Art Explained: Easy Shirt Patterns

This time on Art Explained, i'll be talking about how easy it is to make half-decent shirt patterns using Blending Modes.

1: Shade the clothing

Admittedly the hardest bit, but really it doesn't matter how you do it - since the blended pattern is going to use this for it's own shadow and light it'll 'fit in' no matter what.

2: Draw the pattern

The colours you'll use here depend on the blending mode you're using. Soft Light can use light and dark, but i regularly use Multiply where slightly-dark colours work best.

For the check shirt pattern, i've used two separate layers so i can do transparency later.

I've put the pattern in a folder and set that to "Clip to the Layer Below" so that they don't overlap the shirt shading. Why waste time drawing a proper mask eh ;) 

3: Blending Mode

Blending Modes are basically magic. In Clip Studio they're in a dropdown menu next to Layer Opacity, and i occasionally mess around with them to see what the different options do. As i've said, Multiply is my go-to choice but Soft Light and Hard Light have helped out in the past.

4. Tweak Transparency and Done!

Because i wanted the overlapping lines of the check pattern, i've made both pattern layers slightly transparent - but transparency is also almost always useful for compensating for going too light or too dark with my pattern's colour. 

And there we go - a super easy way to zazz up your clothing patterns :)   I've got a technique I use for fur patterns that could also come in handy for clothing, look out for that in future! 

Also worth noting, i'm aware some painters ( god tier level ) do all their shading in black and white and add colours afterwards, which both blows my mind and invalidates this technique entirely :P 

If you read these posts (and actually enjoy them) let me know. If you don't enjoy them, but by chance have read this far, i still would like that feedback! I've got a couple more ideas for this series but ultimately it exists to give the $3 tier more value and it'd be good to appraise that value.