How to Start

1. Find Your Inspiration

2. Create an Inspiration Board

3. Use Words to Describe the Inspiration

4. Create Thumbnail Sketches

5. Begin Sketching the Elements for Your Patterns

Step 1: Find Your Inspiration

Think about what in your life or past experiences inspire you, and envision the details of your adventures. Is there a story to tell? Try to immerse yourself in your idea without thinking about colors just yet. If it is the ocean that inspires you, think about all the things that remind you of the ocean, and try to come up with an unexpected reminder of the sea by looking at it in a new way. Pursue all angles related to your idea. For example, you could look at sea biology, ecosystem, volcanics of the sea floor, or wave structure.

Step 2: Create an Inspiration Board

I use inspiration and mood boards to develop my ideas and themes for my artwork and pattern collections. Ways you can create the boards is to start with a Pinterest board and start pinning images that remind you of your idea and artwork theme. Don’t think too hard about the images when creating your Pinterest inspiration board. If you like the image, add it to your board. You can refine your inspiration board further and fine-tune your ideas as you think more about the theme.

Step 3: Use Words to Describe the Inspiration

Once you have your inspiration board started on Pinterest, you can begin to refine your theme more by using a list of specific words and ideas that are showing up on your board. Are specific elements central to the story you want your artwork to tell of your theme? List out all of the words that come to mind, and then using that list, go back to your inspiration board and refine it into a mood board that centralizes your elements. You will also want to include images that bring the colors that are coming to mind and include them in your new mood board for your theme.

Step 4: Create Thumbnail Sketches

Start creating small little squares on a piece of paper and roughly drawing out 5-10 thumbnail sketches of what you would like each design to look like and the elements that belong in each thumbnail. Assign specific words to each thumbnail from your list of words representing the artwork elements.

Step 5: Begin Sketching the Artwork Elements for Your Patterns

Begin sketching out each element individually in more detail. I use a three-phase approach when sketching my artwork, and I create all my sketches digitally in Procreate. Though, you could use tracing paper and pencil instead. Both methods work but Procreate is my favorite drawing app, so I usually work in the app.

Get my Sketching Guide!