Using Nature as Inspiration

I love collecting leaves and flowers when out on walks to use in my pattern designs as inspiration and I wanted to show you the full process I go through when I create hand drawn motifs for my patterns.

First I have a good look at what colours and shapes are catching my eye. I take plenty of photos when I’m out on a walk for inspiration later on and for creating colour palettes. For now, we’re just looking for some good leaf shapes in which to draw from.

The process I go through from start to finish

Summary of steps:

1) Find inspiration

2) Draw from inspiration

3) Import work into illustrator and use Live Trace on drawings

4) Recolour artwork

5) Use motifs to make the repeat tile pattern

1.Find inspiration in Nature

Walking through nature is not only good for your mental health (it lowers your cortisol levels) but it’s also increasingly rewarding in terms of the shapes, colours and patterns it offers for us pattern designers. There is boundless inspiration just waiting for us to capture and use in our design work. So, what do you look for?

First thing I do is this: I zoom in. So what does this mean?

This means that I select a tree, a bush, a hedgerow, a field, wherever I am and look REALLY closely. I start just by walking and see what catches my eye. It might be a particular leaf shape or a colour. As it’s spring time, the leaves are just starting to come back on the trees so naturally there isn’t as much green-wise to use for inspiration, but there is still plenty of inspiration to be found. Once you slow down and really look at what at your surroundings, you will begin to see things that you simply didn’t see before!

So, after you’ve collected a variety of leaves or flowers, what do you do with them?

Lay them out on your desk or table and really look at the shapes of them. We’re using them as a STARTING POINT and for inspiration, so your drawings don’t have to look exactly like the actual leaves (unless your going for ultra detailed life like).

You can see below how I’ve laid out my selection of leaves I collected on my desk together with my sketchbook that I’ll be drawing in later.

2. Draw from Inspiration

Now it’s time to draw the shapes of the leaves. I only opt for the basic shapes as I’ll be adding my own unique twist on the details later. You can be as detailed or loose as you wish, whatever your particular style is.

After I’ve drawn the basic shapes, I go over them with a thicker black ink pen. I’m using the Sakura Micron pens in thicknesses 03 and 10 but you can use whatever pens you like.

I start by adding some thicker lines where I think it will look good. This is a personal thing and what you draw will be very different to what I draw. There is no right or wrong here. Just do it the way you wish and what makes you happy when you look at it!

I keep drawings leaf shapes until I have them all drawn. Then I start going over them with the thicker black ink pen (I use the Micron pen size 10).

I keep going until I’m happy with them and add some of my own unique lifework details. I love adding little shapes within the leaves to make them look a bit more interesting, but you can add your own details or just leave them very simple leaf shapes with no details.

Once all the drawing is done, I take a photo of my sketchbook pages with my iPhone and airdrop them to my computer. I then import the photos into Adobe Illustrator and use the Live Trace feature to turn them into vector shapes. Now I can recolour them and make them any size I wish. Below you can see the sketchbook pages on the left with the original drawings and on the right, the drawings now turned into vector shapes ready to be used in a pattern.

3. Use Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator

Once I have the vector shapes created, I get working on designing a repeat pattern with my drawings. As with any pattern, it takes a while to get it just right, with plenty of tweaking and re-arranging to make sure no gaps or visible lines appear in the pattern.

I opted to create my colour palette from a photo I took of some logs that had been used to create a wooden structure. I thought the colours within it were great with warm oranges, creams and browns.

4. Recolour Artwork

I created a colour palette from a photo I took of some a log structure I saw in a local wood. you can use anything to create a colour palette from!

5. Make the repeat pattern

You can see the finished pattern I created below with the leaves I drew and the colour palette I created above. Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration and I really hope you try out using some leaves in your pattern designs or artwork soon.

So there you have it, a completed pattern design using hand drawn leaf motifs inspired by nature. I do hope you’ll try out drawing your own leaves for your pattern designs or artwork!

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