- Hello, my name is Karen.
And in this video, I'm going to show you how to get started
with the Procreate app on your iPad from scratch.
Procreate is an iPad app that lets you be creative,
anytime, wherever you are.
You can use it for drawing or painting or lettering,
and the options are truly endless.
You can use Procreate to create extremely detailed
and advanced artwork.
But it's also perfect for beginners
because it is so intuitive to use.
I've been using Procreate for over five years
for lettering and art.
And I've been obsessed with making Procreate brushes,
practice sheets and tutorials
that help you be more creative with your iPad.
Let's jump right in and let's talk about the best devices
to use with Procreate.
The dream team for using Procreate,
is the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.
But there's definitely other options for you too.
You can draw in Procreate with your finger
or a third part stylus.
But no other tool matches the responsiveness
and control of the Apple Pencil.
The Apple Pencil works with all new iPads,
you just need to make sure that you get the right version
of the Apple Pencil for the iPad you choose.
I recommend getting that larger screen size
you can afford.
I personally use the 12.9 inch iPad Pro
because I love having the large area to work on.
If you don't quite have the budget for an iPad Pro,
then the 4th generation iPad Air is a great option too.
It's nearly identical to the iPad Pro
in terms of performance when working with Procreate.
And if you would like to see it in more detail,
make sure to watch my review video,
where I'm comparing it to the iPad Pro.
But having said that even the iPad mini
or the 8th generation iPad will work really nicely
with Procreate.
I also highly recommend getting a Mac screen protector
for your iPad.
Because the glass screen of the iPad
can feel a little bit slippery.
So the MAXFRAME protector is going to give you a nice,
smooth feeling when you draw.
I personally very much like
the paper like screen protectors.
But now let's start with the tutorial.
This is pretty much a crash course
of how to use the Procreate app.
You'll learn the basics, tips and tricks
and everything you need to know to get started
as quickly as possible.
The gallery view is the first thing you'll see
when you open up Procreate.
Here you can browse and open all of your artwork
as well as start new pieces.
Tap the plus sign to create a new canvas.
You'll see a variety of canvas size templates,
but you can also create your own.
I recommend setting up a high resolution canvas
when you work in Procreate so that you have the option
to print your artwork later on if you would like to.
Let's create a canvas that is 5,000 pixels high
and then 3,600 pixels wide.
It's a good size that fills the whole screen
and you still have plenty of layers to work with.
The number of layers you have depends on your iPad.
If you have a piece of art that you know you want to print
on a specific size, then you also have the option
to set up your canvas in millimeters or inches here as well.
But in most cases pixels are fine.
Tap of create and then it'll open up your new canvas.
One of the things you'll notice
is that I'm using the light interface.
If you prefer the dark interface,
you can change it by taping on the spanner icon,
then go to preferences and then tune that toggle
for the dark interface on or off.
The reason why I prefer the light interface
for my tutorials is because it prevents the screen glare.
If you're left-handed, you might like to turn on
that right hand interface.
So you can turn it on and then you can see the sliders here
are going to be on the right hand side of the screen.
Procreate has a large number of gestures
that you can look at.
But I have most of them set to the default option.
One of the options I recommend you change
is the touch actions.
Which means you can only draw with the Apple Pencil.
But it prevents accidental strokes
by touching the screen with your hands.
Procreate is actually really good at palm rejection.
So you can comfortably rest your hand on the screen
while drawing even with this option turned off.
But I never draw with my fingers so I don't need it.
Tap the paintbrush icon in the menu bar
to access the brushes panel.
Procreate comes with a large collection
of pre-installed brushes,
covering a range of mediums and styles.
But what's really cool about Procreate,
is that you can install or even create
your own custom brushes.
If you tap on a brush,
you'll see that each brush has dozens of settings
that manipulate the characteristics of each brush.
You don't need to worry about these settings right now,
but I just wanted to show you
so that you know that these are here.
You can create new sets
and you can move brushes between sets
so that you have all your favorite brushes,
right at your fingertips.
Each brush has different abilities.
And I very much recommend that you experiment
with different levels of pressure,
the speed of your strokes,
as well as the tilt of your Apple Pencil.
To see what different effect each brush can produce.
The sliders on the left here
allow you to change the size of the brush
and then also the opacity here.
You can use two fingers to zoom in or out
and also to rotate the canvas.
My favorite feature of Procreate is the two finger tap undo.
If you make a mistake,
simply two finger tap anywhere on the canvas.
If there's quite a few strokes you want to undo,
tap with two fingers and hold
to invoke the rapid undo function.
You can tap a three fingers to redo
and then tap and hold to redo multiple.
Another cool feature is that you can scrub back and forth
with three fingers to clear the whole screen.
Now let's look at the eraser tool.
The first thing you'll notice
is that it has the same brushes as in the brushes panel.
This means that you can use the same brush to paint
and erase.
Which makes a big difference
when you work with textured brushes.
Let's color in a portion of the screen
and then long tap the eraser tool to select the same brush.
And now you'll see how you can raise parts of your painting
without losing the textured edges.
That little finger icon is the smudge tool.
You can use it to blend, smear or combine brush strokes.
And again, you can use all the brushes that you have
in the brushes and eraser panels.
Use the opacity slider to determine the strength
of your smudging to create nice, smooth transitions.
And then over here in the top right corner,
we have the colors.
Tap the color swatch to bring up the color pickup.
Use the outer ring to select that hue
and then the inner circle to fine tune the lightness,
the darkness or the saturation of the color.
You can drag the handle of that color picker
to make it float and make it very easy
to quickly change the color while you are painting.
Tap and hold on the screen to invoke the eyedropper.
This lets you easily select the color
that is already on the canvas.
Now let's put the color wheel back into its place
and let's have a look at the color palettes.
Tap on that color palette icon here.
Create a new pallet, creates an empty pallet
that you can populate yourself with your favorite colors.
You can reorder the colors by long pressing the color swatch
and then dragging it into a new spot.
New from camera, is a super cool option
to create a color palette
by pointing your iPad camera at an object
and then you get a live preview of that color palette.
You can also create a new palette from a photo
either by selecting it from the Photos app
or by dragging it directly into the palette like this.
Let's look at the layers panel next
by tapping on the layer icon here.
Layers are very powerful
and one of the most useful features of Procreate.
At the bottom is the background color
and by default it is white.
But you can tap on it
to select any color as your background.
Tap that layer thumbnail to access that layer fly out menu,
which is giving you all these additional layer options.
Let's tap clear to start fresh.
Let's select black and create a rectangular shape.
You can fill this area with color quickly
by dragging the color circle into the shape.
Make sure that your shape is completely closed,
otherwise you'll fill the whole screen.
Now let's create a new layer and create another rectangle.
Let's fill it with that same color.
You might also like to adjust the shape
by selecting one of the transform tools.
Try the different options
to see how you can change the shape of your drawing.
Once you're happy, tap the arrow tool
to unselect the shape.
Go to that layer menu and then duplicate that shape.
(chuckles) And by now you can probably see
what we are drawing.
Now, move the legs behind the body
by dragging the layer to the bottom of that stack like this.
You can see now how this has placed the shapes
behind their body shapes.
So any layer that is on top is always at the front.
And then the layers that are further down the stack
are going to be in the background.
Use the eraser tool to erase parts of the body
and then paint them back if you've erased too much.
Now this looks good and we can merge the layers.
Open the layers panel and pinch the layers together
to merge them.
Sometimes this can be a little bit hard,
so you can also tap on that layer thumbnail
and then select merge down instead.
I also want to show you how to reorder the layers
in the layers panel and the effect it has
on the appearance of your shape.
Let's draw the oxygen tank and fill it with purple.
But now we want it to appear behind the body.
Open up the layers panel and then move the layer
below the body.
And then it gets partially hidden like this.
Layers that are higher up
take precedence over that lower layer.
So if you need to bring something to the front,
then you can just drag it to the top of your layers panel.
Next step, we are going to draw the mask
and I'm going to show you how to use the quick shape tool.
You can draw up lines, rectangles circles,
and polyline shapes
by holding your Apple Pencil on the screen
until the shape forms a quick line.
Then go to edit shape and rearrange the shape
until you're happy with it.
For the mask, we are going to draw an ellipse
and then use the warp tool to amend their shape.
Now instead of fitting the shape with the color,
I want to show you how to use the reference function.
This is a great feature to color in your lineup.
Open the layers panel and tap on that layer thumbnail
then select reference.
Create a new layer and fill the shape
by dragging and dropping the color swatch onto it.
The nice thing about doing this,
is that you can now adjust the fill color independently
of your line color.
Recoloring shapes is really easy.
If you know the exact color you want,
you can alpha lock that layer
and then fill it with a new color.
Alpha lock means that you can only paint on the pixels
that already have a color.
You can drag to the right on your layers panel
to invoke the alpha lock.
Or you can also tap on the layer thumbnail
to invoke alpha lock like this.
If you're not sure exactly what color you want,
I recommend to use the hue saturation
and brightness adjustment.
Let's tap on the magic wand icon,
and let's have a look at all the adjustment options
we have in Procreate.
The top group here is to adjust all the colors
of your artwork.
The next group allows you to apply a blur.
The third group is to adjust the textures.
And then that bottom group here
is used to adjust the shape of your artwork.
My favorite adjustment is definitely the hue saturation
and brightness (chuckles) and I use it all the time.
Tapping on the menu items allows you to choose
between layer and pencil.
Selecting layer will apply the adjustment
to the whole layer.
And selecting pencil, allows you to paint in the adjustment
with your Apple Pencil.
In most cases, you want to select layer,
which is what we are going to do now.
Adjust the sliders,
to dial in exactly the color that you want.
And then tap the magic wand icon again to lock them in.
Now we want to draw in the body highlight.
Create a new layer above that body layer
and draw the shape of the highlight with white.
Now we are going to look at
the next powerful Procreate feature,
which is opacity and blend modes.
Open up the layers panel and tap on the ink,
Change the opacity slider
to make your shape more transparent
so that the layer below becomes visible.
Another thing you can do is change the blend mode.
Let's turn the opacity back to 100%
and then change the blend mode to soft light.
Definitely try some of the other blend modes as well
to see what effects you can achieve with this.
Now let's group the body shapes by swiping to the right
and then selecting group here
at the top of that layer panel.
Now you can move and transform all the layers
inside your group at the same time.
Okay. Now back to the mask.
Let's create some highlights here as well
and let me show you another cool feature.
We are going to draw the highlights here.
And it's kind of difficult
to exactly match to each of your line here.
But it's very easy to fix.
All you have to do is turn on the clipping mask feature
and then it will clip the contents of this layer
to the shape of the layer below.
I use this feature all the time
when coloring in my lettering pieces.
Oh, Chromat needs a hat of course as well.
And I really like the little fried egg.
Draw the outline of the egg,
and then let's use the liquify tool to adjust the shape.
The liquify tool has a number of different modes
and it's super fun to play with.
Definitely try them all out.
You'll probably find the push mode most useful for this,
but definitely try the edge mode too.
And then let's give our Chromat a little shadow too.
Select the soft airbrush and draw a line.
Then go to the adjustments and use the Gaussian blur tool
in layer mode to create a soft blur.
Make the shadow a bit narrower using the transform tool
and then decrease the opacity a little bit too.
Next step we are going to create a galaxy bag around.
Let's create an ellipse and fill it.
And then paint a white nebula with the nebula brush
that's in the luminance brush set.
Let's also use some of this stars that we painted earlier.
Duplicate the layer a few times
and then distribute the stars on the background.
If you don't have the stars on a separate layer,
then it's not a problem.
You can use that selection tool
and draw a circle around some of the shapes.
And then move them with the arrow tool
until they are in the right place.
Once you're happy with your artwork,
it's time to export it.
Tap on that spanner icon and the tap share.
And you can see that we've got a number of export formats
available here.
The most common option is probably JPEG.
You can also select PSD, which will keep your layers intact.
And it's useful if you wanna carry on working
on this artwork on your computer.
And then you also have the PNG option,
which can create a transparent background.
And I'm gonna show you how this works now.
So if you don't want that white background,
you can now go into your layers panel
and then you can de-select that background color.
And you can see here I still got the frame,
but the background is transparent now.
And then in that case, you wanna select that PNG option.
Now let's go to the gallery
and then I wanna show you some other options.
You can name this file by tapping on that layer.
So now it's called untitled artwork,
but we wanna call this "Among Us Purple."
And then what you can do as well is create stacks.
You can see I've got the number of stacks here already.
So you tap on select and then you tap on the artwork
that you want to stack.
And then click on stack,
which will group the stacks nicely.
And now you can name this stack as well.
So this is going to be called "Procreate Tutorial."
I really hope you found this tutorial useful,
and I really hope you got all excited
about using Procreate for your drawing, painting
and lettering.
Please give me a thumbs up.
Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already.
And then I'm also going to bloop up
another couple of videos with Procreate 5X features,
so you can keep watching
and you can keep learning those as well.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you
in the next video.