Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #2 Laura Coyle - Illustratoring

This weekend has been a feast of learning! Last Thursday I tweeted the question: What size art board do you use to design repeat patterns on? I only got one reply! But it was probably the most valuable reply I could have wished for. A tweet came back from @eyecontactart telling me about the wonderful Laura Coyle's automatic repeat pattern tutorial and so off I went in search of Laura's tutorials. 

There are many of Laura's videos on YouTube but sadly the Renee Pearson website where Laura's classes are hosted is taking no more students. I seemed to have got in at the very last minute and have spent this weekend learning how to mimic the Ai 6 pattern tool in Ai 5. It's great to see a preview of your patterns live and I also picked up some general Illustrator tips along the way. Lots of things I didn't know about that are fundamental to using Illustrator properly! 

Here's a pattern I made using Zapf Dingbat glyphs - something I would never have thought of doing! A fast way to create simple shapes.

I'm self taught on Ai - I haven't really delved into all the resources available on Lynda.com or elsewhere and relied on what I had learned as part of my ABSPD course which was basic but proved sufficient for a good while. I do think it's important to know the look you're trying to create and then seek out the skills to achieve this rather than knowing Illustrator inside out but not having an idea what to create! A balance of developing style and skills is what is needed.

It's been a fantastic weekend and I've still lots more to do - I've decided to do at least one lesson a day now in Basic Illustrator just to make sure that I'm not missing some other vital skills. There's been a lot of "Oh, that's how you do that," and "Oh I always wondered about that," this weekend! And a lot of pyjama wearing too! 

If you are using Ai 4 or 5 and would like to learn about automatic patterns, there's a video here from Deke's Techniques where Laura originally got the idea from. Then this is Laura's follow on video from her paid for tutorial on how to make swatches, which as I said, is not really available at the moment I don't think. It doesn't really follow on from Deke's video exactly - you need to have multiple artboards in place but maybe it's possible to understand this by watching these two videos side by side. If anyone really, really wants me to try and explain it you can email me but in all honesty I just really hope that Laura's classes will be available again soon as they are fantastic for beginners in Illustrator. She has a lovely clear, fast paced style of delivery and a really good working knowledge of Illustrator. 

So, that's all for now. I hope someone somewhere enjoys my blog. I'm certainly enjoying writing it! Please feel free to comment if you wish.
Enjoy your day,
Frankie x