Lessons
Introduction: Tools and Source Images
31:19 2Block Demo Repeat: Reinventing the Source
18:28 3Block Demo Repeat: Painting
36:01 4Block Demo Repeat: Scanning Painting
19:23 5Block Demo Repeat: Coloring in Block
31:08 6Interview with Jen Rome
27:54 7Interview with Kate Murray
18:59 8Interview with Kate Woodrow
21:57Lesson Info
Paper Cut Demo: Drawing Out
Step one of my paper cut repeat and in the interest of time like hopefully I can get through everything today I'm a little concerned about making sure we do but I want to get again get the repeat as square as possible so I'm gonna start with my, um, square and I'm gonna move my computer and different from what we did earlier yeah this is on the overall pattern so like the iphone cover it's a pattern that's going to repeat sort of continuously and this is what I do when I'm making the repeats for fabric or for you know, wallpaper for example or for an iphone cover or um so I'm gonna go again with an eight by eight square um and uh I'm gonna actually met here I wonder if this is aidan ches how convenient would that be? Oh my god it is um it was like it was made for me um so I'm gonna do an eight by eight square and again this is just an outline and, uh try to uh just and we'll have a list of supplies up later today I think after the class has gone through the lives we we're going to give...
you a whole list of the paint's I'm using the scissors I recommend the sterile transfer paper on dh I will do my best to try to remember to tell you what I'm what I'm using again, this is the, um, if you're just joining us the borden and riley paris paper for penn. So it's it's a paper that is good for a non bleeding, with pieces of ink and some watercolor? Um, I'm actually gonna tear this one out right away from the from the pad because we're going to be doing some cutting of the paper and this is a really fun exercise even just to do with kids. Uh, are, you know, just for fun on the side, like I just there's something about this process that I love, I know something about cutting paper and taping it back together. It's very satisfying. Um, so I have my eight inch by eight inch square and really try to get this the paper is square is possible, I'm going to go toe step to so you can see what we're going to draw in the middle of the paper and avoid the edges and in this case, I'm going to do it with pencil um and I'm gonna pull out my inspiration images again, see if I have those, uh, see if maybe we can use something I can draw flowers like with my eyes closed, so maybe I should just stick with what I know, um, so I'm gonna go with this ship and, um I'm gonna go with the ship here and I'm going I like the way I don't know if you so much you can see here yes okay um the I'm drawing in the middle trying to stay away from the edges because we're going tio we're going teo cut the paper after and then re tape it together so that we're reconfiguring the pattern so that all sides match up once once we get to the final final scannable artwork and what what's different about this than what we did this morning is that this is what we did this morning repeats from left to right or right toe laughed however you want oh this it's all for side so you can take this tile that is your repeat and put it and it will create an overall never ending infinity repeat so I like these lily of the valley a lot I'm gonna play around with with those and I'm just going to take that one element out of here. I kind of think that's uh interesting and I love willie the valley and I can draw anything I want to in the middle of this and it's going teo is this we're having the same problem that you can't really can you see? Okay, no, I'm gonna play around with this idea of them sort of tear dropping off I'm a june baby so it's my flower of the month and I love how they go on both sides going to make sure that thing calm besides that one's a little uh a little uh I'm having to stretch a little bit to make and I'm you're welcome to ask me questions as I am drawing I know that things might have come up for you I mean I know that your question about like, how my day goes and time management I mean it's a really tough that's a tough thing to balance and I I often work back from deadlines and prioritize and I use my phone and my calendar a lot to make sure that I'm staying on top of things and a lot of alerts to myself in my phone um so that I don't miss things but um it can be really stressful and I think I'm still learning about balancing the design and the fine art parts of my life given that that things have been growing so much lately and changing. So um I feel like I've been having so many new experiences over the course of the last couple of years and I'm really excited about hitting a stride with some of it and getting some of the processes down a little bit more so that I'm I'm not learning so much oh, all the time would be nice if there were a little some more things that were old hat that I kind of had down pat my first book my first repeat patterns my first everything so you have talked a bit about working with an agent but now I'm not sure if you talked about how you went about finding this particular agent or what you would recommend to people who might be thinking about that when is it time for an agent um that's a great question I started to feel like I was giving ben I was given a lot of opportunities um by other companies beyond the sort of one or two that I had been working with um anthropology and a couple others and I wanted to figure out um you know, they know a lot of the nuances of working within it particular industry uh agents do and I felt like I was in a situation where I was starting to be offered opportunities that, um that were, uh I didn't quite know howto advocate for myself in the way that I felt like I should I could do better and I also was starting to get a little overwhelmed by um which companies how to strategize moving forward and what was what was possible really and also they my agents have been doing have been been representing people for a long time so they have long standing relationships with certain companies and I have an easier time of putting themselves in front of the right people to have conversations about new artist so it started to feel a little bit like chasing down the money and negotiating the contracts and like working through all that stuff was it was something that I was spending more time than I wanted teo doing and if I could find someone who could help me figure out how to do that, then it would be, um it would it would help me do better with with my work and my my career. Um and I looked at several different agents and and I tried to find by looking at artists who had resumes that I admired wanted and I would like our brands that I felt like we're doing really great things I wanted teo see if I could see if they had agents and if they had agents, how could I you know, who were they? And should I watch more about what this particular person was doing? And how can I how could I you know what I benefit from working with them, things like that. So I, um I was watching a lot of jan's daughter or yang's daughter, um, who is a someone we mentioned earlier and she was she's been working with a new agency called moxie, and I really felt like what lotte had has been doing was it was really great and she's been growing quickly and I thought gosh, you know, I wonder if they would be interested in working with me as well and so I reached out and contacted her agency and they said sure, why don't you come on in and we'll talk and we talked things through and then I wasn't so sure I wanted an agent and then they were really sure they wanted to work with me so there was like a little bit of a back and forth for us which is great I mean I think that's kind of how it should be and then they really wanted me and we work together to figure it out and I talked to a couple other agents like lula rogers is probably a pretty well known agent and I wanted teo see what it would be like to work with her and they were interested possibly but then it sort of fell through and I think that was for the best in the end um I don't know so I think if you're watching other artists who are making things really interesting things happen with your career and you're seeing how they're working or who they're working with then that can help guide you in your own decision making so I'm avoiding the edges of the paper I've got my source image here and I'm gonna go ahead and show you um step number three which is to flip over the paper I'm gonna actually cut the extra paper off now um and try to be really if you have ah paper cutter at home that's really exact or a or an exacto knife and a ruler that's probably more accurate better way to go but I'm gonna do it the old fashioned way here on the reason I'm doing this is because you'll see I'm going to be cutting the paper some more and re taping it together and so that hopefully if it's really straight when I I'm cutting it that at the end when we scan it into photoshopped these will just click into tiles that will repeat very nicely and then I'm gonna walk you through how to make a repeat in photo shop and at the very least you'll be able to like from from just a small piece of liner like we'll do a little piece of art and then I'll scan that and then we'll make a repeat out of that and um hopefully we'll have time to go through all that before the end of the day so the front of the page is the part with my drawing and the back I'm now going tio mark in four sections summon a mark for inches in and for inches and so the center of the back all right so I'm gonna connect he's no good I'm sure they're more talented than I e exciting dizzy so four quadrants um and then I'm gonna mark wth um so I'm kind of feeling like this is the top of my design here um it doesn't you don't need a top because this is going to be repeating but I'm gonna mark please one teo three and four okay, we're gonna go to the next step step four so I'm going to cut the paper vertically and half I know it's like cut my paper there goes my design right in half from a beautiful lily of the valley um and I'm gonna, um um sorry this confused me every time this is why I had to have it all right now because I'm always like, wait, how is it again? But I suppose I was supposed to do that um and I have my tape, so you're going to re tape it together in this configuration to one for three, taping it back together, probably being a little overzealous in my taping. So now we're gonna go on to step five and I'm gonna flip the page back over and you can see now where the the page will there's like a blank space in the middle and the page will need to be you can fill in this area and now in that center apart so I can draw other elements so I could draw another leaf or I could do maybe I could even I can even adjust as long as you're staying away from the edge is that we've already cut and the and the top and bottom edge is you can work anywhere in this section as long as you're not working right on the edge because you could ruin what you have done your make it not repeat well so I can actually take that and say, oh, I don't know that I want this to actually repeat slightly differently I want us to come down and I'll give it another sprigg lily of the valley and so one of the beautiful things I think about this is that if you're referencing his material like this or some something visually and then you're making a pattern like this, it would be really hard I think teo make this not something original like I don't know how you could and be really hard to copy a repeat doing doing things this way I think it would be it's so straightforward I feel like to make this into a repeat that, um that is a one of a kind thing that original because you're you're sort of responding, teo what's there right? Like you're not you're creating that you're filling the space and if you tried to do it again, I look if I tried to make this again, I probably couldn't because I'm cutting it and putting a lot of time and energy into making it work we're just going to keep I like these little bobbles that don't really exist on like buds almost and then I'll go back in and do the, um the brushwork the same way I did before and we will color it as well yes how did you learn this again and what's it called? I'm calling in a paper cut repeat and I I did some research in books like basically learning how to dio paper cut repeats because I was trying to figure out like how do I make a repeat pattern for clients like, you know, anthropology and um and I needed to learn how to do it by hand because I wanted to retain what I was doing so I there are a few books in our resource is and I can speak to them think, uh textile design by simon clarke is a great book um and that's published by lawrence king heather ross prince is ah, a book that recently came out with abrams it's an s I think it might be an stc craft book, but it's heather ross prints by heather ross and mastering the art of fabric printing and design by lorry whispering is ah, another book and that's actually by chronicle and that was they're all really helpful and talking through basics of illustrator and photoshopped creating designs in photo shop and each of them has their own strengths. But I've sort of compiled this information through a little bit of this and a little bit of that and over time incorporated into my own process. Um, but I by no means am I the generator of this process, this is this is definitely something that's been done before. Okay, so I'm going, teo now move on to step six so I'm gonna unwraps step six. Um, I'm gonna untaes aped the drawing and tape it back together in the original format. Candy, right? Yes, I need the number and I over taped. So taping it back together in one, two, three and four. And then, um, step seven, I'm gonna cut horizontally this time so across that center line and then I'm gonna tape together. Three, four, one, two and this is why I now you're starting to understand why I need the instructions in front of me. Because I'm always like one, two, three. I don't remember, um, even though I've done this a few times, I don't remember, which is why I gave you the bonus material so that you can download it now I'm I am actually like I can see that I'm gonna have a few corrections to make in photo shop because it's I've aren't my hand cutting is causing you to be a little off but I think that will be fun then you're going to flip it back over again right so step uh step eight sorry yes um so I'm flipping it back over again and filling in this center part again staying away from the edge is making sure that everything is in the center deborah harry says molly is so clever how in the world did you figure this method out I did not e need to reinvent the wheel yeah no need to reinvent the wheel and you know julia rothman is ah designer who who makes a lot of her living off of creating repeat patterns and she's great she and she teaches this method as well I believe I feel like I've seen some of her mom her techniques demonstrated and it's it's like I think it's a really it's a really like age old fabric pattern techniques like nothing super special okay so then now that I've filled that out I'm gonna go to step nine and I'm going to flip it back over and I'm gonna tape it back together again in one two three four and I've like all these different pieces of you really have to know remember one dude okay so back together again one day two three and four and this, I'm gonna tape together back again, hopefully, as closely as possible. So having a piece of paper that slightly thicker in this case is actually quite helpful, because you're there's something kind of press against it's goingto find itself, register, hopefully back together again really well. And this is the pattern process. But, I mean, I feel like I use this the most and that's, probably why my patterns are sort of more all over. Um, and then teo, your patterns complete.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Miranda Kate
This was just the kind of course I was after to build on existing knowledge and formal training in art and design. There was so much information provided, not only for the work Molly was producing in the demonstrations but also in her candid and honest discussions surrounding building this type of business, PR and working with clients. What a great resource to find CreativeLive. I am so inspired and don't feel nearly as overwhelmed at the prospect of starting work in surface design. I actually appreciated Molly's instructional style particularly for the demonstrations and acknowledge how she was able to create a new beautiful artwork all while responding to questions and talking through the process. Loved it, so thanks a bunch!
user-cceb33
I didn't know who Molly Hatch was, was attracted by the subject and it absolutely blew my expectations. I took the course as a mosaic artist who wants to create more of their own patterns, and I learned a lot and felt tremendously inspired. I loved the creativity, the insights and tips on creative life from someone who lives it, and a new skill beautifully explained. Sometimes it felt a bit slow but it was absolutely worth going with the given pace to try and absorb this artist's intuitive, freestyle way of working, that works! I found it so enjoyable that I will watch it again. Yes in the beginning you couldn't see the drawing that well, but that was solved later and didn't really matter (as she started filling it out with black later).
Bunny Bear Press
I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this course and I loved every minute of it. I have enjoyed making patterns for some time but it was so awesome to see her different techniques for getting a better fitting more technical pattern for infinite repeating. Molly was an amazing teacher and I know I will be referencing this class over and over again to find new information that I might have missed the first time around.
Student Work
Related Classes
Surface Pattern Design