Digitize traditional art work in Affinity Photo for Patterns

About This Class

Are you an artist or illustrator that works in traditional mediums and are interested in surface pattern design? Do you perhaps paint with watercolors or gouache or sketch with color pencils and want to learn how to translate your art work into the digital medium for commercial use as surface pattern repeats? Well, in today’s class I am going to walk you through how to digitize traditional artwork and translate them into surface pattern designs using Affinity Photo on the iPad. Working with traditional mediums doesn’t mean you have to always create your repeat by hand and in this class I will show you my process for taking traditional artwork into the digital realm that still keeps its handmade look!

Hello everyone! If this your first class with me, welcome! If you are a returning student, welcome back! I am Jen and I will be guiding you through this creative course. I’m a freelance graphic designer, illustrator and educator based out of the midwest and I run Bella + Sophia Creative studio. If you want to learn more about me, check out my youtube channel: The Freelance Life. There, you will get a behind the scenes view of the work I do as a creative freelancer and educator as well as access to a huge library of additional free tutorials relating to art, design and illustration. I am a huge advocate for sharing knowledge in accessible ways and I have found online courses and places like Youtube are great places for this and help me to connect to a diverse group of people looking to learn and grow.

In today’s class, we are going to be exploring the creative place where traditional art meets digital art. While I often work digitally, I do enjoy watercolor and other traditional art mediums like paint, graphite and color pencils. When you work traditionally by hand, you can still translate those pieces of art to a digital format for easier access for any commercial projects or projects that require digital files. Creating surface pattern repeats is a fantastic way to do this. We will go through the process of scanning artwork, prepping it for use in a repeat pattern, how to create the pattern in affinity photo, exporting your final file and some of the ins and outs of the affinity photo app.

If this is your first time taking one of my classes relating to surface pattern design - Definitely make sure you check out my previous surface pattern design courses - I have a variety that cover everything from basic level topics that walk you through the entire process of designing from concept to final pattern to more advanced classes that explore building specific types of repeats like half drop patterns and even specific styles like quatrefoil designs. While this class is focused on using the Affinity apps on the iPad, I also have courses that walk you through the design process using the desktop affinity apps on a computer.

What the class is about

In this class, I will walk you through my process on how to create a repeating pattern from traditional art - in my case watercolor work - using the Affinity Photo app. I will first grow through preparing my art work for use in digital formats. We will then go through tips for scanning your artwork to make it easier to isolate your design elements, the scanning process keeping in mind artwork size and dpi, how to clean up your artwork and the process for isolating your design elements. We will also review exploring color variations of your artwork. Then we will begin to build out the repeat pattern using the design elements in affinity photo. Finally, we will test and export the final for for use with print on demand sties like spoonflower.

Make sure to check out the class resources for some helpful tools you can utilize while working on your class project. You can also check out inspiration over on my surface pattern design Pinterest board.

Tools needed

iPad with Affinity Photo installed

Apple Pencil or stylus

Scanner and computer

Premade art work in a medium of your choice on non textured white paper

Who the class is geared toward

This class is geared towards anyone interested in learning how to translate their traditional or analog art to a digital medium and create repeating patterns with them in Affinity Photo. Whether you are a beginner or pro, this course will go through all the steps necessary to bring your traditional art work into the digital space.