Repeating patterns are a specific kind of drawing labour: individually simple, collectively enormous, and unforgiving of shortcuts. Rope, lace, netting, chain, woven fabric and lattice all present the same problem, which is that the pattern has to wrap around a three-dimensional form while remaining regular.

Doing this badly produces a pattern that sits flat on the surface of the picture, which is the same failure as a prop that has not been constructed in the scene's perspective, described in the piece on props that interact with bodies.

Guide lines come first

Before any pattern, draw the cross-contour lines describing the form: the lines that would wrap around a limb or a torso at intervals. These are the rails the pattern runs on, and drawing them takes a minute and prevents the pattern from drifting off the form.

Then draw the second set, running the other way, and the pattern becomes a matter of filling in a grid that already curves correctly. Nearly every convincing drawn pattern was built this way, and nearly every unconvincing one was drawn directly.

Perspective compresses repetition

A regular pattern on a curved surface is not regular on the page. Elements compress as the surface turns away, and get closer together toward the silhouette edge. Drawing them evenly spaced flattens the form instantly, which is the commonest single error.

The compression is quite strong and most people under-apply it. Exaggerating slightly reads better than being timid, and the guide lines make it automatic if they were drawn with the correct curvature in the first place.

Vary density and use shadow

A pattern drawn at full detail everywhere is exhausting to make and to look at, and it competes with the figure. Letting sections fall into shadow, go out of focus, or simply fade at the edges gives the eye somewhere to rest and cuts the labour substantially.

This is also better composition, since a uniformly detailed area attracts attention evenly and therefore attracts none, which is the hierarchy argument in the piece on composing groups. Detail should be concentrated where the picture wants attention.

Brushes and assets are legitimate

A pattern brush or a reusable asset is an entirely reasonable tool and it saves hours. What it cannot do is understand the form, so anything applied that way needs distorting to follow the guide lines and adjusting where it crosses an edge or a fold.

Applied without adjustment, the result is recognisable immediately: a regular pattern lying flat over an irregular surface. Ten minutes of warping and hand-correction is the difference, and it is still far quicker than drawing the whole thing.

The edges are what sell it

Where a pattern reaches the silhouette, individual elements should turn away and disappear rather than stopping at a clean line. Where it crosses a fold, it should break and continue displaced. These two details do most of the work of making a pattern read as being on an object.

The same applies where a pattern passes over a soft surface and compresses into it, which is the deformation ratio discussed in the piece on bodies in contact. A pattern that presses in reads as real; one that lies on top does not.

Deciding how much to draw

Before starting, decide what size the work will be seen at and what survives there. A lace pattern rendered thread by thread that reproduces as grey texture cost hours and communicated a tone, which could have been achieved in minutes.

Testing at final size before committing is the check, and it is the same reproduction discipline recommended throughout these notes. Detail that does not survive is detail that should not have been drawn.

Colour and value need their own decision here, since a high-contrast pattern turns into visual noise very quickly. Keeping the internal contrast of a pattern low, and letting its overall value do the work against the surrounding areas, means the pattern reads as a texture rather than competing with the figure it is sitting on.

Drawing repetition that follows the form

Lay guide lines first, compress spacing as the surface turns, vary density and let sections fall away, adjust any reused asset to the form, break the pattern at folds and edges, and check what survives at final size.

Characters here are fictional and unmistakably adult, as set out in the reader agreement.