Everything I Wish I Knew When I first used Procreate.
A Beginners 101 to using the Procreate App on iOS(iPadOS) and iPad Pro with Apple Pencil
Since getting my iPad Pro, I have been a big fan of Procreate, its where I do all of my illustration now, it’s so clean and smart, but there is some assumed knowledge that should be in some sort of tour (or maybe there was and I skipped it 🤷♂).
Typography
Who’d have known you can add text to your document in Procreate, it’s tucked away in the add menu, but is super powerful, and lets you import custom fonts, and do all the usual text trickery you would expect.
Colour Picking from your document
Using your finger, hold it on your Artboard where you want to pick a colour. A round colour picker will appear and let you select, at this point you can drag around to get the right colour.
Fill a space using the picker
If you drag a colour from the top corner of procreate it will fill the area you drop on with your chosen colour. If you hold before dropping, you can change the threshold of where you are dropping the colour.
If your pen isn't tracking after a while, check the nib
Sometimes the nib slowly unscrews so it doesn't track your movement, or only sometimes tracks creating dashes. Simply twist the nib back in place, and crack on as you were.
Easy switch from Pen to Eraser
Simply double tap the side of your pen to swap between Pen and Eraser mode, you can stop this in the iPad Settings if you don’t want this behaviour
Draw a perfect circle, shape or line.
Hold your pen in place after drawing a shape or line and Procreate will magically create the perfect version of your shape, while still allowing you to edit it a little more after, plus it will keep your brush texture while doing it.
Merge your layers with a pinch
If your layers are getting out of control, you can smush them together easily, simply use two fingers and ‘pinch’ the top and bottom layers you want to merge together. All layers in between (and including)the two you have picked will be combined into a single layer.
What did I miss?
What features do you wish you knew when you first started illustrating with Procreate?
