There are as many patterns and variations as there are snowflake designs. As for technique, I'll leave it up to you. If you do have a yearning to make music, you should just experiment and mentally file the results. This goes on forever by the way. There are a few players out there who can flat pick and finger pick really well, but not many.
Most players gravitate towards one or the other as their 'standard' mode.
I chose my fingers. Fingerpicking Do me a favor . Plectrums come in different sizes and thicknesses. Tortoise shell was the traditional material but most are made of plastic nowadays. I know one great jazz player in Australia who uses wooden picks, apparently like the famous Django Reinhardt used to play with.