stores (since I was *ahem* busy making this tutorial) but I do hope you’ll find this post useful. 🙂

UPDATE: Now available on fabric, wrapping paper, ribbons, and other fun items on Zazzle.

Vintage Cameras (White / Pink) Fabric by funkypatterns

1. if you’re using a different version of Photoshop, it might be located under a different dropdown[ back]

Here’s something I’ve been laboring on this past couple of weeks — a watercolor version of my floral alphabet. Progress has been verrry slow but that’s also because I haven’t been working on it as often as I should because I’m lazy because I keep finding other things I want to do¹  According to my Instagram, I started working on the alphabet on Feb. 1st. And here’s where I am so far.

(Do you lefties also paint from right to left?)

Hopefully posting it here will push me to finish it… OKAY. This time next week it *will* be done — I promise you, Universe!

I’m also thrilled to show you the proofs of my art cards.

I had them printed on 250 gsm lightly-textured archival & eco-friendly card stock so they’re sturdy and very nice to the touch. Although I had to slightly adjust the colors on my files because they printed darker than I expected, I’m very happy with how they turned out. Once the final prints arrive you can bet that I will open that shop I’ve been promising (myself, more than anyone else actually. 🙂 )

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And finally here’s my lovely friend (one of my bridesmaids!) April with the portraits of her Shiba dogs Mya and King. I just had to show you (with her permission of course) how happy she is with the drawings. 🙂

Mya (orange) is 6 and King (black) is 4 years old.  There are still very few Shiba inu parents here in the Philippines and April is among the few so if you’re considering owning one yourself, do check out her blog Owned by a Shiba.²

1. like watch TV. I just started Karamazov no Kyoudai, the Japanese drama adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov and it’s got me hooked.[ back]
2. It hasn’t been updated in a while but there’s a lot of detailed information on there about caring for and rearing Shiba Inus.[ back]