The holiday season tends to be busy, between all the gift buying and hours spent in the kitchen, at big family gatherings or attending holiday parties. On the other hand, the holiday season can bring days off work and school and more cozy moments spent inside, away from the chilly weather. The busyness of the holiday season means it’s extra important to use those moments off work or school to relax. 

Holiday-themed projects in Procreate can help easily fill any of that extra downtime with some festivity and creativity. Since Procreate projects don’t require a bunch of trips to the craft store or digging into old storage bins for that skein of yarn you bought three Decembers ago, you’ll be able to spend more time creating and less time prepping. 

From making personalized cards to send to loved ones or festive digital illustrations that can help clear any holiday season stress, these themed Procreate projects will inspire creativity and give you the opportunity to explore your unique artistic take on the holidays. 

You’ll discover some of the best Procreate brushes and even learn how to animate in Procreate while making an animated holiday greeting card. 

1. Create a Retro Style Holiday Illustration

An iPad sits on a wooden table next to two hands. One hand holds an Apple pencil. On the iPad is a holiday illustration that includes a reindeer, a sweater, a Christmas tree and a hand holding a stocking.
Create a holiday illustration that you can turn into a greeting card or art print.

Project: Draw With Me In Procreate: Iconic Retro Style Holiday Illustration by Jutta Schneider

About This Project: If you’re someone who is always looking for new things to draw on Procreate, you’ll love this holiday illustration project where you draw multiple different holiday icons. Inspired by retro holiday cards and design, you’ll learn how to add multiple items and text to your illustration as well as play around with different textures and brushes. 

Why We Love It:
This project is ideal for creatives who love a project with a retro spin and want to learn how to draw many different holiday-themed items, such as stockings, reindeer and more. 

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Add new layers
  • Add texture and shading
  • Color fill
  • Use different brushes

Beginner’s Tip:
Skillshare teacher and illustrator Jutta Schneider suggests turning your sketch on and off as you work so you can stay organized and keep a clean canvas while you’re drawing.

Create your own holiday illustration with a retro twist!

2. Draw a Winter Holiday Illustration

An iPad sits on a wooden table. To its right, there is a hand holding an Apple pencil. To its left, there is an illustration of snowflakes and the words “Winter Watercolors.” The iPad is open to the Procreate app and shows a holiday illustration of blue snowflakes. Caption: Get inspired by watercolors and a winter color palette while drawing these snowflakes in Procreate.
Use the power of stamps to create a completely unique winter holiday illustration in Procreate. 

Project: Winter Holiday Illustrations on Your iPad: Digital and Printable Art for the Holidays + 26 Stamps by Liz Kohler Brown

About This Project:
You’ll create a winter illustration using stamps, custom brushes and holiday-inspired patterns. After adding text and your own special touches, you’ll have a creation that won’t just help you clear your mind after a busy week but that you can also turn into a greeting card or computer background. 

Why We Love It:
This class comes with all of teacher Liz Kohler Brown’s holiday brushes, including a bunch of different snowflakes, ornaments, and lights, her blizzard texture and a few extras.

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Make custom brushes,s including symmetrical snowflake and holiday ornament brushes
  • Add stamps, text and hand-drawn elements
  • Use the quadrant symmetry tool
  • Personalize your piece with patterns and textures

Beginner’s Tip:
Creating your own stamps and custom brushes can save you time if you’re repeating certain objects within your holiday creation. 

Illustrate different holiday-inspired creations perfect for an e-card!

3. Animate a Personalized Holiday Greeting Card

An illustrated Christmas tree topped with a star and dotted with ornaments and candy canes sits on a blue background next to the words “Happy Holidays!”
If you’re looking for an eco-friendly way to send out your Christmas cards this year, try an animated holiday greeting card. 

Project: Procreate Animation: Animate a Personalized Holiday Greeting Card by Isaiah Cardona

About This Project:
In this class, teacher and motion designer Isaiah Cardona will show you how to create and animate a greeting card that you can share with your friends and family on social media or through text or email. You’ll use Procreate’s Animation Assist tool to add custom animated elements to add life to your greeting card. 

Why We Love It:
This project will work well for creatives who are curious about animation but don’t have much experience yet. You’ll get to explore many of Procreate’s classic features and animation features while making a ready-to-send digital card. 

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Use the Animation Assist tool 
  • Add falling particles animation
  • Add blinking lights and twinkle effects
  • Hand drawing 

Beginner’s Tip:
When animating for the first time, Isaiah suggests watching back your animation with multiple different settings a few different times so that you can find the right speed, looping options and more. 

Customize an animated holiday greeting card!

4. Paint a Holiday Scene in Procreate with an Oil Paint Effect 

An iPad sits on a colorful background with swatches of different colors like purple, pink and blue. The iPad is open to Procreate and a canvas that contains a holiday scene with an oil paint effect. The scene is of a fire burning in a fireplace, four stockings hanging on the mantle and a Christmas tree in the right corner.
Discover Procreate’s wide range of brushes while painting this holiday scene with an oil paint effect. 

Project: Holiday Season Painting in Procreate with Oil Paint Effect + Free Brushes by Benjamin A.

About This Project:
This cozy and festive illustration will be sure to get you in the mood for the upcoming holiday season. Even if you don’t have a full set of oil paints or a blank canvas, you can use Procreate to make digital art that looks like an exquisite oil painting. You’ll use a variety of oil brushes to add a fireplace, stockings, a Christmas tree and warm lights to your holiday scene.

Why We Love It:
Art teacher and illustrator Benjamin A. shares his own custom set of Procreate oil brushes along with his color palette and a rough sketch of the scene so you’ll have everything you need to get started whenever you’re ready. 

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Oil painting techniques
  • Underpainting
  • Painting realistic fire
  • Adding highlights, soft light and shadows

Beginner’s Tip:
You can bring a flat painting to life by adding shadows and highlights by painting with darker and lighter versions of the colors already in your work of art. 

Paint a seasonal scene in Procreate with a warm and cozy atmosphere! 

5. Paint a Holiday Gingerbread Scene

An iPad sits on a wooden table next to a plate of snowflake cookies and a jingle bell. Two hands sit on either side of the iPad and one holds an Apple pencil. The iPad is open to Procreate where there is an illustration of a gingerbread house surrounded by a few gingerbread trees and another smaller gingerbread house. In the sky, there is a gingerbread moon and some gingerbread snowflakes. 
You can illustrate a whole gingerbread village with this Procreate painting technique. 

Project: Procreate Gingerbread Magic: Painting and Brush-Making for the Holidays by The Artmother

About This Project:
In this class, you’ll create a little gingerbread village scene by painting and shading gingerbread shapes and then adding details and texture. You’ll also create three custom brushe,s including a stamp brush, a texture brush and a special brush for the icing. It’s the perfect way to get into the holiday spirit while learning new painting techniques in Procreate.

Why We Love It:
This project will teach you how to make a gingerbread scene and how to get creative this holiday season. It will also give you three custom brushes that you can use in future Procreate projects. 

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Create custom Procreate brushes
  • Shade and paint
  • Use Gaussian blur
  • Add and duplicate layers
  • Add texture

Beginner’s Tip:
Use the rule of thirds when creating your simple landscape composition to keep your gingerbread illustration visually pleasing and balanced. 

Design and draw a stunning gingerbread village in Procreate!

6. Create a Mini Christmas-Themed Pattern Collection

An iPad sits on a pink background. Two hands sit to each side with one touching the screen in the bottom left corner. The iPad is open to Procreate where there is an illustrated pattern of a bunch of holly leaves and red and pink polka dots. 
Create a Christmas pattern that can be used for greeting cards or even DIY wrapping paper. 

Project: Mini Pattern Collection in Procreate: Christmas Theme by Maja Faber

About This Project:
Surface pattern designer and teacher Maja Faber will teach you how to make your own mini pattern collection inspired by the holiday season. From finding inspiration to building your pattern from scratch in Procreate, you’ll learn everything you need to make your pattern design process as smooth as possible. You’ll also learn a ton of different skills, like how to change opacity in Procreate and how to test your pattern. 

Why We Love It:
This project is ideal for beginners who want to dabble in pattern creation. Patterns can be printed on gift wrap, greeting cards and even holiday pajamas, which means you can take what you learned in this class and apply it to dozens of other projects. 

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Find high-quality inspiration
  • Create a seasonal color scheme
  • Use pattern layout templates
  • Sketch, paint and add texture

Beginner’s Tip:
Use the transform tool to flip your pattern as you work to ensure it lines up and works as an infinitely repeating pattern. Maja also shares her pattern tester so you can test your pattern as you work. 

Design a Christmas-themed mini pattern collection for Procreate!

7. Make Winter Watercolors with Procreate

An iPad sits on a wooden table. To its right, there is a hand holding an Apple pencil. To its left, there is an illustration of snowflakes and the words “Winter Watercolors.” The iPad is open to the Procreate app and shows a holiday illustration of blue snowflakes.
Get inspired by watercolors and a winter color palette while drawing these snowflakes in Procreate. 

Project: Winter Watercolors on Your iPad in Procreate + 20 Free Procreate Brushes by Liz Kohler Brown

About This Project:
You’ll use watercolor Procreate brushes to make some multicolored, textured snowflakes. After exploring a few different digital watercolor techniques, you’ll combine your snowflake scene with a banner and a short winter-inspired quote. You can choose to get creative just for fun or turn your creation into a greeting card or a festive phone background. You’ll also get two bonus projects where you’ll make a watercolor wreath and use a masking method to create an illustration of the word “Joy” filled with winter plants like holly.

Why We Love It:
Teacher Liz Kohler Brown will not only show you how to make a stunning final piece, but you’ll also receive her watercolor brush set, templates, watercolor, glitter and gold paper textures and some snowflake shapes to help you get started. 

Techniques You’ll Learn:

  • Digital watercolor techniques
  • Element composition
  • Masking

Beginner’s Tip:
Try to paint each snowflake in one fell swoop without picking up and putting down your pencil. This technique will avoid any overlapping watercolor lines, which can sometimes make your final piece look a little messy. 

Create winter-inspired watercolors!

Learn Procreate with Skillshare

There’s a special joy that comes from getting creative during the holidays. Hopefully, you can already imagine yourself making digital art while sitting in front of the fireplace or your favorite holiday decorations.

These Skillshare classes are all easy to follow along with, which means both beginners and younger family members can end up with some professional-looking artwork. After you finish your first project, you might also take some time to explore some of Skillshare’s other creative classes so you can continue to grow your digital design skills. 

Make a list of a few projects you want to try out over the next month. If you really want to commit to a project, try adding it to your calendar. You might even text a friend who also uses Procreate so that you can work on the project together. 

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Written By
Calli Zarpas

Calli Zarpas

Producer & Writer by occupation. Ceramicist & Newsletter Editor by avocation.

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