A seamless pattern is a design that can be created and then duplicated as many times as you like, and it all matches up – it’s seamless! I love creating these on Procreate, and the possibilities to make your own are almost infinite.
In this article, we’ll create a celestial-themed seamless pattern. We’ll be using layer masks to give it a metallic effect. Disclaimer: the project is a little complex at times. Anyone can do it with organisation and patience, but it’s probably best if you have a little experience with Procreate before trying this one.
There are a couple of tools that I’m using, which can be downloaded from Creative Fabrica. The links to these are below:
If you’re going to use this brush set and paper pack, I advise downloading them before you start the project alongside ensuring the brushes are imported, and your chosen metallic paper is saved into your iPad’s gallery. If you’d like some further info on Procreate brushes, check out this article.
You can of course use your own brushes and colours, and you don’t have to add the metallic element if you’d prefer not to. So, let’s get started.
Our first step is to create a new canvas. Do this by pressing the + on Procreate’s gallery page, and selecting the size option Square.
Once you have your canvas, tap the layers icon and add a new layer. Fill this entire layer with black.
Add another new layer above this.
Open up the Brush Library and choose the Space Doodle brush named SD 01. This is an empty circle shape. Use whatever colour you want. I’m going to use a purple shade.
We’re going to make a planet, so change your brush size down to around 35% and stamp the circular outline on your canvas. Then fill it in with the same colour.
When adding any of these elements, ensure you don’t go over the edge of the canvas – this is very important as it will affect our seamless pattern.
Zoom in on the planet shape and create another new layer.
Choose the brush named SD 04 from the Space Doodle collection. This brush resembles planetary rings. You can also skip this part if you’d prefer to create a non-ringed planet.
Stamp your planetary rings on the new layer over the planet shape. You will most likely have to undo and redo this step to get the size right – it can be a bit tricky. You can also use the transform tool to manually change the size of the rings if you need to.
Once you’re happy with the rings and the planet open the layers panel, tap on the rings layer (which should be the top one) and select Merge Down. This will merge both layers into one. Only do this step when you are 100% sure that you’re happy with the way your planet looks.
Next, tap on your planet layer and in the menu, select Rename, and change the layer name to Planet – Master. This will help us keep organised as we’re going to be using many layers and groups.
We now need to add a few planets across the page. Swipe left on the Planet – Master layer and select duplicate.
Rename the duplicate planet to Planet – 1.
Reposition this on the canvas.
Repeat this step a few times.
Now, let’s add some moons. Tap on the Actions menu (the button which looks like a wrench in the top left corner) and select Insert a photo.
Choose your metallic paper from your iPad’s gallery, and you’ll see it appear on the canvas, as a new layer. Use the transform tools to expand the paper over the edges of the canvas.
Open the layers menu, and tap on the metallic paper layer. From the menu, select Mask.
You’ll now see a Layer Mask attached to the metallic paper layer.
Open the colour chooser and select black, tap on the layer mask and choose Fill Layer. It’ll now turn the entire mask black.
In the Brush Library, choose the moon outline brush named SD 12.
Change your colour to white, and stamp the moon on the Layer Mask. You should see the metallic colour show through!
You can now stamp this all across the canvas, however, the shape will remain in the same direction. To amend this, tap on the brush and in the brush settings, select Shape and toggle Randomised to on. This will change the brush’s direction, each time you stamp it.
You can leave the moons as just an outline – I think it looks quite cool like this, but if you want to colour them in you can.
Open the layers panel and swipe right on each layer, and then tap Group.
Rename the group to Group 1.
Swipe left on the group and select Duplicate.
Rename the duplicated group, Group 2.
Tap on Group 1, and select the transform tool (button which looks like a cursor).
Move the group to the left side of the canvas – ensuring that it’s exactly halfway and aligned on the upper and lower edges.
Now select Group 2 and move this to the right-hand side of the canvas.
You’ll notice some gaps, so we’re now going to fill them in. This is where the project can get a little confusing because our number of layers is increasing. Open Group 1, and find the layer called Planet – Master. Swipe left on it to duplicate it, and then move the duplicated layer out of the group and to the top of the layers list.
Position this copied planet on the canvas to fill a gap, and repeat this step as many times as you need, to fill any substantial gaps (but don’t fill it too much, as we’ll add more elements).
We’re now going to add more metallic moons. Open the Actions menu and select Insert a photo.
Add your metallic paper, and expand it over the edges of the canvas, just like we did previously.
Create a Layer Mask, fill it in black, and select white for your brush – exactly the same steps as we did for the moons originally.
Stamp more moons on the canvas, to fill in some of the gaps; remembering not to go over the edge.
Next, open the Brush Library and select the star-shaped brush named SD 22.
Stamp a few of these across the canvas – on the Layer Mask – to get the metallic effect. If you’d prefer to do these in a colour, you can also do this by choosing a shade other than white.
In the layers panel, swipe right on your ungrouped layers, and group them together.
Rename this one Group 3, and then swipe left on all groups, and group those together too.
Rename the group of groups (confusing, right?) Master Group 1.
Swipe left on Master Group 1, and duplicate.
Rename this one Master Group 2.
Tap on Master Group 1 and position it to the top half of the canvas the same way that we did previously, only instead of moving to the left and right sides, we’re moving these groups to the top and bottom.
You guessed it – now move Master Group 2 to the bottom of the canvas.
Now let’s fill in some more gaps. Repeat the steps we’ve previously – add your metallic paper, add a Layer Mask, fill it in black – and stamp the moons and stars with white. Once done, group the ungrouped new layers together.
If you want to fill in a few more gaps use the SD 22 star brush on a small size to stamp around the canvas in a different colour. I just used white.
We’re all done! Below is my finished celestial seamless pattern. There are a few variations that can be applied, I’ve added these below too.
With no moons:
With the moons coloured in:
Thanks for reading and please let us know how you got on or if you have any questions, in the comments.
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