Procreate for Beginners: The Ultimate Introduction to Procreate

hi i'm lisa bardot and welcome to procreate for beginners the ultimate introduction to procreate i'll teach you procreate's most essential and useful tools plus plenty of tips and tricks that will get you drawing as quickly as possible follow along and draw with me as i teach you about brushes layers masks working with color animation and so much more let's go procreate is a powerful and intuitive painting and drawing app for ios you can use it to make art anytime anywhere with the world of art tools and mediums at your fingertips you can use procreate to make illustrations paintings graphics patterns animations as an art journal sketchbook and so much more in this video i'm using procreate version 5x a 12.9 inch ipad pro and a second generation apple pencil if you want to learn more about what ipad and accessories are best for using procreate check out my recommended hardware video let's get started when you open up procreate the first thing you'll see is the gallery view here you can browse organize and open all of your artwork as well as start new pieces tap the plus sign in the upper right to create a new file there are several canvas options here but for now choose screen size this will open up the canvas interface let's begin by exploring the tools which are these icons over on the right we'll start by exploring the brushes tap the brush icon to open the brushes panel procreate comes with a variety of pre-installed brushes designed to emulate real-life art mediums like pencils paint markers as well as other unique effects brushes are organized into sets based on effect or medium but the real magic of procreate is that you can install or even create your own custom brushes tap a brush to enter the brush studio each brush and procreate is created by combining shapes with textures and manipulating over a hundred settings found here we're not going to get to know these settings right now but just know that they exist tap done to exit the brush studio let's experiment with a single brush find the inking set and select the brush called mercury use it to make some marks on your canvas experiment with light and heavy pressure many brushes are pressure sensitive and behave differently depending on how hard you press with your pencil brushes may also be tilt sensitive tilt your pencil and see how the marks of this brush become lighter let's take a look at these sliders on the side the top one controls brush size the bottom one controls brush opacity or how see-through the brush marks are move the sliders around and see what happens when you make new brush marks let's skip over to the third icon in the tools which is the eraser use it to erase some of what you've drawn you can actually choose any of the brushes to use as the eraser tool let me show you go back to your brush tool and draw a shape now tap and hold the eraser tool this automatically selects whatever brush you are using to become the eraser you can match your erase marks to your brush marks for a seamless look the next tool is the smudge tool this tool can produce different kinds of smudging and smearing effects depending on which brush you use with it you can choose any of the brushes to smudge try a few different brushes to see the different effects okay we're starting to run out of room so it's a good time to introduce gestures learning procreates gestures is essential as many tools and features can only be used with gestures while other gestures can significantly speed up your drawing workflow use two fingers to pinch in and out to zoom and twist to rotate the canvas do a quick pinch to have the canvas go back to filling the screen if you make a mark you want to undo simply tap with two fingers anywhere on the canvas tap with two fingers and hold to quickly undo multiple tap with three fingers to redo tap and hold with three fingers to redo multiple swipe with three fingers in a z motion to scrub off the screen and clear all we'll cover a few more gestures as we progress through this lesson but be sure to check out my 30 procreate gestures tutorial to become a master at gestures now that you have a clear canvas take some time to do a little brush play the thing i suggest for any new procreate user is to create a brush stroke study this will get you familiar with the capabilities and effects that the different brushes can produce go through your brushes panel and test out the different brushes experiment with pressure tilt brush size and opacity also practice using the gestures for undo and redo pause the video now and play with the brushes for a few minutes when you're done with your brush play tap the word gallery in the upper left this will take you back to the gallery view let's create another file before we learn about more procreate goodness this time we're going to create our own custom canvas size to do this tap the rectangle in the corner of the menu the canvas size i prefer to use on a regular basis is 3 800 by 2800 pixels it's a high enough resolution for printing my art but it's not so big that i'll run out of layers more on that later you can type in the dimensions under width and height if you're setting your canvas up in pixels you do not need to worry about what the dpi is set to let's give this canvas template a name i'm going to call it medium res horizontal here are some other canvas sizes i often use tap create and you'll be back in the canvas interface next let's learn how color works in procreate and the many ways to incorporate color into your artwork this circle in the upper right will open the color picker you'll use this panel to choose colors you can pick colors in a few different ways but the one i like best is the disc the first option at the bottom the outer ring lets you choose your hue such as red yellow green blue and so on this is the inner disk which lets you select the value of that hue moving up and down on the disk controls the lightness or darkness of the color and left to right will control the saturation of the color let's lay down a few colors on our canvas first let's choose a different brush tap the brush icon then find the inking set and choose the brush called syrup head back over to the color picker use it to choose a grassy green and draw a splotch of color on the canvas repeat those steps to find a sky blue a nice bright pink and a sunny yellow let's also make some variations of those colors there are a few ways to recall a color but the one i use most is the eyedropper tool take a finger and hold it on the canvas to invoke the eyedropper it lets you easily select a color that's already on the canvas choose the green then go to the color picker and find a deep forest green paint a splotch below the grass green if you're doing a lot of color picking you can actually detach this panel and leave it open on your canvas tap and hold this gray handle and drag the panel anywhere you want this is called the color companion let's also pick a deeper darker blue and a lighter pink for the yellow just adding black will make this color look a bit muddy so let's add some red to this color as well that color looks like this tap this little x on the color panel to return it to its original position in the upper right we've got a nice little collection of colors going let's save these colors for future use by making a color palette open the color picker and tap palettes in the lower right of that panel tap the plus sign in the upper right then tap create new palette a new space will appear that says untitled tap untitled and we can rename this palette let's call it fun colors you'll also see this blue button that says default this means that the palette will appear at the bottom when we return to the color disk select this green using the eyedropper then tap here in the palette area a swatch will appear i drop the darker green and add another swatch to the palette you can rearrange swatches by tapping holding and dragging to another spot to delete a swatch tap hold and release then tap delete but let's add that color back save the rest of the colors by using the eyedropper tool then adding them to the palette congrats you made your first procreate color palette there are also a couple fun ways to make automatic color palettes choose new from photos to make a palette based on an image saved in your camera roll it's also possible to share your color palettes and import downloaded color palettes you can find this palette i'm importing on my website i have a whole library of free procreate color palettes as well as a tutorial about how to use color palettes in your artwork let's be sure to set our fun colors palette as default next i'll show you a quick way to color in a shape let's clear this layer using the three finger scrubbing motion select the lighter green color and draw a leaf shape be sure this shape is completely closed we're going to use a feature called color drop drag the color circle into the center of the leaf and release and that shape will be filled with color next let's choose the darker pink from your palette and draw a simple flower shape and then fill it in using color drop you can also change the color of a shape by dropping a different color on it choose a light pink from your palette and drop it on the flower to change the color you can even color drop using a palette swatch let's make this flower yellow tap hold and drag the swatch to the shape this is called swatch drop one more helpful color picking tip is if you tap and hold this color circle it will recall the previous color you were using it's a handy way to toggle between two colors let's talk about layers layers are in my opinion the most powerful tool in a digital artist toolbox you can use the power of layers to maintain control over your artwork and manipulate areas of your canvas independently by utilizing a non-destructive workflow if all that sounds confusing just stick with me layers allow you to separate elements of your artwork which has a ton of advantages you can change the way layers interact with each other use them to block or mask areas of your piece change the opacity and so much more let's dig into layers this icon with the two squares will open the layers panel here you'll see one layer which is where we've been drawing everything so far the layer has a small box that contains a preview of what's on that layer down here is the background color which is white by default you can tap to select a flat color for your background for now let's leave it white you can double tap near different points on this disk to snap to pure color values i use this all the time to pick pure white pure black or the most saturated version of a color double tap close to white on the color disk to select pure white tap done you can also turn off the background by unticking this checkbox this will give your piece a transparent background let's leave it on ok back to the layers tap this plus icon to create a new layer layer 2 appears and it becomes the active layer as you can see it's highlighted in blue this means anything you draw will be drawn on this highlighted layer select the light pink from your palette and draw another flower shape with longer petals over the leaf and flower if we go back to the layers panel we'll see the pink flower in the layer two these check boxes turn on and off the visibility of a layer tap and hold the eraser icon to choose the syrup brush as your eraser erase the tops of the petals to form points because i've drawn this pink flower on a new layer i can erase parts of it without affecting the leaf and yellow flower that's the beauty of layers you can alter parts of your artwork without messing with other parts i can also change the way layers interact with one another on layer 2 tap this little n this is the opacity slider which makes the contents of the layer see through set this layer back to 100 opacity these options below are blend modes blend modes dictate how two layers blend or interact with each other it can get a little complicated but my advice is to scroll through the different blend modes to see what each one does i think the multiply blend mode creates a pretty fun effect here but for now let's just set it back to normal tapping on a layer will invoke a menu with several options you can rename the layer select its contents fill the layer with color and more masks are another powerful tool that allow you to control where you can and can't draw within your piece they also allow you to hide or conceal parts of your image without erasing let's add some texture and detail to this leaf turn off visibility of layer 2 with the pink flower tap on layer 1 to select it select the dark green from your palette let's choose a different brush find the industrial set and choose the concrete block brush now if you were to try painting in some texture to this leaf shape you'd have a pretty hard time getting it perfectly inside let's do finger tap to undo that open the layers panel tap the layer then tap alpha lock from the menu you'll know alpha lock is enabled because a checker board pattern will appear in the layer preview with alpha lock turned on i cannot make any new marks on this layer except where i've already drawn this feature makes it super easy to add the texture to just the leaf shape now we'll use a clipping mask to add some veins to that leaf on a new layer open the layers panel and tap the plus sign to create a new layer new layers are always created directly above the layer you had selected go back and select the syrup brush from the inking set again then draw some veins it's perfectly fine that these lines are extending over the edge of the shape open the layers panel tap layer 3 to open the options menu then tap clipping mask clipping masks are a lot like alpha lock where i can't draw outside the shape but the clipping mask allows you to do this on a separate layer this means i can manipulate these vein details independently of the leaf for example i can use a blend mode on this layer to control how the veins interact with the leaf tap n on that layer and slide through the different options multiply will have a darkening effect scroll down until you get to screen this blend mode will have a lightening effect and i think that looks pretty good let's merge the two leaf elements together you can merge layers by pinching them together merging layers is useful if you start running out of layers there is a maximum number of layers you can use in any given artwork the maximum layer count is dictated by two things one how much ram is in your ipad more ram equals more layers two the resolution of your canvas a lower resolution also equals more layers turn on the pink flower layer so we can add some details using alpha lock another way to turn on alpha lock is by taking two fingers and swiping to the right on the layer i use alpha lock a lot so this is a really handy gesture select the bright pink from your color palette draw a dot in the middle and then some lines going outward there is one more type of mask and that is the layer mask i have a tutorial all about masks if you want to learn more now let's learn about the selection tool we're going to make a selection around this yellow flower in the layers menu hide the pink flower layer and then select layer one the selection tool is this s-shaped icon over on the left tap it and you'll see a bar appear at the bottom i use the free hand option most with it you can tap tap tap to make a selection or draw it by hand close the selection by tapping this gray dot right now the flower is on the same layer as the leaf but i want it to be on its own layer to do this we'll use the copy paste menu with the flower selected swipe down with three fingers on the canvas this will invoke the copy paste menu there are several options such as cut copy duplicate but we're going to use the cut and paste option go back to the layers menu and now you'll see the yellow flower has been cut from layer 2 and pasted into a new layer you should note that anytime you paste something it will always be placed onto its own layer let's turn back on the pink flower layer and create another new layer we're going to use the selection tool to draw another flower shape using color fill tap the selection icon tap color fill in the bottom bar draw a u-shape then tap tap tap to make a tulip because color fill is enabled that selection will automatically fill with whatever color you've got selected in the color picker you can even change the color on the fly let's choose a nice orange for this flower tap the selection icon again to deselect there are several ways to make selections first let's disable color fill by tapping it you can also make rectangular or elliptical selections make an elliptical selection near the bottom of this orange flower there's an option to feather or soften edges of your selection feather to about 25 open the layers menu and make another new layer in the color picker we're going to pick like a red orange go back to layers tap the layer and then choose fill layer you can use the fill layer feature to fill an entire layer with color or just a selection like i have here tap this layer again and then choose clipping mask now this flower has a nice gradient effect let's merge those together tap the top layer and choose merge down to merge those two layers together now the thing i use the selection tool the most for is selecting parts of my artwork to move around using the transform tool let's learn about that next the transform tool lets you move and manipulate parts of your artwork around the canvas it's this little arrow icon tap it and by default it will select the entire contents of the selected layer this bounding box will appear around the selection start by choosing free form in the bar that appears at the bottom of the screen you can move the selection around with your pencil or your finger you can also resize and stretch it by pulling on one of these blue nodes to resize uniformly pinch inside of the bounding box or tap over to the uniform transform mode this mode will preserve the proportions of your image take a look at the bounding box and you'll see two different handles the green one lets you rotate the selection and the yellow one lets you rotate the bounding box itself tap snapping then turn on magnetics which will give you guidelines that help you move in a straight line horizontally vertically or diagonally if you were to turn on snapping your content will snap to align to things like the center point of your canvas or other objects there are also options to flip and rotate distort lets you shear your selection creating tilt and perspective effects and the warp transform tool uses a mesh grid to manipulate drag anywhere on this mesh to pull wrap or fold tap this reset button to undo all the transformations let's tap back over to uniform mode let's use the selection and transform tools to arrange these flowers because each flower is on its own layer all you have to do is select the layer then choose the transform tool and move them where you want them to be i think this piece would look good with another leaf go to the layers menu and swipe to the left on the leaf layer here you'll see an option to duplicate the layer with that new layer selected use the transform tool to move it resize it flip it and rotate it you can move multiple layers at once swipe right on each layer to select multiple layers at a time then we can move all of the layers to center them on the canvas let's add some stems to our flowers create a new layer for the stems i want the stems to be behind the flowers so this layer needs to be under the flower layers tap hold and drag the layer down let's say i want my stems to be perfectly straight there's a tool for that and it's called quick line select the lighter green color and make the brush size a little larger draw a line but don't lift your pencil off the screen the line will become perfectly straight and you can move it around like this if you take another finger and place it on the canvas that line will snap to 15 degree increments this is very handy for making perfectly vertical or horizontal lines place this line here and draw two more lines for the other flowers i'll also move my leaves a bit to match them up with the stems this feature also works for shapes select the yellow flower layer and choose the darker yellow from your palette draw a circle in the center of the flower but don't lift your pencil off the screen this is quick shape in action place another finger on the canvas and this will give you a perfect circle tap edit shape at the top and you can manipulate this circle move it around distort it or resize it by dragging the outline of the circle tap on the canvas to commit the shape you can also use quick shape to draw rectangles or squares triangles arcs and polygons let's color in this circle too if we try to use color drop you can see that it's coloring the whole flower and not just what's in the circle we need to adjust the color drop threshold this controls how much color spills over into similarly colored areas of the same shape two finger tap to undo color drop again but don't lift up your pencil a blue bar will appear at the top slide your pencil to the left until the color just fills the circle side note you can also change the color drop threshold when color is not filling in a shape all the way like this this magic wand icon is home to the adjustments menu you can use the features found here to make overall or fine-tune adjustments and create fun effects with filters tap hue saturation brightness you'll see options for layer and pencil layer means the adjustment will be made to the entire layer or selection tap layer i use the hue saturation brightness adjustment often to fine-tune colors you can change the hue saturation or brightness tap one finger anywhere on the screen to invoke the adjustments actions use these buttons to preview undo reset and more tap cancel to exit without making any changes let's try a blur filter gaussian blur tap it and this time tap pencil pencil allows you to paint in where you want the adjustment or filter to be applied use a finger to increase or decrease the amount of blur tap with the finger then tap cancel down here you'll find the liquify tool i use this tool a lot when i want to seamlessly edit the shape of something the one i use most often is push but go through and see what each one does you can twirl pinch expand crystallize and much more reconstruct will let you paint it back to its original shape or you can tap reset there are a lot of different filters in this menu so i would suggest taking some time to play around with them and see what each one does this wrench icon is the actions menu under the add tab you can import a photo to your canvas this is a leaf photo that i got from a free stock photography site i'll put a link to the photo in the description if you want to download it yourself i'm using the automatic selection tool to select the white area of this photo automatic will select similarly colored areas of your artwork slide back and forth to adjust the threshold now go to the layers menu and tap clear now i can reposition this and i have a pretty cool mixed media piece there's also an option here to add text you can add typography to your art you can even import custom fonts before we continue i'm going to make a duplicate of this file let's exit back to the gallery view swipe to the left on the file and choose duplicate now open the duplicate file the next panel of the actions menu is called canvas use crop and resize to adjust the size and boundaries of your canvas move the edges of the frame or tap settings to manually adjust the resolution of your canvas re-sample canvas will allow you to edit the canvas's resolution as a whole let's change the width to 1920 which is the perfect size for the next thing we're going to do animation tap done making animations in procreate is super fun and the possibilities are endless in the actions menu toggle on animation assist a timeline will appear at the bottom animation in procreate works by making each layer or layer group of your artwork into a frame of animation let's see how it works tap play to see it cycle through all the layers obviously this piece is not set up for animation but if we group all these layers together procreate will read it as a single frame go into the layers panel and select all the layers then tap group now you can see the complete artwork as a frame in the timeline tap the frame and tap duplicate back in the layers panel this layer group has been duplicated close the bottom group by tapping this caret symbol in the top group select the leaves and rotate them a little using the transform tool you'll see a lightened version of the previous frame of animation which makes a helpful guide when you're moving things around now that you've moved the three leaves tap play a bit crazy huh tap settings and lower the frames per second that's a bit better this is a pretty simple animation but there's so much you can do using this feature if you want to learn more about animation and procreate including how to export your animations check out my procreate animation class and my animated gif tutorial let's go back to the gallery view and open that previous version of our flower artwork but before we do let's name these files on the original file use your finger to tap untitled artwork let's call it flowers and we'll name the other one flower animation if i tap the name with my pencil i can write in the title like this this is a feature you'll find in ios 14 or later let's also rename our brush stroke study go ahead and open the flowers file another option you'll find in the canvas panel of the actions menu is drawing guide i've got two tutorials that teach you how to use the different drawing guide options learn how to draw a perspective using the perspective drawing guide another option is symmetry which reflects what you draw in really cool ways i use symmetry to teach you how to draw this folk art style piece down here is canvas information which as you might have guessed gives you information about your file statistics is kind of cool because you can see how long you've been working on a piece back in the actions menu let's skip over to the video tab one of my favorite things about procreate is the ability to play back everything you've done in a time-lapse replay it's really satisfying to watch the whole process you can even export your time-lapse video to share speaking of sharing tap over to the share tab finally we're going to look at how you can share your lovely creations there are a variety of formats for you to share your artwork in let's look at these formats when you export you can either preserve all of your layers or you can flatten your piece into a single layer jpeg png and tiff will flatten your artwork jpeg is a very common file type that is supported nearly everywhere this file type applies compression which means you'll lose some quality in exchange for a smaller file size png does not use compression so it will be full quality but it'll be a bit larger in file size png also supports transparent backgrounds tiff is the highest quality option but also the largest file size it's a format often used when printing professionally but always check with your printing vendor to see what file format the acceptor prefer the dot procreate and psd options will preserve your layers blend modes and adjustments use the dot procreate file format when backing up or transferring to another ipad running procreate and then you can use the psd to convert your artwork to a file that works in adobe photoshop let's choose to export this piece as a png which is a good combination of image quality and a smallish file size from here you can save the file to your device or you can share it in a number of ways let's tap back out to the gallery and i'll show you a few ways you can organize your files you already saw how you can swipe to the left to duplicate a file but there are also options to share and delete you can reorder files by tapping and holding them and then moving them around use two fingers and twist to change the orientation of a file a two-finger spreading gesture lets you quickly preview your art pinch to close finally you can organize your files by grouping them into stacks which are kind of like folders tap select at the top then select the files you want to group and tap stack you can rename your stacks as well let's call this one learning procreate thank you so much for watching i hope that you found this tutorial useful and you're excited about making art on your ipad if you're ready to learn more i've got a ton of other tutorials about drawing and using procreate on my website and if you want to learn more about drawing illustration and of course working in procreate be sure to subscribe and if you really want to level up your drawing skills think about joining in the making art everyday challenge it's a series of drawing prompts tutorials motivation all with the goal of helping you overcome your creative fears and establish a daily art making practice we're about to start our third year of making art every day and it's really exciting you can learn more about it at bardobrush.com joinm a e again i'm lisa bardo and i teach people how to find their creativity through drawing on the ipad i'm the owner of bardo brush one of the leading brush creators for procreate if you would like to support my work i hope that you'll check out my premium procreate brushes that inspire creativity at bardobrush.com if you're posting artwork to instagram made with my tutorials or brushes i would love to see it use the hashtag bardo brush thanks and happy art making if you like this video please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a future tutorial and check out one of my other videos have a great day cut done

Channel: Bardot Brush

Views: 473,190

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Id: 9YuqNLz5AUs

Length: 35min 2sec (2102 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020