Mid August is a busy time in our household. You may be feeling the same if you are a teacher and/or have children. With only a little time to paint this week, I pulled out a square repeat of 5 petal flowers that I had sketched out earlier this summer..

This post shows my process of going from painting to repeat. Follow along and let me know how you work through the messy middle of creating a repeat from watercolor artwork.

I painted a few flowers in a loose repeat. With time restrictions looming I did not follow through with all the details originally planned that you see in pencil. The flowers looked good alone so I went with them. I added a few flower centers along the side of the paper. I kept them separate in case I decide to vectorize the artwork later.

Scanning is always the first step. I opened the scan in Photoshop, removed the background, and began the process of eliminating the pencil marks. I was not careful to stay near the lines I had drawn. Sometimes pencil gives an elegant look to the watercolor. Here though, the lines didn’t make sense. I removed them and brightened the color overall.

The next step was to test the repeat using Pattern Preview in Photoshop. The flower along the edges was not well matched and my attempt to fix it didn’t improve the situation. It was better to remove it entirely and put a modified copy of another flower there instead. Next I dropped in the flower centers. I like them small and the high contrast is great. The individual flower colors needed only small adjustments which I accomplished with blends and hue/saturation tools.

The repeat needed a little adjustment but it wasn’t too far off. I added a background color along with a faint textured ground. Done!

This pattern will soon be available on Spoonflower. Check out my shop HERE.

Do you struggle to work your watercolor paintings into pattern designs? Let me know in the comments if you are interested in tutorials showing any of the processes I went through.

Enjoy the rest of August!