In the last few years, digital drawing tools have come a long way, allowing artists to produce some truly amazing work having the look and feel of traditional media, with a couple digital advantages. Procreate is one of the best drawing apps out there and only costs about $13 in the Apple App Store.
Procreate on iPad
If you own an iPad, you may have a powerful drawing tool at your fingertips, and don’t even know it! In this short tutorial, I will explain to you how to open a file on Procreate and quickly start drawing.
After learning the basic interface in this video, try playing around a bit at first. Scribble, and test out different brush styles (like I did in the video) without the pressure of making “real art.”
A few more tips
Procreate has a clean interface, which means some features are hidden and rely on user gestures.
Use two finger tap to undo an action.
Three finger tap will redo an action.
Three finger swipe-down will reveal a cut and paste menu.
Long hold a color on screen to sample that color (your brush will now paint with that color).
Drag the color swatch from the upper right into a shape to color fill.
If you own an Apple Pencil, it may have the ability to tilt and make different marks (like when you sketch with a pencil at a low angle).
In Layers, try out Blending Modes by tapping the small letter “N” and then adjusting transparency or Blending Mode. A Blending Mode changes the way the colors in the layer interact with lower layers.
If you don’t have an iPad there are other drawing apps like Sketchbook that you can try.
Have fun!
Your First Digital Sketch