Seamless repeating Mexican Pattern

Create a seamless repeating Mexican Pattern from DigitalArts Magazine bringing together some of the content from the Illustrator workshops for fashion students.

Constrain your drawing.

A helpful tip to enable you to draw at a specific angle. Think isometric.

Back To Basics

The dreaded pen tool.

The pen tool will easily be your biggest enemy when learning to draw in Illustrator but be your best friend when you have mastered how to use it.

You can of course use the pencil tool to draw in a more intuitive and direct way but doing so creates more work for yourself that needs tidying up later with spare anchor points and stray lines everywhere. Not helpful when you are trying to draw an accurate and precise flat drawing or spec sheet.

Remember that drawing in Adobe Illustrator is like putting pegs in a board and attaching string from one peg to the next. Unlike Adobe Photoshop which is more akin to traditional drawing ink on paper.

In Photoshop if you want to edit a line you may use the eraser and repaint your line in its new place.
In Illustrator if you want to edit a line you just need to more the pegs and the string follows.
Drawing in Illustrator is like placing the start and end points, Illustrator will draw the bits in between.

Comprehensive guide

What's in a drawing?

I have downloaded a flat from the WGSN Resource Library and exploded it so you can see what makes up the flat. What at first can look involved and complicated in fact is simple.

Pleats please.

Somebody asked me if there was an easy way to create a basic pleat in Illustrator.

Pleats can be drawn as a row of parallel lines, each one the same as the next.

But what if those pleats are more fluid, change their profile from one to the other and you want them to blend smoothly.

Then you might want to try using the Blend tool.


1. Draw your two lines, the start and the end profile.

2. Select both lines and in the Menu bar select Object, Blend, Blend Options...

3. In Blend Options you can specify how the blend is made. For this example use the following:

4. Next select again from the Menu bar, Object, Blend and this time Make Blend.

5. You will end up with a smooth blend from one shape to the next in the number of steps you specified.

6. You can change the shape of the blend by selecting one of the start or end profiles with the Direct Selection tool and just reshaping it. The blend will refresh itself.

7. To use these lines as part of your drawing you will need to Expand its appearance.

This will let you add, remove and edit each line individually.

Search: blend tool illustrator fashion videos

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Search: blend tool illustrator

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Colour mixing online

Have a look at this if you are looking for some colour inspiration or a way to create, save and swap colour palettes:

http://kuler.adobe.com
You can register and save all your custom palettes to be used in Photoshop and Illustrator.
For example:
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/75242
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/106002

You are even able to make a palette from an image you upload or have loaded into Flickr
http://kuler.adobe.com/#create/fromanimage

Here is a video explaining briefly how to use Kuler

You can also have a look at ColourLovers for more colour and pattern palettes.
http://www.colourlovers.com

Comprehensive Guide to all the brushes

Here is a very comprehensive guide to all the Brushes available to you in Adobe Illustrator.