Julia Rothman Demystifies the Repeat Pattern in Her Skillshare Class (Sponsored)

Illus­tra­tion is all around us. We often pic­ture it on book cov­ers and among the text in mag­a­zines, but its influ­ence reach­es much far­ther than that. Prod­ucts, from some­thing as small as your cof­fee mug to as big as fur­ni­ture (or larg­er), are anoth­er type of appli­ca­tion for the illus­trat­ed image. And what pairs well with a prod­uct? Repeat pat­terns! Though they look com­pli­cat­ed, cre­at­ing them is eas­i­er than you think; espe­cial­ly when you take Julia Roth­man’s Illus­trat­ing Pat­terns: Cre­at­ing Hand-Drawn Wall­pa­per class on Skill­share.

Right now, you can enroll in this class (and thou­sands more) for less than a dol­lar. Skill­share is offer­ing three months of their pre­mi­um sub­scrip­tion for just $0.99. When you sub­scribe, you’ll have access to Juli­a’s course, along with over 18,000 oth­er classes—from illus­tra­tion and beyond. Over the past year, I’ve tak­en a cou­ple of help­ful sketch­book class­es that have allowed me to hone my skills.

Juli­a’s class begins with a quick intro­duc­tion of who she is—someone that loves and makes pat­terns. Pat­terns are her business—she’s cre­at­ed wall­pa­per, sta­tionery, and home decor items dec­o­rat­ed her draw­ings. If any­one is going to teach you this tech­nique, it’s her.

The class is short and sweet at 25 minutes, and it covers two approaches to creating repeat patterns of your own.

Juli­a’s assign­ment is sim­ple but a chal­lenge: draw a repeat pat­tern based on objects in your home. She lays out what this entails before get­ting into the nit­ty-grit­ty of her tech­nique; first, she’ll find 20 objects, draw them on paper, and then cut the paper a cer­tain way. After that, she’ll xerox the paper “a mil­lion times” and then line it up to make a set of wallpaper.

What excit­ed me about this class is that it’s com­plete­ly ana­log. I use as lit­tle dig­i­tal tools as pos­si­ble for my work and the thought of hav­ing to nav­i­gate illus­tra­tor and make a repeat pat­tern was daunt­ing. But, as Julia points out, the approach she uses is a foun­da­tion for work­ing on a motif on the com­put­er.  For the pur­pos­es of her class, how­ev­er, you just need paper, a pen, an X‑Acto knife, and tape. Oh, and access to a copy machine. Here’s my repeat pattern:

Each of the 8 videos in Julia’s class explores another facet in learning how to make a repeat pattern.

The joy of tak­ing a Skill­share class is that you get insight into how some­one thinks. As Julia draws, she explains her rea­son­ing for why she places some­thing or ren­ders it in a cer­tain way. Because we don’t often hear pro­fes­sion­als nar­rate in this way, these moments of Juli­a’s class prove just as valu­able as learn­ing the repeat pat­tern tech­nique itself.

I’m not going to spoil Juli­a’s class—it’s some­thing you’ll have to learn your­self! Now’s the best time to join Skill­share because their pre­mi­um sub­scrip­tion is $0.99 for three months. So, if your New Year’s res­o­lu­tion is to spark your cre­ative juices, you’re bound to find some­thing you love here. Just click here to redeem.

This post is sponsored by Skillshare but words and opinions are my own. Thanks for supporting the brands that support Brown Paper Bag!