Making Ty's Floral Blazer (Patreon)

After all the conversations about AI "art," and to whom an algorithmically-created piece belongs, I've been thinking a lot about the reference material that I use in my own work. (A far cry from AI, but it's still related, imo.)

For Meighan, Berto, and Ty's floral patterned clothes in this chapter, it was tempting to just search out a pattern, tweak it, and plop it into Photoshop, but with this "what is art theft?" thought in the back of my mind, I decided to take inspiration (admittedly, a lot of it) from a found pattern, and draw over it to make it my own. 

This puts an extra hour or so into the process, but I learn more about pattern-making while I'm doing it, and the end result fits into the comic better. 

So, for you art nerds, here's a time lapse on Procreate showing how much I stole (again, I still feel it was a lot!), and how much I altered, and then my absolutely idiotic method of repeating and filling in the whole canvas. (If you're making a pattern, consider drawing within a square shape and just replicate the squares next to each other, instead of unintentionally filling in the shape of West Virginia and then awkwardly pasting the shapes next to each other, like I did.)

This is an unlisted YouTube video I posted just for you guys, but feel free to share it with your art nerd friends if you'd like! Has anybody else made their own patterns for something they were drawing?