Geometric costs $2.99 from the iPad app store.
This blog entry is another chapter in my weekly series of reviews/tips about an iPad app that's caught my fancy. Many of these will get full treatment -- detailed how-tos, project suggestions, lots of photos of work in progress and finished art -- as part of my upcoming online series of workshops. These workshops will include using your tablet apps to plan, design, create and manage your studio art practice -- many of them are available for Kindle, Android tablets as well as iPad. If you'd like to be notified about the workshops -- and other upcoming events -- please subscribe to my newsletter by clicking this SUBSCRIBE link. I am working on subscription services to this blog, but have not quite figured out the new software interface!
This week's art app for iPad is made to order for Modern Quilters -- and pattern junkies of all stripes. Whether you are on the bandwagon of that latest quilting "movement" or not, Geometric provokes way-too-much-fun playtime with stripes, circles, dots and angles. It's a pattern-making app that uses a trademarked group of shapes -- referred to as a font by the designers, whose main business is selling design services.
The interface is intuitive and limited-- basically the patterns are auto generated with just a few "locks" provided to the artist-user. Clicking on the locks alters what does and doesn't change as you scroll through the patterns. When you see one you like, send it to your camera roll, or it may not come along again!
The best way to figure out the locks is to lock all the options and unlock one at a time. Combining locks provides more options. I found the best way to work with this app was to find a color palette and font I liked, lock everything, then unlock SIZE to find the most interesting variations.
Here are the locks and (what it seems) they refer to:
FONT - the basic shape that is set by what you see on the screen, for example triangles. Font is the large general quality of shape, not proportion or "amount".
PALETTE - colors, includes background and foreground shapes, and the palettes are generally broader than what you first think!
SEQUENCE - arrangement of the shape elements, the pattern sequences -- how they fill the space
CHARACTER - the exact shapes, sizes or maybe the "feel" of the design -- I still am not sure!
SIZE - unlock this to vary the size from quite small to fairly large. The design elements are never so large that they don't make patterned repeats
From the app site:
"geometric™ is a powerful pattern generator by creative studio Kapitza.
It puts to use our extensive Geometric pattern font collection to create countless cool patterns by simply swiping the screen. The possibilities are endless. For news and updates subscribe to our newsletter.. All patterns ©2012 Kapitza".
That copyright notice might cause notice, but I don't really think there would be a cause for concern if you used a pattern as a basis for quilting work, with some variation and subtlety!
Two versions of two patterns, with font, size and palette as variables.