For my digital repeat pattern, I am interrupting a historical pattern. The pattern above, found in the Met collection, was the inspiration for my pattern. By taking central elements from this historical pattern, I was able to create a similar pattern.
This is the final swatch / block design for my pattern. To “interrupt” the historical pattern, I took key elements like the fish, the waves, and the splashes and added a boat and a person. I added a boat because of the history in mythology of giant sea creatures endangering fishermen and destroying boats.
For the final swatch, I combined these two patterns that I had previously created so that there is more variety throughout the pattern. The pattern on the left is featured essentially the same and the pattern on the right was partially mirrored to create more balance between the two.
Once patterned, I put a darker background so that the light pastels pop more. I chose to use a light color scheme to mimic the original historic pattern. I didn’t make the waves a solid color so that the darkness could be seen more and bring out the contrast with the lightness much more.
I wanted to make the two patterns more offset from each other, but I found that making the block offset did not work when I went to create a pattern. I also had a little bit of trouble trying to fill some of the blank space in the top right corner of the swatch. In the end, I added another little splash in the corner to fill the negative space. Overall, I am happy with how the pattern turned out :))