Designing Patterns By Hand

I love all methods of design, and for years, my focus was solely graphic design done digitally. It was a good 10 year stretch between college and the next time I picked up a pencil to work on artwork by hand. It’s not that I had an aversion to it, but working in graphic design had me so busy that I forgot how much I loved drafting art on a physical surface.

There are certainly benefits of working digitally. I rarely outline my pattern designs before I put ink to paper so the design ends up mostly being free thought. On larger pieces, I will sometimes draft out the concept or map out the project, but these smaller patterns tend to go straight to ink. When working in photoshop and illustrator, it’s easy to experiment and click the UNDO button every time you want to try something different or choose a new approach. However, with pen and paper, each stroke. and line needs to be intentional. There’s a much longer thought process and contemplation when choosing which elements to add to repetitive pattern. Yes, you could always sketch with pencil first before adding a final layer, but I’m often too stubborn for that. This also means that when mistakes are made, the design must be altered to work in the “flaws.”

There’s also nothing to say you can’t scan in the design and edit digitally after it’s completed or even mid process. A number of the patterns I’ve designed have been from the same sketch at different phases of completion or by applying different color sequences. Below is a new sketch in progress that I’ve added some different color ways. Not quite sure where it will end up, but I like how the base pattern is evolving.

For me, there’s a beautiful component to these intentionally laid designs. The meticulous detail and thought that goes into every pen stroke with it’s tiny imperfections create a final work that can’t be easily emulated from digital alone.