From Petal to Pattern: Design your own floral patterns. Draw on nature.

Beautiful, inspiring book. I’m buying as gifts now too.

Beautifully illustrated book with plenty of colourful images. Good quality paper and cover which has openable leaves to place as a book marker. Lovely idea. Just a really nice book to pick up and look through.

Really lovely book that takes you through some of the background of different patterns and how you might go about constructing each.

Lovely book.

Lovely little book

Really good easy to read. Amazing pictures and instructions, great for beginners to surface pattern design, as a reference guide or as a refresher course.

As another review has said - this book will not teach you how to draw flowers or plants, so if that is what you are after you will need to look elsewhere. What this book will introduce you to is how to create patterns using botanical and floral motifs in a variety of styles. It goes into great detail but the text is easy to follow and is illustrated throughout with examples and step-by-step methods. The first half of the book covers the BASICS - different forms of pattern, different layouts, repeating patterns, how to create a layout both working by hand and digitally, inspiration and colour theory. For digital work the book references Photoshop and Illustrator. I'm currently learning to use Affinity Designer (which allows you to create vector artwork). Although specific keyboard/mouse steps will not be the same, I think the digital methods the author uses will be transferable with a little tweaking. The second half of the book introduces you to various projects - using different forms of inspiration (seasons, ditsy, holiday floral, geometric, single flowers etc.). The author walks you through various techniques in a project and each project ends with the instruction to Create Your Own and you are given different "stepping off point" suggestions. The book concludes with a Botanical Index (very useful and something you could expand to include plants which specifically interest yourself); a few botanical facts and some further reading suggestions. If I had any niggles it would only be that I would have liked to have seen a more extreme palette used at places in the book. There is a lot of pink. Don't let that put you off because there is nothing preventing you from taking the lessons learned here and applying them to the wackiest colours you can think of. Overall - I highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in floral art, patterning and design. It's detailed but easy to follow and inspiring. You could apply the methods you learn in this book to - designs using animals, geometric designs, technological designs etc.

I have never empathised with an author so much. Their intro really hit me in a personal way, very honest, very authentic. I was hooked immediately. Then once you get to the bones of the book, they describe pattern and colour theory very well and easily digestible. It does focus a lot on digital art and specifically Adobe references. Which is nice, but I don't have Adobe illustrator. So those chunks become a little irrelevant (but only as I'm too cheap to pay for it, I would LOVE to afford the Adobe suite) Their patterns are beautiful, really aestically pleasing book. Such a tactile feel to it all too. Really interesting, personable and well thought out learning aid. Can't praise it enough. Really enjoyed it. Now...off to make some patterns!

Lovely Book

Livro bem completo, várias técnicas, muitos exemplos e ilustrações. Recomendo para iniciantes e designers mais experientes também! As estampas são lindas!

Sehr schönes Buch mit viel Inspiration und einfachen Anleitungen. Sehr empfehlenswert!

Mi piace molto. Anche se è in inglese è comprensibile e spiega in modo chiaro come creare dei bei pattern floreali partendo da elementi anche minimali. Mi piace molto anche la scelta della carta opaca che fa risaltare i colori e non stanca gli occhi. Consigliato a chi si approccia al mondo dei pattern!

This book is fantastic! Parascandalo starts with commonly used tools for creating patterns in analog format, and includes information about converting them to digital. Patterns are separated into different types, with 4 examples of each type, information about that type of pattern, and then the step-by-step guide for creating your own. I love that each guide includes a breakdown of the types of flowers she's using to create her pattern, as well as tips for steps where people may struggle. The book is well written, clearly organized, and the full-color examples are actually helpful in seeing how the different patterns are laid out.