"My blue feathers" pattern.

Hello! so pleased you visit me! thanks a lot!





I have designed a feathers pattern and I thought it could be interesting to write about the designing proccess I followed to create it.

I found  a pigeon feather on my desk some weeks ago. My son told me he had taken it in the street and brought it home. It seems to me it was a very pretty one, so I had the idea of scanning it to see how it would look.

I used to traced all my patterns with my mouse pad, so it was nice to try other working methods. 

I scanned it on grayscale mode at 600 dpi. I am not an expert at photoshop at all, as all my patterns are vector and I don´t use it very much. But I like experimenting and tried to convert that feather grey image, in nearly a black and white one, using the image adjustments. I adjust  brightness and contrast, curves, levels and threshold manually. I looked for tutorials on google which helped me a lot, like this one http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/black-and-white/black-and-white-intro/. 

At the end I got what I wanted, a black and white leather. I know It was not a perfect convertion, and that there are more professional ways to do it but it was good enough for using it as the main motif of my pattern.

My designs selling on products at, http://society6.com/JuliaGrifoldesigns/My-blue-feathers_Print#1=45

Then I opened it at illustrator and traced it automatically. Then I ungroup all the vectors  elements. There were lots of  small vector icons and I  erased some of them, improve some lines with the pen tool and coloured them in different blue colours tones., till to get a nice feather.

I duplicated that blue feather and distributed them changing their sizes as a multi direction pattern. I realised it looked very nice but too simple and empty. I tried to design other motives, but it was very difficult to match them with the blue feathers ones. So I thought the best was to add other similar feathers but in soft grey colours down the blue ones.It was  a very simple repeat to make, nevertheless it took me lots of changes as I didn´t like the composition.  

At the end I chosed a light grey as solid colour background  as I thought it made the pattern elegant for home products.  I am happy with the result and with the comments received on my facebook or Society6  page.  I have already licensed this design for an American brand, but it is too early to comment more about it!!


I hope to create other colour ways! 
Have a great weekend!