A Beginner’s Guide to Procreate

Procreate is an app that gives you a varied colour palette and numerous brushes for you to transfer your artistic flare to the digital platform! It has become extremely popular, especially with many artists using lockdown as an opportunity to begin drawing and selling their art online. I myself have fallen in love with the app and go on it every single night! However, it did take some time to get used to and understand, which took me even longer as I didn’t look into YouTube videos or Instagram reels for help. Here is a beginner’s guide to Procreate, so you can save some time from aimlessly navigating and get straight to creating your masterpiece!

Firstly, and very importantly, if you are wanting to sell your artwork, is the canvas size. When you first go on the app and select the ‘+’, it will come up with a pre-set list of canvas sizes. You can choose one of these, or you can create your own. If you want to create your artwork on A4 paper size, the option is already there. However, if you are wanting to create bigger drawings (A3+) you’ll need to manually create one by entering the pixel size you want. For A3, the pixel size should be around 4961 x 3508 px, but you can Google the pixels you should enter for any other size. Why is this so important? Well, as I have sadly learnt, drawing on a smaller sized canvas than you actually want it will make the final image blurry. So, if you’re drawing on an A4 canvas but print it as an A3 paper, it will blow up the image and cause any fine lines to visibly blur. It’s also important to go into your canvas’ DPI and make it at least 300 to prevent blurring.

Now the technical stuff is out of the way, let’s get to the drawing! The canvas is initially white, although you can change the background colour in the top righthand control centre. In the top righthand corner lives the colour palette. When you click on this, you can view the colours in 4 different ways, although I tend to stick to ‘classic’. Here, you have free reign to select any colour that’s on the board, and controls to make it darker, lighter, or a different shade altogether. Once you’ve found a colour you like, you can save it by clicking on the colour palette just below, or you can select from the ready-made colour palettes.

Finally, the brushes! Procreate comes loaded with various brushes ready for you to use, but there are extension packs available to buy from various sources if you want to branch out even more. There are nearly 20 (!) sub-sections of brushes, including sketching and charcoals, with various brushes under each category. It can be daunting at first when you’re just wanting to pick something to draw with, but I recommend spending some time with each one to see which suits your drawing style best. 

So, now you have the basics covered, go and have fun with your new app!

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