I haven’t been posting them, but I’ve been playing with seamless repeating patterns since the beginning of the year. While it’s mostly been flowers and other sort of geometric shapes, there was this one file I started with the intention to fill with as many unique, organic shapes as I could, and this pattern of sea critters started to take shape. It took me a three or four sesssions to finish it (over the course of several months!), but it’s finally done!

I learned a little trick while I was working on this one. I kept testing it out and in spite of all of the unique shapes, I was still really aware of exactly where the tiles were seaming. I had overlapping shapes, but it wasn’t until I started using certain motifs over again within the tile that the rhythm finally broke up enough for me and the pattern started to feel more natural to my eyes. The tiling isn’t 100% invisible, especially at this small size, but it’s a lot better than where it started (I don’t see any strong path of  white running through it anymore, for instance), and I’m really proud of this one

Tags: animals, art, ocean, patterns, sea life, vector

For the uninitiated, scratchboard is an art technique that is reductive- you start with a board that has two layers, and scratch the top layer to reveal the bottom. Little kids do this a lot with crayons, and the effect is cool. The grown-up version is also cool, but I like the digital version the best. Basically you make a brightly-colored gradient on one layer, fill with black on the layer above, and then use your eraser/pen combo on your tablet to render your subject (you’re using your eraser as your primary tool in this case. It’s reductive!). It’s more forgiving that way.

Is anybody interested in a tutorial? I think I’m going to make a tutorial of what is a really fun computer drawing technique.

And actually? I lied about not promoing a t shirt in this post. The merchandise for this design looks awesome.

Tags: aquatic, art, art technique, Friday Fish, ocean, scratchboard, sea life, sea turtle, t shirts