The design process behind my pattern“Pure Lily”

Behind the scenes

Dec 4

Today I’d like to share the design process behind one of my latest pattern called “Pure Lily”.

I was motivated to create this project by a wonderful Skillshare class called Classic Pattern Styles: Learn to Design Arts and Crafts Patterns by surface pattern designer Bärbel Dressler.

This pattern is inspired by Renaissance paintings where the Madonna is often associated with the lily. As a matter of fact, according to the traditional iconography, angels offer white lilies to Mary as these flowers are a symbol of purity.

My intention was to create a pattern for wallpaper and to include two different layers as Barbel did in the pattern she created for the class.

THE MOTIFS

I started with very rough drawing in my sketchbook:

...and then moved to a more refined sketch.

From there I started to think about the overall flow of the pattern and tested my layout. Since I decided to design with wallpaper in mind what I wanted was to achieve a nice vertical flow.

After picking a colour palette I really liked, I created a coloured sketch to see how the colours could work together. I also started to think about including a background pattern and therefore traced some lines as a skeleton.

With the lines as a guide I drew a lot of small leaves and made them intertwined with the main motifs on the foreground. It definitely took a while to draw all the leaves, keep them consistent in size and shape and make sure to a achieve a good overall flow but i really enjoyed it as it was a very meditative process :)

THE FINAL RESULT

Here's the final pattern in three colour ways: