Procreate is an award-winning app that caters to both beginners and professionals. It was designed for use on the iPad to mimic regular drawing when you use the Apple pencil. You can use Procreate to create sketches, paintings, illustrations, and even animations. There are over 200 brushes, multiple layers, masks, and so many more amazing tools. It’s like having an entire art studio that you can take anywhere. Procreate is really like Photoshop for the iPad. This makes it easy to relax on the sofa and create your art. You can also start projects in Procreate and export to Photoshop for completion on your desktop or laptop.
If you have used other digital drawing or painting apps, then you will find Procreate to be very intuitive to use and easy to learn. If this is your first try at digital drawing, you will have a very slight learning curve, but you will be creating digital art in just a few minutes. Seriously, just a few minutes! Here are 10 steps to get you started with Procreate.
10 Steps to Drawing in Procreate
- Download the Procreate app from the App Store. It is a $9.99 one time charge.
- Open Procreate
- Procreate automatically opens in Gallery view. Tap the + sign in the top right corner to open a new canvas.
- Select “screen size” for a typical canvas. There are other options such as 4K, A4, 4 x 6 photo, comic, etc. However, we will stick with screen size for this beginner tutorial.
- Now you have a blank page to draw on with your finger or an Apple Pencil. Draw lightly to create thin lines or press harder to create thick lines with your Apple pencil. Tip: To draw a straight line, start drawing a line and hold your finger or pen. Procreate will turn the line into a straight line for you and you can choose where to end it from there.
- Click on the ‘brush icon’ at the top to select different brushes. You will be amazed at the huge selection of brushes and options here. There is everything from sketching to water brushes. Play around with the brushes until you are comfortable.
- Draw something with your finger or Apple pencil. Anything, like some wavy lines, a doodle, or a shape. There you go, you’re a digital artist now!
- Tap with 2 fingers to undo.
- Tap with 3 fingers to redo.
- Keep drawing and playing with these steps for a while to get accustomed to drawing on a screen instead of paper.
Tools
There are some awesome tools in Procreate. Here is a description of each and how to use them.
Layers
Layers are very important. You can create very intricate designs using multiple layers. You have one layer along with the background color by default when you open your canvas. To create a second layer, tap the layers icon which looks like a stack of two pages. Tap the + to create another layer. Tap the N to change the opacity, darken, lighten, screen, etc. You can also paste one over the other or have one underneath. When you want to change something, click on the double page icon to open the layers menu, tap the layer you want to change, tap a second time and the options menu will open. You can rename, select, copy, fill, clear, Alpha lock, mask, clipping mask, invert, reference, merge down, and combine down.
Selection
Tap the wavy S at the top for the selection tool. A menu will appear for you to select automatic, freehand, rectangle, or ellipse. Select one and drag around what you want to select, tap the slanted arrow at the top to enclose your selection into a box. Another menu will appear at the bottom. You can select freeform, uniform, distort, or warp. Each one has additional options after your select such as magnetics, flip horizontal, flip vertical, rotate 45 degrees, fit to screen, bilinear, and reset.
You can use the selection tool to select portions of layers to make changes or color in. When coloring in a specific layer, you can click and drag to change the tolerance level to completely fill in a specific layer. Tap a brush and color to completely color in.
Swipe down with 3 fingers to open a pop-up for cut, copy, and paste options.
Tap the circle in the top right corner for the Color Wheel. You can select colors and saturations. Disc, classic, harmony, and value display the color wheel in different forms. Ascend is the default palette. Tap the Palettes button in the bottom right to choose a different palette such as campfire or flourish. You can also select the + to create your own custom palettes.
Brush studio
Tap on the brush icon for the brush library to open. There are 18 brush sets, and over 200 brushes. Tap on a brush to go into the brush studio. This is the edit mode where you can change the properties of the grain and gradient of your brush as you desire. You can do this with any brush, or even create your own brush from scratch. Adobe Photoshop also allows you to import their brushes into Procreate. When drawing in Ibis Paint X, I never really used my Apple Pencil. However, the Apple Pencil is truly what brings the Procreate brushes to life.
Eraser
The eraser tool erases. The brush library also applies to the eraser so you can erase with any brush.
Smudge
The smudge tool smudges the pixels using the brush library as well. Use this to create different textures and effects in your artwork.
Color drop
To fill in an enclosed shape with color, tap the circle in the top right corner to select your color, drag it to your shape to fill it in with that color. This works similar to a paint bucket tool in other digital art software you may have used.
Adjustments (wand)
The adjustments or effects tool allows you to change the opacity, blur, sharpen, liquify, hue, saturation, brightness, curves, recolor, etc.
Actions (wrench)
The actions tool allows you to add files, photos, text, or change the canvas. You can turn on a drawing grid here, share image or layers in multiple formats, do a time-lapse replay or recording (speedpaint), and change preferences.
Colors
This is the square on the sidebar between the brush size and brush opacity sliders. Tap the square and a circle with crosshairs will appear, drag the circle over your art to allow selection of matching colors. This is most useful when you import art or a photo to make changes, and want to match the colors in the photo or artwork.
Some additional things that are just good to know
From the ‘Gallery” view, you can swipe to the right and delete, duplicate, or share. You can swipe to the right to select multiple drawings at a time, tap share, then save or export in any format such as pro, psd, pdf, jpg, png.
If you want to create a folder, tap and drag a drawing onto another and this will create a folder named Stack. Tap on Stack and rename your folder whatever you prefer.
There you go digital artists! Now, go have some fun and create those masterpieces!