What did you learn?
Through the process of creating the pattern man and all the different swatches on Illustrator, I learned a fair amount about the Swatches panel, creating layers and being able to use the different tools (such as duplication, rotation, and opacity) to create patterns. Drawing it out by hand was within my comfort zone, but using the Illustrator program was not and that is where the challenge came in. I had the most difficulty with creating the pattern swatches and and remembering to create the different layers, thus most of my patterns were pretty simple.
Why did you make your choices?
I chose simplified versions of patterns that stood out to me the most, particularly one symbol of each pattern because I felt like it would be visually interesting to look at if they were repeated over and over again. I think viewing patterns as a whole and seeing all the intricate details come together is interesting, but I wanted to experiment with isolating just one and having it stand out on its own.
What is the project about?
What I took out of the project was familiarizing myself with Illustrator and understanding more of its basics – such as how to create Swatches and how to harmonize colors, as well as editing the transparency and line weights to let the drawing beneath come through.
