How To Draw Gingham (Patreon)

I have another little tutorial for you!

To continue on with the theme of the picnic cakes we drew earlier in the month, I wanted to show you how to draw a simple gingham pattern which is super simple but SO useful for drawing picnic blankets or for drawing on summery clothes.

It’s just three steps but it can be a really nice little detail to add to an illustration and I use it quite a bit, especially for picnic themed illustrations like this one:

So here are the steps to drawing a gingham pattern:

Start by drawing some vertical stripes in a light colour. I like to have the thickness of the stripes fairly consistent with the gaps between the stripes so they’re roughly the same.

Then draw the same stripes horizontally (if you’re drawing digitally then do these lines on a separate layer above the vertical lines).

Now for the most important part: make all of the areas where the lines overlap a much darker version of the same colour. A super easy way to do this in digital drawing software is to set the layer of lines on top to ‘multiply’ blend mode which will multiply the colours together (which is what I’ve done in this example).

And it’s as simple as that!

You’ll likely find yourself wanting to put a gingham pattern on something that isn’t straight and flat, so let’s say we have a picnic blanket that we want to have at an angle or a curve like in the examples above.

To fit the pattern to the blanket, draw the lines parallel to the edges of the blanket, matching the angle or curve of the edge. If the opposite edges are different angles, then adjust the angle of each of your gingham lines until they meet in the middle (like in the second example with a low perspective).

It doesn’t really need to be an exact science so give it a go and experiment!

Now you’re ready to draw lots of lovely picnic blankets and cute gingham outfits ❤