Have you ever wondered how exactly to begin with Procreate? Perhaps you’re new to the program, or haven’t used it in a while. Either way, I have some tips to help you get started, or to refresh your memory.
Procreate is an Apple-device exclusive drawing app, with additional features such as an animation feature, and drawing on 3D models (this one is only available in the version for iPad, as iPhones are not compatible with this feature).
When you first open Procreate, your gallery is shown. By default there are a few starting artworks in there for examples. If you want to create a new artwork, tap the icon shaped like a plus. +
There are numerous canvas sizes to choose from such as a square 2048 x 2048, 4K, 4 x 6 photo, Paper, and others. You can even make your own custom canvas sizes. A canvas size called “Screen Size” is always at the top of the list of the canvas sizes.
When you create a new canvas, or tap onto a pre-existing one, it opens for you to work on.
Tapping “Gallery” in Procreate or an arrow facing to the left on Procreate Pocket will take you back to your gallery.
Canvas
This is what a canvas looks like when first creating a new canvas in Procreate Pocket. The slider bars for brush size and opacity have both become circles. In Procreate Pocket, instead of brush opacity, the option instead becomes brush pressure. The color picker square is absent. Instead of using buttons for undo and redo, you tap the screen with two fingers for undo, and three fingers for redo. To color-pick from an image you press and hold until a circle appears around where your finger is on the screen. Then drag your finger until the upper half of the circle becomes the color you want to color-pick. Then take your finger off the screen.
The “Modify” area is where the selection and editing tools are all in, in Procreate Pocket.
Painting Tools
In both versions of Procreate the painting tools are on the right side of the screen. The paintbrush is for paint tools, the finger is for smudge tools, the eraser for eraser tools, the icon that looks like two squares overlapping is the layers, and the dot on the right of everything else shows the color currently being used. Within the color section, there are various color wheels and related things, and you can even make palettes if you don’t want to color pick from an image every time. For example, if you have a character you want to draw multiple times and don’t want to color-pick from an already existing image, make a color palette for the character.
When you tap the brush, smudge, or eraser once it is selected. If you tap it a second time, it opens the brush library menu. All three share the same brush library, which allows for much more creativity with combinations of brush shapes with the different tools.
Procreate has many brushes, numerous brushes are inspired by real-life art mediums and materials.
Brushes change with pressure, pencil tilt and speed, so Procreate is better optimized for use with an Apple Pencil. However, you can use your fingers as well, if you prefer to do so, or simply don’t own an Apple Pencil.
The smudge tool is used to blend anything already on the canvas. The eraser tool does as it’s named, it erases from the canvas.
Color
In the color menu, you can chose a color through various color picking modes. A color wheel with two sections, dubbed by Procreate as a color disc, value sliders, and others as well. The color disc has two sections, the outer section being for a color’s hue, and the larger inner ring for saturation. You can even pinch to zoom in the saturation disc for more meticulous control over saturation. You can zoom out by pinching again, or simply closing the color panel and reopening it.
Some brushes such as the oil paint brushes, blend with colors already on the canvas, to replicate how actual paint works.
Palettes
By default Procreate has a few pre-existing palettes for you, but you can create your own by pressing the plus icon when in the Palettes section, which you get to from the Colors menu. To create your own palette, tap the plus icon to create a new palette. In Procreate Pocket there are the words “New Palette” that when tapped give you a few options. These options are “Create new palette” which creates a blank palette for you to fill yourself, “New from camera”, “New from file” and “New from photos”.
They all work similarly, creating a palette from a photo. In the case of palette from camera, a photo is taken and then a palette is made. Palette from camera isn’t the best, as a preview of the palette obstructs your view of whatever you try to take a photo of. Taking a photo within the normal camera, then making a palette from it is the better bet. Be aware that when a palette is created, it creates a full palette from the image. If you want only a few colors from the image, color-picking from the image is a better idea.
To rename a palette, tap onto the title of it, then a keyboard should pop up, allowing you to rename the palette to whatever you see fit. Press done, once you are done naming the palette, and the keyboard goes away.
There is a blue indicator that signifies what palette is selected.
To add colors to a palette, tap onto a blank spot in a palette. You can tap and hold on a color already in the palette to be given options to delete or replace the color, depending on if the color is different from the current selected color. You can even tap and hold a color in a palette to grab it and move it around.
You can access palettes from any color-related thing, whether picking colors for drawing, or selecting a color for the background color.
Gestures
Procreate has numerous gestures that can be quite helpful.
Tap with two fingers on the canvas to undo, and tap with three fingers to redo. Hold two fingers to undo multiple times quickly, and holding three fingers will quickly redo multiple times.
The undo and redo buttons which are shaped like curved arrows do the same thing on Procreate on iPad. Procreate Pocket does not have the undo and redo buttons, but the gestures still work the same.
Use two fingers to pinch the screen and zoom in and out, move and even rotate within the canvas. A quick pinch zooms out and fits the canvas to the boundaries of the screen.
A quick three-finger tap and scrubbing the screen back and forth clears the canvas entirely.
If you double tap specific areas of the inner circle of the color disc, it snaps to a pure white, pure black, or solid color.
Layers
The layers icon brings up your layers. Procreate uses stacked layers, like pieces of tracing paper or pieces of clear glass one on top of each other to where you can see the previous one underneath.
The only layer you can work on at a time, is the currently selected layer, which is highlighted in blue in the layers.
The plus icon, or “New Layer” in Procreate Pocket adds a new layer above the currently selected layer.
To move layers around you can tap and hold to grab a layer, and move it around to move it above or below other existing layers.
The background color is a special layer that you can’t draw onto, but you can tap the checkbox to turn it off. The checkbox turns a layer on or off. It makes a layer visible or invisible. Tapping onto the background layer lets you change the color of it.
After selecting a layer, tap it again to see layer options. These options allow you to do things such as rename a layer, copy a layer, invert a layer, and merge a layer with the layer below it, to name a few.
Alpha Lock allows you to make it to where anything transparent in a layer, cannot be drawn on or otherwise edited.
You can always select the Alpha Lock option again to turn it off.
In the layers the N stands for normal, and refers to the mode that layer has. You can tap the N to bring up a menu that allows you to change the blending mode of a layer, as well as change the opacity of that layer. The defaults are Normal and 100% opacity. However, you can change these at any time you wish.
Import
To import an image into your canvas tap the wrench icon, or Modify then the wrench in Procreate Pocket. Go to Add, then press Import Photo. You can also Insert a File as well. From the Add menu you can also Add Text into the canvas, or Cut, Copy, and Paste.
Export
To export a drawing tap the wrench icon, or Modify then the wrench icon in Procreate Pocket. Go to Share, Share Image, then select the file you want to export as.
Here’s a drawing I did, the final layers of it were shown in the above layers screenshot.
As well as how it looks when the canvas is open.
Video Export
To export the process of drawing an image, in the menu that appears after tapping the wrench icon, or Modify then the wrench icon in Procreate Pocket, go to Share, then Export time-lapse video. You can export the video as a 30-second long video, or as its full length.
Gallery Tips
In your gallery you can swipe left on a specific artwork to be given options to Share, Duplicate or Delete an artwork.
You can touch and hold an artwork and drag it over another artwork, once a blue highlight appears over the artwork that is being hovered over, let go. From this, a stack is created. A stack is essentially a group of artworks that you can add to. You can organize artworks with stacks. Once you have a stack, you can rename the stack by tapping on the name of the stack, the same way you rename an artwork. You can tap a stack to open it, and see all the drawings inside of it. You can go back by tapping an arrow pointing to the left. When a stack is open you can tap select and select numerous artworks. You can tap and hold to pick them up, tap the arrow with another finger to close the stack, and you can bring the artworks back into the main canvas. If a stack has no artworks in it, the stack is automatically deleted.
I hope this helped you get started with Procreate!