- Welcome to Part Three of the Procreate Beginners Series.
I'm Christiane and in a few minutes
you'll learn the basics of Procreate's Editing Tools,
including Transform, Selection, Adjustments
and Actions, all whilst creating an intergalactic artwork.
Let's open the app, and we'll be greeted
by our gallery.
If you've joined me for Parts One and Two,
you'll have at least two of your own artworks in here.
Let me show you some actions we can use
to manage our artworks.
First, if you swipe left on an artwork
you have the options to instantly Share,
Duplicate, or Delete your artwork.
I'll show you a great way to organize your work.
Simply touch and hold an artwork
and drag it over another one.
Wait for the blue highlight, then release
to form a Stack.
Once you have a Stack you can give
it a unique name.
I'll call this one 'Art'.
You can tap your Stack to enter it and observe
the art within.
And finally, tap Select in order
to select multiple works to Preview,
Share, Duplicate, or Delete.
Also, when we have multiple artworks selected
we can touch and hold to pick them all up.
Tap the Stack name to exit the Stack
and drop them directly back into your gallery.
Now let's create another artwork.
Hit the plus icon in the top right
to create a new artwork and select
Screen Size canvas at the top of the list.
In Parts One and Two of the Procreate Beginners Series,
we focused on mastering the Painting Tools
on the top right hand side here.
Now in Part Three, we'll go through the Editing Tools
on the top left.
But first, let's start painting.
Open Layers and let's select a Background color.
Remember this layer is all about choosing
a color, not painting.
And we're going to go to the Palettes tab
and find the Ascend palette.
Select that blue in the bottom left.
Next to Palettes is the Value color picker,
which is great for finer color selection.
You can see a range of modes.
For example, H is for Hue, S for Saturation,
and B for Brightness.
What we can do is make the blue darker
by bringing that brightness slider down to the left,
around 25%. Nice.
Let's go to the Paint tool, and under
the Painting set select the Round Brush.
Make sure the size is set to 7%.
We can see the percentage in the preview
next to the Brush Size Slider,
and make sure the opacity is right up.
Now let's select a color to paint with.
Tap your Active Color and we're going
to find the Flourish palette.
Next to it tap the three dots and tap
Set as Default.
This means that if we tap our Color Disc,
we see our default palette here.
Select the fourth orange along the bottom row.
And finally, follow along and we'll draw our circle.
Keep holding to invoke the QuickShape feature.
Touch the screen with a second finger
to create a perfect circle.
Try to keep it the size I have here
with plenty of space above and below
and roughly in the center of your canvas.
Tap the Paint tool to finalize.
Let's now take a closer look
at Procreate's Editing Tools.
From left to right, we have Actions,
Adjustments, Selection, and Transform.
Let's start with the Transform tool,
which is for changing the size, shape,
or position of your layer content.
Tap the Transform icon and a bounding box
will appear around your layer content.
Dragging the corners of the bounding box
adjusts the content's size and shape.
Holding and dragging either within
or outside the bounding box allows you
to move the object.
A two finger tap will undo your last move.
There are four transform modes along
the bottom menu.
Freeform can squash or stretch your content.
Uniform retains the original proportions
of your content when you resize.
Distort allows you to skew your content
at angles to create a sense of dimension.
And with Warp a mesh will appear
around your content so you can bend
and twist the proportions of your artwork.
Let's go Uniform.
Tap Snapping and turn the Snapping toggle on.
Now when we move our circle around
we can see the vertical and horizontal guidelines
to indicate our content is in the center of our canvas.
Move your circle around until you see
both lines at once.
So now it's dead center.
Go to Layers, swipe left on your circle layer
and tap Duplicate.
We now have two circles.
Tap Transform again and let's resize
the second circle and move it directly
on top of the first one
until the gap between is roughly the thickness
of the line.
Because we have Snapping still on we can
easily center the circle over our original circle.
Duplicate the second circle.
Again, transform the size of the third circle.
Make sure you have a similar gap between
and snap it to the center.
Duplicate the third circle.
And finally, transform the size of the fourth circle
and center it.
Great.
What if we want to transform all four circles at once?
Well, we can select them all.
To do this, tap the top circle layer.
Doing so will give the layer a blue highlight,
indicating that this is our Primary Layer.
Now we can swipe right on each of the layers below
to select them as Secondary Layers.
Now with all four layers selected we do have
the ability to transform them all at once,
but we're going to group them first,
as layer groups have more options for us.
As we have multiple layers selected,
the Group option will appear here.
Tap it to create a Layer Group.
We can now select the group and transform
all the circles within.
Groups are a great way to keep your layers organized.
To keep track of your Layer Groups
you can rename the group by tapping it and tapping Rename.
Let's call this group Planet.
With a Layer Group you can still go in and edit
each layer individually,
but you can also easily select
and make sudden edits to the entire group.
The group can be collapsed or expanded,
which is helpful to organize things visually
if you have many layers.
And you can tap the check box to hide the entire group.
With any Layer Group we can also swipe left
and either Delete or Duplicate the group.
Let's Duplicate this one for now.
Let's turn on our top group and leave
the bottom one hidden, as we'll come back
to it a little later.
And we can tap the arrow to expand our top group
and reveal the layers inside.
Now let's create our planet.
We'll use this group of rings as our starting point.
You can only ever paint on one layer at a time,
so you can't paint on groups or multiple layers.
So in order to ColorDrop between
these two middle rings, we need them to be
on the same layer.
Tap the second layer to bring up Layer Options
and tap Merge Down.
Now we can ColorDrop between the lines.
Let's also ColorDrop into the smallest ring,
the bottom layer of our group.
We can also use ColorDrop to change
an existing color.
Let's go to our Flourish palette,
hold and drag the second darkest pink
and drop that in.
And finally, instead of using the Merge Down option
we can use our fingers to pinch
the top two layers together to merge them.
Now the rings are on one layer.
We can grab pure white with a double tap
and ColorDrop them both.
Now let's transform these white rings.
This time, let's try Freeform
and I'll show you a little shortcut
to distort without having to jump between modes.
We can tap and hold the top left corner node
to quickly distort and create the illusion
of planetary rings.
Drag the node in directly towards
the bottom right node, just until we see
a bit of the bottom of the planet,
keeping an even space on either side.
And let's now touch outside the bounding box
to reposition the rings a little further
away from the bottom right there.
Now we've had a look at Transform,
let's try the Selection tool,
right here next to Transform.
This tool allows you to select and isolate areas
of your artwork to paint or edit.
I'll do a little demonstration
so you can see it in action.
Like Transform, you'll see a range
of options at the bottom here.
I'll start with Automatic and we'll look
at the other options later.
Automatic allows you to quickly select
solid areas with a single tap.
For example, I can tap the inner ring
to select it, and now I can make edits
to this selected area.
Let's undo that.
Now follow along and we'll use automatic selection
to erase the back part of our rings.
We can use the Selection tool to work across layers.
So if we go to our pink planet layer,
tap Selection, Automatic, and select
the planet area, we can go back into our layers
and select the outer rings.
Here you can see diagonal lines to indicate
what is not in our active selection.
Now we can erase within the selected area.
Tap the Selection tool to exit and look
at our lovely planet.
Now let's collapse and hide that group
and turn on and expand the bottom group.
Tap and hold the Eyedropper to get that orange back
as our Active Color.
Now go up through the layer list
and ColorDrop into each of your circles.
By the time we finish this we'll have
four different sized, fully filled circles.
(ambient music)
Now tap the N on the top layer
and bring the opacity down to roughly 50%.
Do the same for the two layers below.
But leave the fourth at 100%.
When it looks like this we can flatten
the entire group into a single layer
by tapping the group and selecting Flatten.
Now, turn on and expand the top group
and drag this layer to in between the planet
and the rings.
In Part Two of this series, we had a look
at Alpha Lock, a similar but much more flexible tool
is Clipping Mask.
If we tap our middle layer we can find
Clipping Mask just here.
Tap it and you'll notice a little arrow
pointing down at the layer below.
This is how clipping masks work.
The paint on the layer below acts
kind of like a window, in this case,
a planet shaped window,
revealing only a planet shaped portion
of the clipping mask layer.
So if we tap Transform and move the clipping mask
we can see those lovely concentric circles
within the frame of our planet.
Drag them to the top left of the planet
and tap Transform to exit.
Now let's add another clipping mask.
Add a new layer above the clipping mask,
tap that layer and tap Clipping Mask.
Go to your Color Disc and double tap
to select pure white.
Go to brushes, Spray Paints, Medium Nozzle.
Make the size around halfway and paint
a cute little highlight.
The great thing about clipping masks
and what makes them a little more flexible
than Alpha Lock is that you can go in and add
more clipping mask layers, hide them,
delete them, and just experiment
without destroying anything.
Because our planet is now complete
we can pinch merge the clipping masks
with the layer below.
One last example of clipping masks in action
is the ability to recolor everything on the layer.
Let's try this with the planet rings.
If we add a new layer above
and create a clipping mask
we can select a brighter yellow in our palette,
the third one along, and ColorDrop
to fill the entire layer.
The entire clipping mask layer is yellow,
but we'll only see it through the window
of the rings layer below.
And I'm happy with that too.
So we can pinch merge them together.
Let's add some effects to our artwork.
Go to our rings layer,
swipe left, and Duplicate.
Ready to add a glow.
Now it's time to explore our next Editing Tool.
On the left of Selection is Adjustments.
This menu contains all sorts of exciting effects
to experiment with.
Let's choose Gaussian Blur.
Drag right across the screen to adjust
the threshold or how much blur.
Let's go for around 7%.
Okay, let's look at another adjustments tool
that can be super fun to play with.
First let's select the group and create
a new layer above.
Let's hide the planet for now.
Go to the Flourish palette and grab that nice,
bright green on the top left.
Get the Round Brush again within the Painting set,
and set the brush size to around half way.
Draw our line right through the middle
of your canvas, holding at the end
to make it straight using QuickShape.
Now boost the brush size up a bit and draw
a shorter line on the top and bottom halves
of your canvas.
Go to Adjustments and almost at the end of the list
select the Liquify tool.
Liquify offers a bunch of modes that can
be a lot of fun.
Let's try Crystals.
(ambient music)
Now we'll try Twirl Right.
(ambient music)
And you can always tap Reset to get back
to your starting point.
Now we have even more options
at the bottom here to adjust
the behavior of each of these modes.
For our artwork we'll use Twirl Right.
Size, Pressure, and Momentum, right up.
And instead of full Distortion, we'll bring
it right back down to none.
This gives us a more controlled effect
and we can give it a little touch
to create a beautiful swirl.
Go to Transform and using two fingers,
let's rotate and scale up the size
to create a nice spacey background texture.
Go to the layer, tap the N symbol
and change the blend mode to Overlay
and bring the Opacity down to around 30%.
Bring it down to the bottom of the layer stack.
Tap the plus symbol to add a new layer
and let's grab that Spray Paint brush again,
the Medium Nozzle.
Boost the size to maximum.
Go to your Active Color.
Double tap the black area to select full black
and paint some texture at the top here.
Let's go to our layer, tap the N
and bring the Opacity down to 50%.
Let's turn the Planet group back on.
We're going to rotate our planet a little,
and because it's a group we can easily use
the Transform tool to do this.
With our group selected, tap Transform
and you'll find a little green node at the top.
Drag this to the right and rotate your planet.
Now, we just need a few more planets
to bring our solar system together.
And for this let's use the Selection tool again.
Tap into Layers and create a new layer at the top.
Go to the Selection tool
and choose the Ellipse mode.
We want to create three planets
around our main planet of varying sizes.
So drag to create a circle
and hold with another finger whilst dragging
to create a perfect circle,
just like QuickShape.
Let's create another selection at the top left here
and a little one at the top right.
(ambient music)
Now let's go to our Flourish palette
and grab that bright green again
and ColorDrop into our circles.
Tap the Selection tool to complete.
What if we want to move a planet?
Well, we can use the Selection tool again.
Tap it and let's use the Freehand method
free drawing around the planet
while tapping to draw straight lines.
And finally tapping the start node
to close our selection loop.
Now we can go to the Transform tool
and move our selected planet around independently.
Now let's use another clipping mask
to give these planets some dimension.
Go to Layers, tap the plus icon,
and add a new layer above our little green planets.
Let's make it a Clipping Mask.
Make sure you still have your medium nozzle spray paint.
Bring the size down about halfway
and let's use the Eyedropper to grab
that deep blue background color.
Now paint them in.
(ambient music)
So to make them look like they're reflecting
the colors of the main planet,
let's grab that golden yellow and paint
a highlight on this one.
Grab the pink for the bottom one.
And grab orange for this top one.
And that's it.
You've created a beautiful solar system artwork.
Thank you for joining me in Part Three
of the Beginners Series.
You've covered a lot so far.
Well done.
We'll learn more about the Editing Tools
in Part Four, including Drawing Guides and Animation.
So, join me there.