Printing and pattern
Art & Design · Early Years · The School
What makes a pattern
A PATTERN repeats. Red, blue, red, blue is a pattern. Red, blue, green, orange is not. That is just colours. The repeat is the whole idea. Say your pattern out loud as you make it. Then you will hear it when it breaks.
Printing with objects
Dip the end of a cork in paint. Or a leaf. Or a fork. Or a sponge. Then press it down. Press once and lift it straight up. If you drag it, it smudges. Print the same object twenty times and you have a pattern. That is how printed cloth has been made for thousands of years.
Patterns everywhere
Look at tiles. Look at bricks, cloth and fences. Look at a honeycomb. Look at the scales on a fish. Patterns are so common that we stop seeing them. Find three in the room you are in right now.
Print a leaf. Then a cork. Then a leaf. Then a cork. Go right across the page. Someone else could carry it on. It REPEATS in order, so it is a pattern. Now print a leaf, a fork, a bottle top, a hand and a cork in no order at all. It fills the page. But nobody could say what comes next. So that is texture, not pattern. The test is whether you could continue it.
Pressing the same shape again and again
A print is a shape you can repeat exactly. That is what makes it different from drawing. Cut a potato in half. Cut a simple shape into the flat face. Dip it in paint and press. Now press it again, right next to the first one. You have two that match. That is nearly impossible to do by drawing. Now turn the potato a quarter turn before the next press. The pattern changes completely. But the shape stays the same. Same stamp, different pattern, just from turning it.