5 Simple Steps to Create a Fun Art Piece in Procreate

Step 1: Start With a Sketch

If you watch any procreate tutorials/speed-paint videos on youtube, you’ll see that a lot of artists start their projects with a rough sketch. You can choose to create the sketch in procreate using the different pencil-like brushes, or if you’re more comfortable sketching on paper, you can do so, take a picture with your device, and bring the photo into procreate by going to insert > import photo. In this sketch stage, it is easy to erase and change things, play around with layout, and refine proportions. 

Step 2: Line Art

After you are happy with your sketch, create a more polished line art. Make sure to set this as its own layer, incase you want to make changes or turn the layer off in the final product.

Step 3: Flat colors

In this step you can decide on your final color pallet, and start filling in your line art with the base colors. This might feel like coloring in a color book at this stage. Don’t worry if you draw outside the lines! It’s easy to erase excess color to make it look more clean.

Step 4: Highlights and Shadows

To make your work really pop, it is a great idea to add highlights and shadows to your work. Procreate has blend-modes, so you can create solid-evenly defined shadows and highlights. Procreate also has a blending tool if you want it to look more organic.

Step 5: Background

You can choose to create a simple, single colored background. You can use a vignette effect in order to bring focus to your art. Or you can create a more involved background with its own details. It all depends on your goal and vision!