Procreate is an amazing app, and there is so much to know. It has a whole host of features to learn and love. But before you dive into everything it can do, and start overwhelming yourself, let’s take a look at 15 of the best Procreate tips for beginners that are going to make your art pieces incredible.
So let’s dive in – here is the ultimate list of procreate tips for beginners!
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#1 Understanding the Size of Your Canvas
When creating a traditional piece of art, you would always carefully choose the size of the canvas you were going to use. You would want to make sure it fits everything on it that you want it to, that the scale is correct, and that the proportions are right.
The same goes for creating digital pieces. You want to make sure you’re making a piece of art that can stretch to the size you want it to, either when printed or when used on other digital devices. For example some digital artists might create desktop screensavers, or art that’s going to be printed. If you create a piece that’s too small, or the wrong shape (e.g. square, rather than rectangle) then, it’s not going to stretch right and could end up distorted or pixelated. If you decide to print your work, and frame it, you could also end up having to cut off pieces of your hard work to get the art to fit.
It’s easy to forget about proportions like this sometimes, particularly when you’re zooming in and out of your art piece. Make sure you’re quite literally looking at the bigger picture!
Start getting a good understanding of what sizes are going to work for your art style – these can easily be researched online and you can create custom canvas sizes as templates so you can use them over and over again. A good place to start if you’re thinking about which canvas sizes to use, are to look at common frame sizes, or common desktop screen resolutions, so you know what sizes are popular and work best. This is one of the best procreate tips for beginners.
#2 Creating a Colour Palette
I’ve actually created a whole separate article about colour palettes in Procreate here. So after you’ve finished with this article, feel free to take a little look at that post too. I go into much more detail over in that post. But in a nutshell, one of the next best Procreate tips for beginners would be to learn how to create a custom colour palette.
There’s a whole bunch of ways that you can do this. One of the easiest ways would be to click on the little colour circle in the top right hand corner of Procreate. When it drops down, click on Palettes at the bottom, click the ‘+’ icon and then create a new palette. You can then use the colour disc (or any of the other colour modes) to add colours into your palette.
The reason it’s a great idea to create a colour palette in Procreate, is because it makes life so much easier for you to create a cohesive piece of art, and it’s going to make it a lot easier to find the colours you want quickly, without having to go to your colour disc all the time to select a colour. Doing this little step up front might take 5-10 minutes, but it’s going to save you a whole bunch of time in the long run.
#3 Getting to Know Your Brushes
The third best procreate tips for beginners is getting to know your brushes. A huge part of working with digital art is realising just truly how many different tools are out there for you to use. When you’re creating traditional art, you might have a handful of brushes that you use. Or maybe pencils, pens, or even sponges. But you’d probably focus on one or two of these tools, rather than have a whole bunch of different ones at your fingertips that you can interchange at the drop of a hat.
That’s what digital art offers you. The ability to change your tools in a split second, and therefore change the entire vibe of your art piece.
You might already have an idea of what you want your piece to look like, and what type of brush / tool is going to get you there (pencil effect, for example. Or maybe acrylic brushes).
But my advice would be to spend a bit of time exploring all the brushes that Procreate has to offer. Some of them might seem a bit wild and ‘out there’ but used correctly or sparingly can add some really cool effects to your piece.
All in all, it’s good to get to know your brushes, how they work, and what type of effect they have. You can then ‘save’ the brushes to your favourites list so you can easily go backwards and forwards between them anytime you need to. This will make it far easier for you to find them and you won’t ‘lose’ any brushes – trust me, this has happened to me a lot. I wish I’d have known I could save brushes to my favourites sooner.
#4 Using Layers
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that you could create layers in Procreate. Like, seriously, I was drawing on one flat layer for weeks before I realised I could add layers. And boy, does it make creating art that little bit more interesting. This is probably one of the most useful Procreate tips for beginners.
Using layers gives you the opportunity to create extremely intricate, interesting pieces of artwork that are incredibly multi-faceted and vibrant. It also gives you flexibility, and allows for creative licence without ‘ruining’ your whole artwork – create a layer, try something out, and if it doesn’t work, just delete the layer without worrying about erasing around everything else.
You can also move the layers around, so if you actually want something to sit on top of something else, rather than the other way around, you can easily long hold the layer, pick it up, and move it on top.
#5 Using Alpha Lock
Alpha Lock sounds incredibly complicated, and perhaps a bit random if you’re not used to the terminology. But in a nutshell, Alpha Lock allows you to lock a shape, or series of shapes in a particular layer. Once those shapes are locked, you can only colour, smudge or erase inside that locked shape. It allows you to edit that shape in any way you’d like without worrying about going over the lines.
This tool is so helpful when you are working with lots of different layers, or when you’re using a big brush for example, and want the effect the big brush brings without going outside the shape you’ve already created.
#6 Using Grid Lines
Probably one of the most helpful, yet simple Procreate tips for beginners. And one of the best tools that Procreate has is that you can put gridlines on your canvas. Obviously these are a temporary overlay that you can add and remove at any time. But they help so much with creating straight lines, equal squares, and even perfectly round circles. They also help lots with proportion in your art piece.
You can find grid lines if you click on the spanner tool in the top left corner. You can also edit the grid lines to be different colours, different sizes, and have different levels of opacity (if you’re working with really small grid lines for a really detailed piece, you can really lose focus of what you’re actually drawing if the grid lines are too dark and too opaque). So play around with this feature and see what type of grid size works best for you.
#7 Creating Straight Lines and Perfect Shapes
Some of the art you might decide to create might need perfect shapes, such as squares, circles, or just simple straight lines. And you might be worrying that you don’t really have a steady hand. But luckily another feature of procreate is the ability to create perfect shapes by simply drawing the shape to the best of your ability, and then ‘holding’ the brush still once you’re finished, so that Procreate can ‘snap’ your shape into place.
From there, you can easily adjust the dimensions of it by using the selection handles around the newly created shape.
#8 Colour Filling Made Easy
Number 8 of Procreate tips for beginners is so easy. Yet will save you hours upon hours of time creating art pieces. And that is the colour fill function. This is so easy it’s not going to take more than a few words to describe it. You choose the colour you like and identify the shape you want to fill.
You quite literally ‘drag’ the colour in the top right hand corner onto the shape you want to fill. And hey presto, it’s all filled in for you. No more spending hours colouring in (unless you want to, of course!)
#9 Opacity Functions
Bear with me on this one, because it’s a bit more difficult to explain, and a bit more difficult to explain the benefits of actually having this function. But once you realise how easy it’s going to make your life when creating art pieces, you’re going to love it!
Have you ever tried to draw a glass? Or window. Or perhaps even a ghost? What is difficult about drawing all of these things? Well, they’re see-through. But… not quite.
These particular things (and loads of other things) have a translucency about them which is really hard to replicate in traditional art forms. You have to imagine what would be behind the glass, or the window, and then draw a dimmer, more warped version of that thing.
Well, with the opacity function on Procreate, you no longer need to worry about that.
Let’s say you’re drawing a wine glass. Create a layer on Procreate and draw the background, or what is going to appear behind the glass. Then, create a new layer and draw the glass using a grey, or perhaps a very light blue. (You be the judge of the right colour choice for your piece!) Then click on the small ‘N’ next to the tick box on the layer you want to change the opacity of, and a drop down should appear under that layer.
Under ‘Opacity’ use the slider to change how transparent your layer is.
That’s it! Easy peasy! Now you have a realistic looking glass!
#10 Symmetry Tools
The symmetry tool on Procreate is so cool. If you like to make patterned art pieces, or you want to create art that is absolutely perfect (you might be creating a face for example), the symmetry tool is perfect for that. It’s also pretty fun to just play around and be creative!
To access the symmetry tool, click on the spanner > toggle on ‘Drawing Guide’ and then tap ‘Edit Drawing Guide.
A menu will pop up at the bottom. Select ‘Symmetry’ on the tabs. You can use the two sliders to choose the thickness and opacity of your symmetry lines. And you can also change the colour of them at the top of the page along the colour slider.
Click on ‘Options’ underneath the sliders and a few different options will pop up.
- Vertical – a line down the middle of the page from top to bottom. If you draw on the left, the right will perfectly match and vice versa.
- Horizontal – a line down the middle of the page from left to right. If you draw in the top half, the bottom half will perfectly match and vice versa.
- Quadrant – a cross across the middle of the piece, splitting the page into four. If you draw in one quadrant, all of the others will match.
- Radial – the page will be split into eight. If you draw in one eighth, the rest will match.
#11 Colour Selector
If you have been creating a piece of art, and completely forgot to create a palette, this hack is going to be for you. If you’ve used a colour, but you forgot to save it to a palette, you can very easily find that colour again by using this tip. Another scenario: perhaps you’ve imported a picture or photo into your canvas to copy from and you want to use a colour in that photo.
To replicate that colour, all you have to do is long hold your finger or Apple Pencil on that colour, and it will automatically select it for you!
Just don’t forget to save it to your palette 😉
#12 Selecting and Moving Elements
Have you ever looked at something you’ve just drawn and thought ‘wow, that looks amazing! But I wish I’d have drawn it over there instead! It would look soooo much better there!’
Well, with Procreate, you can literally select an element of your picture and move it somewhere else.
There’s a couple of different ways you can do this.
The first way is to select the layer that the element you want to move is on. Then click on the transformer icon (which is an arrow) in the top menu, and simply drag the element to where you want it to be.
If the layer you’re working on has multiple elements to it, and you just want to move one of them, click on the selections icon at the top (looks like an ‘S’) and draw a freehand ring around the thing you want to select. Then click on the transform (arrow) icon again and you should be able to move that singular object.
#13 Merging Layers
Layers are great because it means you can create lots of different elements to your digital art piece without them disturbing each other. This is the great thing about digital art in comparison to more traditional art. With traditional art, you really need to think ahead about what you’re creating so you can envisage where everything needs to go. And what piece of the art you need to start drawing or painting first.
Digital art gives you the freedom to create each element of your art piece in your own time and in your own order. Then, you can simply merge all of your layers into one at the end. (Or as you go, depending on if you’re ‘finished’ with certain layers).
To merge any layers, simply ‘pinch’ the layers together, as if you were zooming out of a photo on your smartphone. The layers should snap together.
#14 Adding Text to Your Art
Number fourteen of procreate tips for beginners is so effective! Some artists like to add text to their art. Whether they’re creating a stylised quote, or even just adding a road or shop sign to their piece. You might be tempted to write the quote or sign freehand yourself – and a lot of people do! But you do also have the ability within Procreate to add text. You can also edit this text in any way you want. A lot like you’d do on a word document.
To do this, click on the spanner in the top menu. When it drops down, click on ‘Add’ and then ‘Add Text’.
From there, a text box will appear and you can write what you want. If you long hold the text, you can highlight it (exactly like you’d do on a smartphone if you’re highlighting text). And then use the editing buttons at the bottom of the screen to change the font, change the size, or make it bold, italic – the list goes on!
#15 Save Your Brush Sizes
Sometimes, when you’re working on different art pieces, it’s great to have the flexibility of very quickly and easily being able to change the size of the brush that you’re using. But sometimes you need to ensure consistency in the brush that you’re using. And the easiest way to do this is by ‘saving’ your brush size.
This is really easily done. On the left hand side of your canvas, you should see two sliders. The top one is for brush size, the bottom one is for brush transparency.
When using the slider to change or preview your brush size, a little window should pop out. On here, you will see a + symbol. Simply tap that symbol and it will save your brush size for that particular brush. You will see that a dash has been left on your slider so you can easily find the size again. You can do this up to four times.
If you want to remove a brush size, simply repeat the action. But this time a – symbol should be there instead. So tap on that and the brush size will be removed.
Procreate Tips for Beginners: Conclusion
Procreate is an incredibly clever app, and can offer you so many options to create incredible art pieces. Once you’ve got the basics nailed, then you can move onto the more advanced features to expand your knowledge even further.
I’d love to hear from you – so please tell me what you thought of these Procreate tips for beginners! Have you used any? Are you thinking of using any? And do you think I missed anything vital?
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