Aerials Pattern Design
The original photograph
I shot this image in Bratislava. I loved that the bird was perched in the perfect position. With a near silhouette of all the roof-top aerials.
Photomanipulation
The image had a grey sky and a fiddly aerial at the bottom. I adjusted the levels to make the background clean white, then retouched out the unwanted fine details.
Tracing the image into Illustrator
The image was then traced into Illustrator. After a tidying a few stray paths the image was ready to use. I then had the thought to perhaps colour the bird differently. Creating second set of paths for just the bird meant it could be coloured independently of the rest of the design.
Creating the pattern repeat
I could see there was an obvious gap in the aerials photo where I could insert the repeated horizontal images, using Illustrator’s Transform function. The staggered ones are flipped duplicates of the first row.
Palette of colours
I have a wide palette of colours I use to experiment with – currently 48 colours. I methodically tried each of the 48 background colours combined with the 48 colours of aerials. I know this sounds bonkers but it works and isn’t too time consuming. The final touch was to try the varying the colour of the bird. The most successful bird colours where simple black, white or dark grey.
Creating this web page
The large full-screen slideshow at the top of this page appears to be one single image, but is actually only the pattern repeat. Your computer then duplicates this to fill the screen.
Buying My Designs
Products featuring my pattern designs are available to buy from my shops hosted by Spoonflower and Contrado. As well as fabrics by the metre, they can produce my designs in a range of home decor items including; tablecloths, bedding, cushions, wallpaper, cushions and wrapping paper / gift wrap.
