Half Drop Frilly Pinks and Dragonflies

I’m taking Delores Naskrents Affinity Designer MasterClass to learn more about the tools in Affinity Designer.  In AD43, we use a quad scatter template that can be used over and over with different motifs and palettes to create unique patterns in which the pattern repeat is difficult to find. I can’t wait to try a few of these.

Not only do I have a limited palette, but also limited motifs that are scattered all over, rotated and flipped, with different sizes to create a scatter pattern.

I had made the frilly flower a few years ago and simply plopped it into the template in the large flower area, and all the large flowers were automatically flipped or rotated, replicated the one motif I added to the template.

I dropped the same motif into a smaller flower, and the templated replicated across the canvas.

I chose one more flower and followed that process for another even smaller flower and one still smaller, replicating again across the canvas.

I repeated the process with leaves, a leaf with a flower, and dragonflies.

All I had to do was change the colors of one “symbol” and all the others changed as well. This makes design-making so easy. Sometimes you have to move a motif to match, or add flowers to stems, depending on the motifs you’ve chosen. It’s a great reason to spend a day or two simply creating motifs, just to choose a few and plop them into the template for a new pattern.

I have to also say, the palette I chose is growing on me. It’s good to try something outside of your usual favorites, just to expand one’s eye for what works for differing motifs. I’m not much for browns as a color; my granddaughter loves the earthy tones. I like a bit more color, and the turquoise here helps with that. Here. the brown is like the earth with the florals and leaves popping up here and there, like in a meadow of wildflowers. Scatter templates are like that.

I’m hoping to learn to create these templates myself. Learning about “symbols” and “syncing” was fascinating; creating my own template will be interesting, but for now, I plan to just use the template with other motifs, flowers or perhaps just bugs!