Pattern Stamp tool

Lino Drieghe reveals how this Photoshop staple can be used early on in the creative process to generate interesting textures

Finding a good worklife balance is hard. In the evenings, when family life calms down, I like to search and learn new ways of working. I explore new techniques to add to my various workflows and write about them on my blog to help me understand them. The Pattern Stamp tool in Photoshop is one of my recent discoveries.

Sometimes I use this technique to either overcome the fear of the blank canvas or when the brief of a project has a lot of room for interpretation. I don’t want to be fixated on just one idea. As a concept artist it’s my job to generate a variety of ideas and concepts as quickly as possible.

It’s creating that variety where the Pattern Stamp tool excels in. It generates interesting textures and colour variations from texture sheets. Furthermore, it creates enough room for happy accidents to occur which can be beneficial to the early stages of the creative process.

In this workshop I’ll take you through the process of creating your own custom patterns and how to apply them to a value sketch. Based on the outcome of placing the patterns, I’ll refine the sketch to a working idea. Finally, I bring that idea to a more refined finish.

1 Gathering pictures

Before I start, I gather pictures to build my library of patterns. I’m using photos that I take myself or collected from friends and family. I’m building up my own reference library by storing photos on a cloud server. That way I can use my own photos, knowing there are no copyright restrictions on them.

2 Using the Pattern Stamp tool

The Pattern Stamp tool enables me to paint or fill my canvas with a pattern that I choose from a pattern library. Similarly to the Brush tool, I can select a brush tip to paint the pattern with. There are pre-made patterns available but for this workshop I’ll make my own. I’ve created several patterns that can be downloaded from my website under the Resources tab.

3 Creating patterns to use with the tool

I make a new document and copy-paste photos from my reference library (A). By double-clicking my layer (B) and using the Blend if… option under Layer Style (C), I can blend layers together by excluding colours. Holding Alt while dragging will split the slider in two, resulting in a smoother transition. I make sure that I arrange the photos in such a way that the lighting and shadows correspond with each other.

4 Refine and edit the chosen patterns

To retouch the edges of the photos, I use the Content Aware tool under Edit>Fill. In the dialog I choose Contents> Content Aware. By clicking OK, this tool fills the selection with the surrounding pixels and blends them together. I click Filter> Other> Offset to make the pattern tileable.

5 Warm up and create a series of sketches

At this point I have no idea in mind so I use the Pattern Stamp tool to warm up, and to show how effective it is in the early phases of a painting. I start my sketches with limited values and use the standard Round brush to keep the shapes simple. After producing multiple sketches, I decide to develop one of them so I can show my whole process from start to finish in this workshop.