You’ve bought an iPad*, you’ve bought an Apple Pencil*. You’ve downloaded and paid for Procreate, and now you want to get busy drawing some cool pictures. Except, you’re now on the app, and you don’t even know where to start. Well the first thing you probably want to do when starting any art piece, is choose the colour palette you’re going to use. So today we’re going to talk about how to make a colour palette on Procreate.
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Contents
Why Should You Choose Your Colour Palette on Procreate Before You Start Drawing?
Creating a colour palette on Procreate in advance is completely optional. You can definitely choose colours as you go. You might not even know what you want to draw yet, or how the piece is going to look.
But the reason a lot of people try to set their colour palette on Procreate in advance is to make their art look more cohesive. Or it might be because you want to create a series of art pieces that have the same vibe, or they could be matching pieces in a duo or trio. Whatever your reasons, setting a colour palette in advance of starting your piece can help you keep on track. It will also make it so much easier and quicker to seamlessly switch between colours, without having to think too much about it.
How To Find and Choose Colours on Procreate
Finding your colours on the Procreate app is pretty easy. But finding out how to use them can be a little bit trickier. I’ll quickly give you a run down of all the important things you need to know about creating a colour palette on Procreate, and how to access each feature.
The first thing you need to do in Procreate is open either a new canvas, or choose one that you’ve already started working on.
Next, click on the coloured circle in the very top right hand corner of the page. This will open up your colour options in a pop-out menu.
Palette Types
Along the bottom of the pop-out menu will be a few different options. This is called your panel and these are the options you should be met with:
- Disc
- Classic
- Harmony
- Value
- Palettes
Each of these options have their own features and benefits. I’ll run through these, and then we’ll get down to business on how to create a colour palette on Procreate!
Disc
On the disc menu, you will find – a disc of colour.
This disc offers you the ability to choose different hues of colour on the outside ring. It then gives you the ability to choose the saturation of that colour within the inner circle. So you can choose a hue of blue that you like the look of in the outside ring, and then decide within the inner circle exactly how vibrant or dim you want that blue to be. You are also able to zoom into the inner circle so you can see the saturation levels a little bit better. (Use your fingers to zoom in on the circle, just like you would if you were zooming in on a picture on a smartphone).
Once you’ve selected a colour that you like, and start using it, it will appear in the history line underneath the disc. This history line only holds up to 10 colours. When you select a new colour it will delete the last one on the list each time a new colour is selected. Make sure you’re aware of this so you don’t lose the colours you like. We’re going to, of course, talk about how to make a colour palette in Procreate in this article, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
Classic
The classic menu might look a little more familiar to you. It follows a similar style to a lot of other applications and programmes out there.
When you open the classic menu, you will find a big square of a single colour hue offering different saturations within that hue.
To change the hue, use the first slider directly underneath the big colour block. Underneath that first slider is the saturation slider. Here you can decide how dim or how vibrant you want the colour to be. And underneath that you can set the brightness of the colour, from black to white (and everything in between).
As you move these sliders, you will see the dot moving around on the square. You can also manually move this dot, rather than using the saturation and brightness sliders.
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Harmony
The Harmony option on the colour panel is probably one of the most exciting options because it allows you to create palettes of colour you might not have previously thought of, without having to think too much.
The idea of the harmony option is to create colour schemes for your art piece using basic colour theory. When you’re on harmony mode, you will see in the top right of the pop-out menu under ‘Colours’ it says one of five things; complementary, split complementary, analogous, triadic, and tetradic.
If you click on this word, another menu will pop out allowing you to choose a different option. But what do these different options mean?
Complementary Colours
Complementary colours are essentially two complete opposite colours on the colour wheel. If you choose your base colour to be a cool colour, like blue, then the complementary colour will always be a warm colour, like red.
Complementary colours in an art piece can be really interesting. Because each colour is so different from the other, each colour allows the other to really ‘pop’ which can create a really vibrant, eye-catching piece.
Split Contemporary Colours
Split contemporary colours allow you to work with three different colours. And these three different colours are divided up like this; one colour (your main base colour) might be a warm colour. The harmony mode will then give you two complementary cool colours. Or vice versa.
Using split contemporary colours can give you a more balanced art piece. This is sometimes easier to look at, because one particular colour is always the main focus.
Analogous Colours
This particular mode uses one base colour (like a lot of the other modes do), but this time, it chooses two other colours that are very close to the base colour on the colour wheel. One colour will be slightly cooler than your base colour, and the other will be slightly warmer. This creates a nice palette for the base colour and allows it to have highlights and accent colours that closely match it.
Triadic and Tetradic Colours
I’ve grouped both of these modes together because, a bit like complimentary colours, triadic and tetradic colours places equal distance between your base colours and the other colours that are chosen. This creates three (triadic) or four (tetradic) equally dominant colours on your wheel (rather than two, which is what complementary colours give you) which you can carefully place in your artwork to create a balanced piece.
Value
If you’re extremely technically minded and have an exact colour in mind, or know how to create it, then this mode is going to be for you. Or, you might just like playing around with colour, in which case, this mode is also going to be for you. Choosing a colour using this mode is based more on HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) than visually seeing a colour you like on a wheel and choosing it.
What is extremely useful in this mode, however, is the ability to input hex (or hexadecimal) codes. These are alphanumeric codes, usually made up of 6 figures, which indicate a specific colour. If you find a particular colour, or palette of colours you like, on Pinterest for example, you might find that the hex codes (usually preceded with a #) are available on the Pin too. You can input those hex codes directly into the hexadecimal section under the value mode and voila! There’s your colour!
Palettes
Here we are – the section you’ve been waiting for! How to make a colour palette on Procreate.
The palettes mode comes with two different view options – Compact and Card. You can see the different view options for this at the top of the pop-out menu.
Compact is the default mode. Here you will see little squares (called swatches) of colour. This is a great view because you can see more of your palettes all at once, making it easier to see and choose which palette you want to work with.
Cards is the second, non-default option when you open up the Palettes view. Cards is a much bigger, more expanded view with bigger squares of colour. These bigger squares of colour, unlike the smaller squares, are also named based on what colour Procreate thinks they are. You can change these names if you want to by tapping on the name.
You can also long hold each of the colours and move them around if you want to. This is useful if you want to see what colours look like next to each other, or if you want to create a more cohesive looking colour palette on Procreate.
Creating Your Colour Palette
When you first open you colour palette on Procreate, you will see that there are some preloaded palettes available.
To create your own colour palette on procreate, do the following:
- Click on the ‘+’ button in the top right of the pop-out menu
- In the drop-down menu, click ‘create new palette’
- A blank, untitled palette will appear – you can rename this by clicking on the three dots (…)
- Make sure your new palette has the blue checkmark next to it – this means this is the active palette
- Go to your favourite or preferred colour choosing mode – disc, classic, harmony, or value and choose a colour you like
- Once your colour is chosen, press on one of the blank dots in the palette showing underneath the tool – this is your new palette and the colour is now saved there
- Continue adding colours in the same way until your palette is complete
And there you have it, a quick pit-stop on all things ‘Procreate Colour’ related. Hopefully you found this useful! Let me know if there’s anything else you want to know about exploring colours on Procreate!
If you’re interested in getting involved in digital art, then take a look at some of my recommendations on my Amazon Storefront.
