Digital Illustration: A Beginners Guide to Mastering Procreate

1. Introduction: Imagine packing a whole art studio with all its painting techniques inside an iPad that you can take anywhere with you, that is procreates. In this class, you will learn, practice, and master all the essential painting tools and functions necessary to create beautiful digital illustrations. Whilst illustrating I said a botanical assets, you will learn how to use all the drawing, painting, and transforming tools. Lastly, you will use all of your elements to create an infinite number of standing plants. By the end of the class, you will feel comfortable using Procreate and you will be ready to transfer what you have learned into any other subject of your choice. Working with Procreate means that everything that you create is already in a digital format. Your artworks will be ready to share it on social media, sold on print-on-demand websites, make repeating patterns, print stickers, decorate your walls, sold to clients and more. Hi I'm Silvia Ospina, I am an artist and graphic designer, and I have been working as a creative individual industry for about 15 years. I am such a big fan of drawing and painting that since the start of my career, I enhanced a number of projects with my illustrations. I lived in London for seven years and I used to have a beautiful art studio. I used to work on pain from there and I designed hundreds of beautiful hand printed patterns that went into stores such as Sarah, Mango, and other similar brands. Now I live in Barcelona and I do all of my work from my iPad without the need of getting messy, and I feel more efficient than ever. I love taking it with me to different places, as it allows me to get creative instantly and work from wherever I am. Mastering Procreate has been the best thing that I have done in recent years, and guess what? I will teach you everything I have learned so far starting with this class. This class is perfect for absolute beginners with no experience on art or design, and also welcomes more experienced artists. If you want to check my work, you can follow me @silviaospina.art on Instagram, and for our tutorials and tips and tricks, you can subscribe to my newsletter and follow me @socreative.art. This is the place where I often share inspiration on how to use different creative techniques. All you need to take this class is an iPad Pro, with Procreate installed. If you don't have the app, you can buy it for only 0.999, which is pretty good for such an incredible program. Just so you know, with this class, I will be hosting a giveaway. Read the description of this class to enter, and you will get a chance to win a year of premium Skillshare membership. Get your tools ready, and see you in class. 2. Your Project: [MUSIC] Your project is to digitally illustrates at least one botanical plant using Procreate. Whilst creating a set of botanical assets, you will learn, practice, and master all the necessary tools and functions to create digital illustrations. As the class moves along, we'll explore the brush library, and I will show you how to use the drawing and painting tools creatively. You will see how easy it is to draw and fill up shapes with color. You'll understand the importance of using layers as much as possible. How to draw a flower using symmetry, which is like magic, various way of adding texture or creating gradients. How do we erase backgrounds and how to transform all of these assets into numerous standing plants? Please upload your initial botanical assets and your final plants or plants if you did more than one, the more you make, the more you practice. In your final composition, I will be looking for the same elements repeated across a plant in different sizes and tones of color. This will show that you've mastered the move and transforming tools, which are very important. As the class moves along, I will show you how to combine various geometrical shapes to create other illustrations. If you decide to make any of these, there are also welcome in your final projects. If you share your project on social media you can tag me @socreative.art, so I can look at it and share it with my followers as well. In this class projects and resources tab, I have left a PDF with some information that might be helpful to you. I have also left are link to Pinterest and some images that might give you some ideas on how to make the most out of this class. I've designed this class so that each chapter covers a specific tool and it's named accordingly. Suppose you have already some experience using Procreate, in that case, you can just watch at high-speed the chapters which cover tools that you already know, do this instead of skipping it in case I mentioned a shortcut or trick, which might be helpful to you. If you have any questions or doubts or need extra guidance along the way, don't hesitate to reach out to me using the discussion panel below. I am excited to see what you create. [MUSIC] 3. Gallery Overview: [MUSIC] I like to use Procreate to work on all sorts of projects. I love to sketch my hand-painted murals in here. During the past years, I have done a ton of botanical assets that I have been using on my patterns and illustrations. I love to keep my files organized in groups and in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to do this in case you want to start organizing your gallery as you work in Procreate. When you open Procreate, this gallery is the first thing that you will see and it will be empty if it's your first time using the app. Depending on the size and storage capacity of your iPad and the Procreate version that you have installed, you might see your screen a bit different to mine. That's alright. Even the older versions of Procreate have pretty much all the same functions covered in this class. To organize or move one of your files, you have to touch and hold it, move it and drop it wherever you want it to be. When you want to move two or more files, you will have to tap on the "Select" word from the top menu, tap on the artworks that you want to choose and you'll see these blue check appear on the ones that are selected and move them across your gallery. To exit this mode, tap on the "X" symbol here on the top right side of the screen. If you swipe left on top of an artwork, you will see this pop-up menu appear and you can share, duplicate or delete an artwork. If you wish to rename it, then you will have to tap on its name, change the title, and press "Enter" when you want to exit. If you want to preview an artwork, you can spread your fingers on top of it, swipe left and right to flick through the gallery. If you want to open it, double-tap on it and you will see the window change. To go back to the gallery, I'll have to tap on the "Gallery" word on the top left of the screen. As I said earlier, I tend to vary my style quite a lot when working on different projects and different clients, so that's why I like to keep my files grouped in folders. I'm going to show you how to do this in case you want to organize your files as well. I will tap on "Select" from the top menu and tap on these two artworks to select them. You will see that when two or more artworks are selected, the top menu changes. Now I can stack, preview, share, duplicate, or delete these artworks at the same time. I'll tap on "Stack" and now the artworks will appear within a group. To enter a folder, tap on it and to go to the main gallery, tap on the word located at the top left of the screen. If you want to add a new artwork to the folder, touch and hold it, place it on top of the group that you want to put it into and when you enter the group, drop it there. If you want to take an artwork out of the stack, you will have to touch and hold the artwork, drag it to the top left corner and once you are in the main gallery, drop it there. You can select various artworks at the same time and move them in and out of the stack or folder following the same steps. Have in mind that the gesture of swiping left also work with folders. If you want to rename it, you will have to tap on top of its title and give it a name in there. That's it for the welcome gallery. In the next lesson, I will show you how to open and personalize our documents [MUSIC]. 4. Opening a Document: [MUSIC] Procreate comes with a few templates by default, such as an A4 or a 4x6 photo and some more. Even so, it's good to know specific technical concepts to make your own templates. Ensuring that you're working with the right type of document from the beginning is very important. There have been numerous times where I haven't been so careful when choosing the right size and resolution of my documents. Sadly, after working for hours on an illustration, I haven't been able to print it because of it being too small. Let's dive in. To create a new document, tap on the plus icon here at the top corner and you'll get access to this drop-down menu. Here are the templates that come by default. You will see that I have made a couple of new ones down here. I have templates for making patterns in different sizes. I have saved an A2 and A3 templates for making bigger illustrations. To create your own custom size document, you will have to tap on this black rectangle icon with a plus sign. You'll enter this window. In here, you will be able to choose all the technical specifications of your new document. You can tap on "Untitled Canvas" to add a name to your file or template if you want. In these boxes, you will be able to define the width and height of your document. Down in here on the left, you can choose if you want to use millimeters, centimeters, inches, or pixels. When working on documents that I want to print, I tend to use centimeters as I can visualize the actual size in my head. For social media, I use pixels. In the DPI box, you will be able to define the resolution. 300 is generally good for when you want to print your designs and 72 is enough for when you want to display them on screens. But having said this, I advise you to always use at least 300 DPI as you never know when you want to print your designs in the future and also the quality of your drawing will be so much better. The maximum layers box will show you how many layers you can get access to. It is the only option that I can't modify. The bigger the document, the less layers you will get. If I make my document larger, let's say 60 per 60 centimeters with a 300 DPI, the number of layers will decrease to 9, which is not a lot. These numbers might change depending on the version and memory capacity of your iPad. If I reduce the size to half, 32 per 32 centimeters, then I will get access to 49 layers, which is more than enough to work with. Depending on the project that you're working on, you might prefer to sacrifice some layers to have a larger document or vice versa. In the second tab, you can choose a color profile for your document. CMYK is used for printing. When you select this option, the colors on your screen will look a bit muted as they're trying to resemble the intensity of the ones which can be printed. RGB is used for digital projects displayed on screen. The colors often appear much brighter and more saturated than in print. I pretty much always design in RGB. I like the colors to look vivid and bright whilst I design. I can adjust the colors if necessary when it comes to printing my artworks. Let's tap on "Time-lapse". Procreate records a time-lapse video every time that you design, which, by the way, can be a lot of fun to watch once you've finished your artwork. Here you can see an example. In this time-lapse tab, you can choose the size and a quality in which you want them to be recorded. Lastly, in canvas properties, you can choose to have your background hidden or keep it white, which I always do. For this class, I'm going to open an A4 document. It's a good size for the exercises that we're going to do and it will give us enough layers to work with. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you a few things that you can personalize to start working comfortably in Procreate from the beginning. [MUSIC] 5. Hand Gestures & Personalizing the App: [MUSIC] Procreate is all about using specific hand gestures to access or use different menus and functions. In this lesson, I will start showing you a few. I will also cover the actions panel and how to personalize the interface so that you can start working comfortably from the beginning. Whenever you open a document, you will enter these main window. Use a pinch to zoom in and out of your artwork. This is really good for when you want to work on details or when you want to have a bigger picture of what you're doing. If you want to rotate your canvas, you can pinch and twist your fingers. This is really good to draw comfortably. Whenever I work on a physical illustration, I tend to rotate my paper a lot as this helps my hand to stay relaxed. When working digitally, instead of having to rotate my iPad constantly, I just rotate the artwork with this hand gesture. If you want the document to fit the whole screen, give it a quick pinch and lift your fingers from the screen at the end of the gesture. When you want to focus on your artwork without any interface or menus, tap four fingers on the screen. This gives you a full screen mode where the interface disappears, giving you a clean view to your canvas. To bring the interface back, do a four finger tap again or tap the full screen indicator in the top left corner of the screen. Before diving into the fun drawing part, I'll explain some technical things that will help you personalize the app to your preferences. There are two sets of icons at the top area of your screen, one on the right and one on the left. You also have this sidebar. I will start by explaining the first icon which looks like a wrench. Tap on it to access the action menu. Under the Canvas tab, you can crop or resize your canvas. See that these bounding box appears and I can adjust any of the corners. Notice that when I resize the canvas, the width and height is displayed, and at the top of the screen, you will see how many layers there are available. If you're working on something, just be aware that when you do this, everything that is left outside of your canvas that you crop will be lost. In video, you can see the artistic process, which is always a lot of fun. Just make sure that the time-lapse recording switch is on. If you ever want to stop recording temporarily, you can switch it off. If you don't mind losing the video which has been recorded up until now, you can press Purge. But if you just want to stop it temporarily, then don't press purge, and turn the button again whenever you are ready to start recording. In Preferences, you can personalize certain things of the app. You can switch the interface from light to dark. I change this mode often, depending on the type of project that I'm working on, but I generally prefer to use the light interface. With the second option, you can choose where you want the sidebar to be. These bars define the size and opacity of your brush, and it is practical to move them with the hand that you're not drawing with. If you're left handed, you might want to send the controls to the right. If you're right handed, you might want to send them to the left. The brush cursor switch is for seeing the stamp of the brush that you're painting with. I'm going to choose a painting brush and increase the size so that you can see this better. You can see that as I move my pen, I can see the stamp, and if I turn it off, then you won't be able to see it. In the Project Canvas, you can share the screen with a second monitor. The rest of these options are more advanced, so I would leave them as they come by default. In the next lesson, I will cover various ways to select colors and how to make color palettes. [MUSIC] 6. Color Systems & Color Palettes: [MUSIC] Color is one of the most essential components of the visual world and it is good to start experimenting with different ways of selecting them as much as possible. In this lesson, I will show you various ways to select colors and how to make color palettes. Tap on the colored circle here on the top right corner. This circle shows the currently selected color that you're going to draw or paint with. Then you have these two little squares used in certain brushes to create special effects. The first icon on the bottom menu is the disk and this mode is the one that comes by default. You can select the base color with the outer here ring and adjust how light, dark, or saturated you want it to be by using the inner circle. To have a wider range of color choices you can zoom in on this middle circle by spreading two fingers over it and pinching on it to close it and select another color. When you're in the disk mode, you can double-tap on different areas of the circle to select pure colors. This way, you'll be able to achieve a pure white, a pure black color, and brighter hues. Let's tap on the second icon which says classic. The classic mode has a more traditional approach to color. You will find that programs like Photoshop share this way of displaying colors. At the bottom, you have three sliders. The first one adjusts the hue. Here you can choose the base color that you want to work with. The second bar is for choosing the saturation which defines the brightness of a color and in the third bar you can define how light or dark you want your color to be. For any color that you choose, you will also be able to define the saturation and lightness within the top square. Play around with these ways of choosing colors as you work on your illustrations and see what you like the most. These other two modes are a bit more advanced and I never use them so I will leave them aside. Another way of choosing colors is using the color picker. It allows you to select colors that are already on a photo or artwork. I will open one of my illustrations to show you how this works. If I tap and hold my finger on the screen, the eyedropper tool appears. This tool lets you select a color already displayed on the Canvas. It appears as a ring surrounding my circle. In the bottom half I can see the primary color that I'm already using, and on the top, I can choose the color that I want to replace it with. Then if I lift my finger, the primary color will change. As you can see when I tap on the color circle, the colors that I have been using appear under the history row of swatches. In here, you will see all the colors that you've been working on recently, but after 10 colors used, they will start disappearing. If you tap on the palette icon, you will see some palettes which come by default. As you can see, I've created a few and I like to try them across different projects or I use them also to test the colors in a very quick way. To create a new palette, tap on this plus icon in here and then select "Create new palette" from the drop-down menu and you will see an empty set of squares at the top of the panel. You can rename it by tapping on the Untitled word and If you go back to the disk or the classic mode, you will see that this new empty palette appears in here. I'll start choosing a couple of colors so that I can show you how this works. I will choose a nice orange bright color and once I'm happy with it, I will add it to the palette by tapping on the first square. I will now choose a lighter orange and tap on this second square to add it to the palette. I will also add a darker orange and then I will tap on the third square once I'm happy with it. You can also switch to the classic mode to choose some greens and experiment with this second way of picking colors. This way, you can see which one do you prefer. You can organize these colors by touching and dragging their swatches to another place in the palette and if you touch, hold, and lift your finger, you can delete any color. Don't worry as these colors are not the definite ones that you have to work with and at any point you can start adding new colors to the palette deleting them or reorganizing them. All of your palettes will be saved under the palette circle and you can reorganize them the same way as you organized your colors. You just have to touch and hold the palette down and then drag it to wherever you want it to be. If you tap on these three dots, you can share, duplicate, or delete the palettes. I can also select "Set as default" so that when I go back to the disk mode, it appears in here. In the next lesson, we will keep exploring hand gestures and I will show you how to undo and re-do recent actions. [MUSIC] 7. Undo & Redo Recent Actions: [MUSIC] One of the best things of working digitally is that you can undo and redo recent actions. In this lesson, I will show you the finger gestures that you need to do this. I'm going to make some marks in my canvas to show you some basic finger gestures that you should start memorizing. When you're painting and you want to quickly undo one or more recent actions, tap the canvas with two fingers. A notification will appear at the top of the interface letting you know which actions the undo affected. To undo a series of actions, tap and hold two fingers on the canvas. After a moment, Procreate will rapidly step back through your most recent changes. To stop, lift your fingers off the canvas again. Something important to know and remember is that if you exit your document and return to the main gallery, all the undo available actions will be cleared. Closing a document behaves like a 'Save' and your changes become permanent. It's important to remember this. To redo any actions that you have undone, tap the screen with three fingers. As with the undo gesture, you can redo a series of actions by holding three fingers on your canvas. Two fingers to undo, and three to redo. In the next lesson, we will explore the Layers panel and I will show you one of my illustrations so that you can see the benefits of using layers as much as possible. [MUSIC] 8. Layers, Layers!: [MUSIC] Now that we have seen how to use basic drawing tools, I'm going to show you how to use the layers panel. If you have some experience using Procreate or any other design program, you're probably already familiar with how to use layers and what they're for. Using layers gives you a lot of control and freedom when it comes to designing, it allows you to move your objects separately and try out other effects or textures without affecting the image as a whole. Tap on the fourth icon to access the Layers menu. As you can see, this panel contains two layers. The one on the bottom contains the background color, and it works as an opaque sheet of paper that you're going to work on. Everything that you draw or paint will appear on the top, if you want to change the background color, all you have to do is tap on the thumbnail, choose our color using one of the methods that I showed you in the previous lesson. Then click on "Done." Click on the plus icon to add a new layer. I'll explain the brush tool in depth in the next lesson. But for now, choose one from the library and draw a circle. If you are overwhelmed by how many branches there are in here, you can follow me in selecting the dry ink brush from the inking collection. Move up the top bar on the sidebar to increase the size of your brush. Choose a color and draw a circle. We're going to create a new layer by tapping on the plus symbol on the panel stops right side. Any drawings you make on the canvas will appear on your currently selected layer, which by the way is highlighted in blue. It's essential to develop the habit of checking which layer you're standing on before drawing. Make sure you're standing on the empty top layer. Select a new color and draw another circle covering the circle on the bottom. Let's do this once more. Tap on the plus icon to create a new layer. Select a new color and draw another circle overlapping the other two. Now let's try switching the position of the layers. Tap and hold on one of the layers and move it up and down the stack. See how even if the circles overlap, each of them is still complete. The checkbox allows us to turn off specific layers without deleting them. When making illustrations is very common to leave things for later or discard them temporarily. Being able to make them invisible is very handy. If I would have drawn these circles all in the same layer, I wouldn't be able to move them or discard them. You've add any point on this glass, you spot any unwanted marks or strokes and you can't erase them. It's probably because you're standing in the wrong layer. Go to the layer stack and start making them visible and invisible until you find the layer which contains the unwanted mark, you will have to select the layer first to be able to edit it. Remember that the selected layer is highlighted in blue. If at any point you see a screen like this, it means that you are working on an invisible or turned off layer. Easy. Just go to the layer panel and turn it back on or make a new one. To make a layer transparent, you will have to tap on the N layer and move the opacity slide. I will explain the bottom options later in class. If you want to rename your layer, you have to tap on top of it and select the first option from the list, which says Rename. If you swipe the layer to the left, you can lock, duplicate, or delete a layer. Locking layers is excellent when you want to maintain the contents visible, but you want to make sure not to modify it. I'll tap on the lock and you will see this padlock appear in it. To unlock it, I'll swipe to the left again and press Unlock. This information is enough for now and it will give you confidence and autonomy in the following lessons, where we will start exploring the drawing and painting tools. Before ending this session, I'm going to give you a quick sneak peek at one of my illustrations so that you understand why layers are so important and great when working digitally. I'm going to open this door illustration. As you can see, I have used quite a few number of layers to create this artwork. Instead of drawing everything on the same layer, I have chosen to use different ones for different objects. For example, I decided to create the door in two layers. In the first one, I just drew a rectangle. In the second one, I drew the details. Drawing the details in our second layer allowed me to try out different decorations for the door. I even tried adding some texture, which I probably wasn't sure of, but I didn't discard it in case I decided to keep it for later. In one layer I drew the basic shape in the second one, some shadows, and in the third one, the details. The same for the plant hunger. I wasn't sure which flowers to use when creating the illustration, so I decided to use various layers. I did the basket in one layer, the background in another. In-between, I tried out different foliage and flowers. I'm going to start making each layer visible and invisible so that you can see the benefits of doing things in layers. In the first one, I drew blue flowers, in other purple roses. Then I decided to try a new foliage design altogether. To maintain my layers fairly organized. I grouped the foliage and flowers. I will show you how to do this in the layers advanced lesson. I also placed the bicycle into its own layer. This allows me to move it around and work on my composition freely. If I had drawn everything in the same layer as I would do in a real painting. I wouldn't be able to choose which flowers I want to keep, where to put the bicycle or make minor changes to my illustration. I hope that sharing my process helps you understand the importance of working with layers. In the next lesson, we're going to start exploring the brushes. 9. Exploring Brushes: [MUSIC] One of the things that made me fall in love with Procreate was the massive library of brushes and how real they look and feel when drawing and painting. I showed you how to use the layers in the past lesson, but just in case, here is a little reminder. If at any point in this lesson you feel like your Canvas is getting full and you want to empty it, you can either undo the steps that you've done or swipe your finger to the left on top of the layer and select "Clear". If you don't want to discard the layer, you can tap on the checkbox to make it invisible, and then tap on this plus icon at the top right of the panel to make a new one. If you tap the brush icon, you will see this drop-down menu appear. Procreate comes with a great library of hundreds of versatile brushes. You will see that they come in collections which cover different mediums and style. So, in sketching, you have pencils and pastels. In inking, you have different types of pens, and painting brushes and so on. On the sidebar, you will be able to modify the size and opacity of your brushes. By dragging the top slider up, you will increase the size of your brush tip for a thicker stroke. To make it smaller and achieve a thinner line, you should drag the top slider down. Our brushes come with a size by default, and it's good to try each brush in different sizes. With the bottom bar, you can change the opacity. By dragging it up, the opacity will be opaque, and to make it transparent, you should drag the bottom slider down. These arrows are for undoing and redoing actions and they work the same way as your fingers. We will try a couple of brushes so that you can start understanding how they work. Go to the ink collection and select the Mercury Brush. This brush is quite sensitive to pressure, so move the size to 10 percent. Make a wobbly line and try to apply very little pressure at the beginning, and increase the pressure of the brush as you move on. Then if you want, release the pressure and start seeing how the brush changes its size. If you want, you can change the color to make it more fun and try again on the bottom. Increase or decrease the size and see how it feels. As you can see this brush, for example, has a lot of texture on the borders when I zoom in. Let's try another brush from the inking collection. As I said at the beginning, you can undo these lines by tapping the screen with two fingers, or if you want to keep this layer, open the layer panel, make it invisible by unchecking this box and tap on the plus icon to make a new one. Go to the inking collection and select a "Syrup" brush. Choose a different color and do the same exercise of applying very little pressure at the beginning and increasing it as you move on. If I zoom on my image, you can see that this brush doesn't have a lot of texture and it has a much more defined style. By trying out different brushes, you can start seeing which are the ones that suite your style the most. Undo these steps and let's go to the sketching collection and select the 6B pencil. Pick a dark gray so that these pencil looks more real. I love how these pencils resemble the texture of real ones when I draw. With this and some other brushes, you can not only apply different levels of pressure, but you can also tilt your brush to create shadows. If you start by making a line, applying very little pressure at the beginning, and then increase it as you move your pen, you can see that not only the size changes a little bit, but the opacity changes as well. Now tilt your brush and make the same movement. Try making a shape. I'm going to make a triangle for example, and make some shadows tilting your pen on the borders. I do this a lot when drawing in real life, and it's incredible how Procreate has managed to mimic this difference. I'm going to undo these steps. I'll try the last one with you, and once you've finished this lesson, you should try new ones yourself. Tap on the charcoal collection and select the carbon stick brush. We're going to make a gradient using this brush and you will see the beautiful texture that can be achieved. Let's select the classic way of using colors. Bring the second and third slide to the right so that we can get the purest color possible, and move the first handle to select a yellow color. Starting on the left of the screen, make a big mark. Now, open the active color and move the first handle to the right to select a light orange. Starting on top of the yellow, make a mark. Start by applying little pressure and increase it as you move on. Then go back to the color and move the handle a little bit more. Make another mark and always start by applying little pressure and increase it as you move along your paper. Look at this beautiful gradient. The best part for me at least, is how real it looks when you zoom on the image. Playing around with these brushes is key to understanding them and finding your favorite ones. Since the brush library is so vast, searching for the brushes that you like the most every time you want to use them can be time-consuming. This is why in the next lesson, I will show you how to make your own collections so that you can gather your favorite ones, so that they're ready to use. [MUSIC] 10. Making Your Own Brush Collections: [MUSIC] As you try to brush, I am sure that you will find which ones do you like the most. I will show you how to start creating your own collections of brushes. Instead of searching for your favorite ones every time, you can group them and have them ready to use. You can create your own collections of brushes by scrolling down on the list and tapping on this plus icon when it appears, highlighted in blue. When you do so, you will see a folder up here. You can change its name to favorites or whatever you want. Now I'm going to go, for example, to the inking collection and move a brush to the new folder that I've just created. From this collection, I tend to use the studio pen and the dry ink a lot. They're both opaque brushes and are great for making silhouettes. Dry ink has a lot of texture and studio pen is a little bit more defined and clean. To prevent from messing with the initial brushes that come by default, you should always duplicate the brush that you want to save into the new library. Go to the studio pen, for example, swipe right on top of it, and tap on Duplicate. Now touch and hold the new brush. When you see that you can move it, use a finger on your other hand, tap on your new folder and drop it there. If you want to delete a brush, swipe to the left and tap on delete. I will go to the inking collection again, search for the dry ink which is down here, swipe left and tap on Duplicate, tap and hold on the Pen, tap on the collection with my other hand and then drop it there. Take the time to try these brushes out and start saving the ones that suite your style the best. In the following list, you will find some of my favorite brushes. If you want to save them, pause this video and gather them into your new collection before the next lesson, where I will show you how to fill up shapes with color. [MUSIC] 11. Filling Shapes with Color: [MUSIC] Now that we have seen how brushes work, we will draw a leaf and fill it up with a solid color using the color drop shortcut. I will also solve some challenges that you might find when using textured brushes. Let's start by selecting the studio pen from the inking collection or your favorite brushes collection and adjust the size to draw a leaf. The quickest way to fill it up with a solid color is to tap on the circle located at the top right of the screen and drag it to the center of the shape. When you drag a color to an area in your canvas, this one spreads until it hits a boundary such as an outline or an area of a different color. It basically fills the areas containing pixels that share the same color or tonal value. In this case, the color is contained inside the leaf because the shape is closed. I'm going to undo this action and draw a new leaf, leaving a tiny gap in the silhouette. If I drag the color inside the shape again, you will see that the paint will escape through the tiny hole and fill the background. So you want to make sure to close your shapes before coloring them. Since I've been using a clean brush with a very defined border, everything has been fine. But let's see a challenge that you might encounter when using textured brushes. I will select the dry ink brush from the library, which has a nice texture, and draw a new leaf. If I zoom in the image, you can see that the border isn't really too defined. It has some lighter pixels lying around, which might not be included when I fill in the area due to having a little bit of a different color. When I drag the color, you can see that a little border has been formed in-between the silhouette and the inside area. A way to fix this is by using something called swatch drop threshold. I will undo this action, drag the color to the center of the shape, and this time, I won't lift my pen from the screen. This message at the top of the screen appear saying ColorDrop Threshold, followed by a percentage number. If I move my pen to the left, the percentage number will decrease, and if I move it to the right, it will increase. At lower thresholds, only the pixels with the same or similar information will be filled. At higher thresholds, the color will bleed and break through the outlines feeling neighboring areas of color. I'm going to zoom in so that you can see this clearly. See how the border disappears if I've moved my pen to the right, and if I move it to the left, the separation between the inner part of the silhouette and the filled area will be more noticeable. When filling up shapes this way, the paint spreads until it hits a boundary or an area of a different color. I will draw a new leaf and this time, I will separate it in half. If I drag the paint, this one will stop when it hits the line of pixels in the middle and won't affect the other half, and if I select another color and drag it to the other half, it would stop when it hits the boundary of the color which is different. In the next lesson, I will show you how to add texture using a function called Alpha Lock, so that it only affects the inner part of your leaf. [MUSIC] 12. Adding Texture with Alpha Lock: [MUSIC] Being able to add texture to drawings is one of the best features that Procreate offers. Textures can make illustrations look less digital and have a natural feel to them. Later in this class, I will show you how to use masks to add texture to your illustrations. But for now, I want to sprinkle an easy trick so that you can enjoy making textures straight away and feel more confident when using the smudge tool in the next lesson. Let's go to the Sketching Library and select this Soft Pastel, which has a very nice and soft texture. If after using it, you like it, you can add it to your collection. I will alter my green a little bit and start creating some texture on the borders of my shape. When adding texture, you usually want it to appear inside your shapes, not all over the canvas. I could start being cautious not to go over the border but this would be totally inefficient. Check out this trick. Open the Layer Panel and swipe two fingers to the right on top of the layer that contains your leaf. This hand gesture activates the feature called Alpha Lock. By the way, you can also activate and deactivate this option by tapping on top of the layer and selecting Alpha Lock from the drop-down menu. This option locks the transparent areas of the layer so that you can't modify them. Meaning that you can only paint where the opaque areas were already when you activated the Alpha Lock option. When this option is active, you will see a checkered background in the thumbnail surrounding the shape. You will only be able to modify what's inside the existing shape, in this case, the leaf. Now let's say I want to add a stem in the same layer, then I would have to deactivate the Alpha Lock with two fingers first. See how the checkered background disappears and draw anything in any part of the layer. I bet that you will turn this option on and off quite a lot when creating your illustrations. If you're still struggling to understand it, that's all right. Just play around with this option and see what it does for yourself. I will grab a pastel from the Sketching Library, increase its size, select a darker green. Making sure that the Alpha Lock is active on the layer panel, I will start moving my brush around the leaf. See how these beautiful gradient full of texture starts appearing on the border. One trick is to increase the size of the brush quite a lot and pass it outside of the shape to only paint with the borders of the brush which are already faded. As a result, the gradient will be much smoother. In the next lesson, I will show you how to smoothen this texture with the smudge tool. After these two lessons, you can choose which visual outcome you prefer, if the smoother gradients or the texture shapes. [MUSIC] 13. Smudge Tool: [MUSIC] Smudging is like rubbing a finger on top of your paint or pigment. If you have ever painted with chalk, pastels or charcoals, you know the feeling. I barely use this tool, but it's good to understand it and know what it does so that you can start experimenting with it and see if it suits your style. This tool shares the same library as the brush and eraser and it's used to blend or mix colors or smooth out strokes and every brush has a different visual effect. Let's start trying out different textured brushes so that you can see the effect that these two has. For example, go to the charcoal collection and select the charcoal block. Let's turn off the Alpha lock options so that you can see this effect clearly. Increase the size of the brush and start rubbing the leaf. You will see the brush texture is stamped on your image. It creates an excellent effect but somehow it would be fantastic for it to be inside of the leaf. Unless you're painting a sky or something like that. Now activate the Alpha lock and do it again. Let's try a different brush. Go to the airbrushing collection and select the soft blend. I'm going to adjust the size of the brush and start passing my pen on top of the light green line. This lesson is for you to play around with this tool and see what it does so that you can fully understand it. If you discover a brush to smudge with that you like, I would love if you can share it with me. You can leave a comment when publishing your project in this class or you can leave one in the discussion panel. As you can see, the more I rub the line, the smoother it gets and some beautiful gradients start appearing. I don't use this tool a lot because I prefer my illustrations to have texture. Still, I advice you to play around with different brushes and see if smudging switch to your style. If you find a specific brush that you like, you can create a whole new library to keep them. I'm going to make some lateral marks and smudge them so that you can see the results. As you can see, I haven't mastered this tool but since I don't use it that much, I still have to experiment before fully understanding it. This is true for every tool and brush. It's good to pick the ones that you like the most and use them as much as possible to make the most out of them. In the next lesson, we will explore the eraser tool and I will show you some tricks to increase your workflow. [MUSIC] 14. Eraser Tool: [MUSIC] Now we're going to look at the eraser tool. This tool helps us to paint away mistakes, remove pigment, amend our shapes, or get rid of them entirely. It shares the same library as the brush and the smudge tool, and you can select a different brush from the one that you're already using to paint with. You can adjust the size and the opacity using the sidebar. When drawing, I like to use the same type of eraser as the brush that I'm using, as it helps me to create a seamless style. Instead of having to go through the library to match the style, you can hold your finger down on the eraser icon and it will match the style of the brush that you're using. See that when I do this, this notification appears up here saying erase with current brush. You must select the brush first and then tap on the eraser icon. Here's another trick. When creating sketches, I often switch in between the brush and eraser. Tapping on the icons every time I need to do this can slow down my process quite a lot. But check this out. You can exchange the brush for the eraser by tapping your pen twice. See how if I tap my pen twice, I can select the brush. If I tap twice again, I can select the eraser. I use these a lot. It allows me to erase mistakes really quickly when drawing, so it not only improves my drawing, but it makes my workflow faster. Sometimes when drawing digitally, it can take a lot of effort to achieve smooth lines. It's easy to apply too much pressure and cause unnecessary hand paint. Thankfully, Procreate has thought about this, and in the next lesson, I will show you a couple of functions that you can tweak to help you a lot when drawing. [MUSIC] 15. Drawing Made Easy with Pressure & Smoothing: [MUSIC] Depending on the brush we're using, it might be challenging to achieve a smooth line. I don't know about how you felt when drawing your leaf, but sometimes when making silhouettes, I struggle. There are days when my hand is a bit trembling and I find myself making a lot of tension to achieve perfect or not so perfect smooth lines, and as a result, my hand hurts. Thankfully, Procreate has thought about this, and there are some features that can help us easily achieve smoother lines. Let's have a look at the Brush Studio. If you tap twice on top of any brush, you will see this window up here. As you can see there are a ton of tabs in this menu with many options. If you're curious and would like to play around with these options to see what they are, you're welcome to do so. You can draw in this drawing pad to preview the changes, and when it gets too messy and full, you can clean it up by tapping on this pen icon and selecting "Clear drawing pad". If you're not sure about what you're doing, you can tap on "Cancel". But if you change the brush and want to reset it to what it was originally, you can tap on "Reset". You can reset Procreate brushes to how they were initially so it doesn't matter too much. But if you purchase brushes, I advise you to not change these things, as you might end up altering the initial brush completely. If you still want to play around it, duplicate your brush first. Remember that you can do this by swiping your brush to the left and selecting "Duplicate". Tap twice on top of any brush, you will see this window up here. Tap on the second tab that says Stabilization. Let's start with the streamline option. This option has been available in the app for quite a while, so you might be familiar with it. It removes any minor imperfections or unsteady movements you make whilst drawing. You can draw on that path to see how it feels and looks. You can create snake lines, wobbly ones, or even a circle, to see how these options affect the lines when moving the different bars. In the amount bar, you can decide how strong you want the effect to be. In the pressure bar, you can determine if you want the effect to be active all the time or only appear when you apply pressure to your brush. The second feature is stabilization, and it has a stronger effect than the streamline. It makes your lines a lot smoother and straighter automatically when drawing. This feature might change up your lines or shapes completely when pushing the bar too far, and the faster you draw, the stronger the effect will be. I suggest that if you want to use this feature, you turn the bar only a little bit. The third option, motion filtering, is the strongest of all. This option removes all your unstable hand movements completely. In the amount bar, you can select the intensity. I usually keep these under 25 percent, but it might change for you. The expression bar makes it even straighter. If you move it to the right, the motion filtering effect will be more substantial. Only the current brush is affected when making changes in the Brush Studio, and it might get messy and feel daunting to start modifying brushes separately every time that you need to draw smoother lines. Thankfully, there is a way of modifying these options to affect all the libraries simultaneously without directly affecting the brushes. If you tap the wrench icon and go to preferences, you will see this option that says pressure and smoothing. Tap on it and you will access a simple version of the advanced options we already saw. You can move these bars whenever you need to create smoother and better lines, knowing that the smoothing effect will be applied to all the brushes you're using. Turning these options on and off in here is much quicker and safer as you won't be modifying your brushes directly. I usually move all the bars to the right, making sure that I don't surpass 25 percent when wanting to make smoother lines, and then turn them off when I'm done. In the next lesson, we will have some fun and make a few leaves from the one that we already have. If you don't like the leaf that you have made with the smudge tool, that's fine. But I do recommend that you create a new one and use a style that you want. By this point in this class, you already know how to create texture, draw details, and achieve gradients. So start thinking about which visual outcome you like the most and use it to develop your project for this class. You will begin defining your own visual style this way. [MUSIC] Make sure that you start the next session with a leaf that you like ready. [MUSIC] 16. Using the Eraser as a Sculpting Tool: As I already said, the most obvious way of using the eraser tool is to eliminate mistakes or shapes. Well, you can also use the eraser creatively and almost use it as a sculpting tool. In this lesson, we will carve at least two new leaves from the one that we already have. Let's start by duplicating our leaf layer and make the one on the bottom invisible. I'm going to start erasing part of the silhouettes of this leaf and carve a new one using the brush studio pen from the inking collection. Remember to move the stabilization and pressure bars if you're struggling to make smooth lines. I'm going to move them myself as my hand is getting tense. It's incredible how by moving the bars just a little bit, drawing certain things become so much easier. You can also rotate the paper by pinching and twisting your fingers as you curve your leaves. If you feel that your hand is hurting a bit, this might help a lot release the attention and draw comfortably. Whenever you want to create a new leaf, you should create a new layer and make the bottom one invisible. If you can't see the changes that you're making, it might be because the layer on the bottom is still visible and since it's an exact copy from the one on top, you can't see the changes. See how if I make the layer on the bottom invisible, I can see the changes I've made. I will erase this layer, create a new one, and make the one on the bottom invisible. I teach how to do something similar in my botanical scenes in Photoshop class. If you want to get some ideas on how to carve many leaves out of a single one, I highly recommend watching it. I do this a lot when creating my illustrations and designs. I love to be creative when using my tools, and I'm a fan of carving shapes out of existing ones. Sometimes I do it just for fun, and sometimes I do it to increase my workflow and be more efficient. If you need some inspiration for shapes of leaves, I'm leaving you an image in the description of this class. By the end of this lesson, you should have at least three different leaves in three different layers. In the next lesson, I will show you how to create perfect geometrical shapes using hand gestures, and we're going to create a fruit or a berry [MUSIC]. 17. Geometrical Shapes: [MUSIC] Creating perfect geometrical shapes can be very practical when making illustrations. You can use them individually or combine various ones to create complex silhouettes. Let's see how to create a perfect geometrical shape. Make the rest of your layers invisible and create a new one. Try making a straight line. It's pretty challenging to make it perfect, right? Now try again but don't lift the pen from the screen. See how after a second or two, the line becomes straight. If you move your pen up and down, you can decide the inclination. Suppose that you want it to be perfectly aligned to our iPad's horizontal or vertical edge. In that case, you have to tap the screen with a finger of your other hand and you will see that this one starts rotating in perfect angles of 15 degrees. Once you lift your pen, you will see this message at the top of your screen saying Edit Shape. If you tap on it, you can see these blue dots appear on each side of the line and you can move them independently. I will end these actions by holding 2 fingers on my screen. Now let's do a circle. I'm going to choose another color. Same as the line, it's challenging to create a perfect one. So I'm going to draw one again and keep my pen down. You will see that the circle line smoothens and if I tap the screen with a finger from my other hand, the circle will be perfect. As it happens with the line, once I lift my pen, I will get this option on the top of my screen saying, Edit Shape, which allows me to have even more control of my shape. Each of these blue dots can be moved independently and I can choose if I want to do an ellipse or a circle. The same things happens for a square. Create a new square, leave your pen down, and it will become perfect. Once I lift my finger, I can edit the shape with these dots. I can choose from these top options if I want to create a square, a polyline, an ellipse, or a rectangle. [MUSIC] You can also do triangles and stars. [MUSIC] Now let's combine various geometrical shapes. Draw a triangle without closing it, edit the shape, and then draw half a circle at the bottom. This, for example, could be turned into a slice of watermelon. [MUSIC] Now make half a circle, make it perfect by keeping your pen down on the screen, and close it with a straight line from side to side. There you have a slice of fruit. [MUSIC] Combining a square and a triangle can help you draw a house, and half a circle with two straight lines can help you create a door. Getting creative when combining shapes can help you a lot when drawing if you don't have much experience. If you make a drawing out of combining geometrical shapes in this lesson, I would love you to share it in the project section of this class. You might want to create a new document to experiment with and then return to this one for the next lesson where I will show you how to use masks for adding texture to your images in a non-destructive way. [MUSIC] 18. Clipping Mask to Add Texture: We've already seen the Alpha Lock option to add texture to our assets. When using this method, the texture is added directly to the illustration, meaning that you can't edit or discard it. It changes it permanently. This isn't bad necessarily, but it doesn't always work. In this lesson, I will show you how to use masks to add texture in a non-destructive way. You can change it, discard it, or save it for later. In this lesson, we're going to make a berry or a fruit. Not that they're are different things, but you understand. What do you want for your final illustration to be? Think about this and choose your color accordingly. Here's a few examples. If you want to create an orange, then make a circle larger and pick a solid orange color as a base. For our lemon, you can use an oval and a lighter green. Cranberries, blueberries, cherries, or red currants have more like a red or burgundy tone, you choose. I left a couple of images on the Pinterest board that appears in this class description in case you need some inspiration. Let's start by making a circle or oval and filling it with a solid color. I'm going to make a red currant or cranberry. I will choose a red color. Create a new layer and select a different tone of the color that you chose. If there is a color that you really like, remember that you can easily add it to your palette. I'm going to select a darker tone and add it to my color palette by tapping on an empty square if it's not already there. I will choose the soft pastel brush from the library as it has a nice smooth texture, but you can select a different brush if you want. This time, I will create a texture on a layer on top. I will start drawing it, and as you can see, it appears all over the place. That's why we need to turn this layer into a mask. Go to the Layers menu, tap on the "Texture layer" and select "Clipping mask" from the drop-down menu. When this option is active, the top layer will show the content based on the layer below. It will have it as a reference to control the visibility. This adds texture in a non-destructive way. I can activate, and disactivate the texture, change its opacity if I want by tapping on the end letter or even discard it. Down here, you have all these blending modes available. These controls how the layer on top affects the one on the bottom, and as you can see, they all have different effects. Let's now add a new layer and add a bit of light to our berry or fruit. Activate the Clipping Mask option and make a soft circle up in here. I will select a new color and maybe even a new brush. [MUSIC] You can try smudging your lights and shadows if you don't want any texture, it would work beautifully as well. You can add as many textures on light areas or dark areas as you want. You can start developing your own visual style by trying out these things. Do you like texture, do you prefer smooth gradients, or do like hand-drawn patterns? If you feel that your gradient is too strong or noticeable, you can smooth it by erasing it softly. If you match your eraser to your brush, you can create a seamless style. Remember that you can select a brush first and then keep your finger down in the eraser icon until you see the erase with current brush appear on the top of your screen. You can also change the opacity or pass the pen smoothly. These brushes are sensitive to pressure. So if you move your pen smoothly, you should be able to soften the gradient a bit. I will zoom on my image and in my original circle, fill this line of pixels using the same color. I already showed you how to fix this when filling your shapes. But even so sometimes some pixels are left out when using the dry ink pen. Take the time to refine the silhouette of your shape if needed, as it will form the base of your fruit. Since we already have a good number of layers in our documents, in the next lesson, I will show you how to organize them using advanced features of the layers panel. [MUSIC] 19. Layers: Advanced Functions: It is very common to manage many layers when creating an artwork. Since we already have a few, we can start seeing advanced features such as how to organize them in groups. I already showed you how to move your layers up and down the layer stack. But just in case you do this by holding one and when it's highlighted in blue, you can move it up or down. To group various layers, you have to select them first. To select a layer you have to tap on it, and to select multiple layers, you have to swipe on each of them to the right. See how the ones which are selected are highlighted in blue. If you want to deselect them, you will have to swipe again to the right. Swipe right to select various layers and swipe again to discard them. Select the circle that forms your fruit and the textures that you have created on top of it and details if you have any. As you can see when I have more than one layer selected, Procreate gives me the option of grouping them or deleting them all at once. I'm going to tap on group. Working with groups can help you organize documents with many layers. You can tap on top of the group to change its name. I never name my layers, but I do name my groups. If you swipe to the left, you can lock, delete, and duplicate the group. If you want to make it visible or invisible, you will have to tap on the checkbox. To expand the group, you have to tap on this little arrow located by the checkbox, and to contract it you will have to tap on it again. Unfortunately, there isn't a specific function to ungroup layers. You will have to select the layers manually and put them out of the group. The only way to get rid of the empty group is by deleting it. You can swipe to the left and then select on Delete. Start grouping the layers which form your fruits, and make another group with your leaves. I usually like to keep a group with my assets in layers and then have a copy with the layers merged. Let's duplicate the group by swiping it to the left and tapping on Duplicate. To merge a group into a single layer, you have two options. Either you can tap on it and select Flatten from the drop-down menu, or you can pinch the layers with two fingers. See how they merge into one. When you tap on a group you also get the option of combine down, which will put the layer that is below the group inside it. In the next lesson, we're going to decorate our assets a little bit more. [MUSIC] 20. Decorating Your Assets: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will refine my assets by adding some details. You can do this with the help of the Alpha Lock option, or by using layers and masks. I will leave this down to you as there's no good or wrong. When using Procreate, I like to paint as I would do in real life. I start by blocking out the main shapes and colors and once I'm sure that I like the proportions and colors, I start working out the tonal values, which are the shadows and light areas. Lastly, I make the details. This works for anything that you want to do. If you're working on a house, for example, don't start by drawing a very detailed window. Start by blocking out the walls and roof and then work on where do you want the door and windows to be. Once everything is in place, you can start enjoying working on the last touches. Since various tones have many details, I'm going to leave it as it is. But just in case you did an orange, or a lemon, I will leave you with a high-speed video and give you some examples of things that you can do. I'm going to start by giving volume to the orange in a separate layer that I have set as clipping mask. With a large textured brush, I am painting some shadows on the bottom and using a smaller brush and a lighter tone, I'm giving some light on the top. [MUSIC] In a new layer, I'm going to use the dry ink brush and draw some small dots across the fruit burying the tone. This is another way of adding texture to your objects. As you can see, I'm using a darker tone on the bottom and a lighter one on the top. For the lemon, I'm going to follow a similar process. I'm going to block the shape first and this time I'm going to use the airbrush to give volume to it. I do this to give you an example of how different brushes can be used in similar ways, it all depends on the style that you want to achieve. I constantly use the color picker with my finger, to select a tone which is already on the canvas, as this helps me to maintain a cohesive color tone across all the fruits. By the end of this session, you should have at least one leaf and a berry or fruit full of texture. Take your time refining your assets and if you don't like the ones that you have done so far, feel free to start again and replace them. The more you draw, the better you will understand all of these tools and how to use them, so don't worry if you have to draw your assets a few times. In the next lesson, I will show you how to create a flower in the easiest possible way using assisted drawing. [MUSIC] 21. Making a Flower with Assisted Drawing: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will show you how to create a flower in the easiest possible way. We will use a function called Assisted Drawing, which mirrors whatever is drawn into one section of your Canvas in other areas to create perfect symmetry. It's like magic. It's up on the wrench icon under the Canvas option, and you will find a switch for the drawing guides. Drawing guides can help you make better compositions generally. If you tap on "Edit Guides", you will see that you can change the color of how they are displayed on this top bar. These options below, you can modify the opacity of the guides and thickness to see them better. You can also change the grid size if you want. By tapping on the blue dots, you can move the grid across the Canvas, and if you tap on the green dot, you can rotate it. To reset these options, just tap on these dots and select "Reset". Down here on this menu, you can select if you want your grid to be squared, isometric, perspective, and the symmetry option which we're going to use. The symmetry option allows us to mirror everything that we draw. In the vertical option, all the drawings that you do on one side of the canvas will be mirrored in the other one. In the horizontal option, whatever you draw on top will appear on the bottom and vice versa. In the quadrant, the drawings will be repeated across the four squares. Finally, the one that we're going to use is the radial one. Activate this option and make sure that the assisted drawing switch is on. Tap on "Done" and now whatever you draw in one of these slides will be repeated across all of them. If you want to use these lines as guides to draw in your petals and you want them to appear across all of them, turn their rotational symmetry switch on. If you rather draw your petals in the blank slides, turn it up. Experiment to see the difference in between these options, tap their rotational symmetry toggle to switch between the two behaviors. Before we continue with the flower, let's see some challenges that you might encounter with assisted drawing. First of all, if after activating this option you create a new layer, assisted drawing will stop working, even if you can still see the guides. If you open the layer panel, you will see the word Assisted on the layer in which you first made it active. If you want to turn it on on other layers, you will have to tap on top of them and select "Drawing Assist" from the drop-down menu. You will see the word Assisted up here, which means that the mirroring option is now active on this Layer 2. Now let's go to the Canvas option again and switch the drawing guide off. You might think that by doing this you've turned assisted drawing off, but if you open the layer panel, you can still see the word assisted there, which means that the option is still active. To turn it off, you will have to tap on top of the layer and switch drawing assist off. Let's start our flower. I'm going to maintain the rotational symmetry on as I want to use the lines as guides. You can create a flower with rounded petals or you can make them a bit pointy. You can also leave your pen down to create some perfect ovals and it will look good. If you're struggling with your lines, you can move the pressure and smoothing bars and these will help. Just so you know, when doing this, there might be a delay in-between the line that you create and the other ones. See how when I move the pressure and smoothing bars, when drawing my line goes faster than the ones that are mirrored. If you don't like this, then you have to move the bars to the left arm pressured and smoothing. I encourage you to create your own flower and try different styles of decorations and combinations of color, but if you want to follow what I do, I will describe the steps I take to make mine. I will leave my pen down and use an oval to create my flower. As you can see, the "Edit Shape" option is also available when I use assisted drawing. This allows you to move the blue dots individually to adjust the size of your petals. I'm going to decorate the petals of my flowers using the same layer. If you wish to use different ones, you now know how to turn the assisted drawing on and off. I'm going to select the dry ink brush and a darker shade of pink and draw some fine lines on the side of the petal. Since I struggled to create a smooth line, I will move the motion filtering bar under the pressure and smoothing option a little bit. Using a lighter shade of pink, almost white, I'm going to create a couple of lines starting from the center of the flower. I'll smudge them to soften things a little bit. Using a darker orange with a smaller size of brush, I will draw a few lines on top. To create the center, I will create a new layer. With a darker orange, I will draw a circle and leave my pen down until it becomes perfect. As you can see, I had to do this a few times. I switched the dry ink brush for the studio pen and decreased the brush size. Since I want to use the assisted drawing to create some texture in the center, I need the circle center to match the guides. Using a yellow color and increasing the size of the brush, I'm going to draw Sample A. [MUSIC] Take your time playing with this option as I am sure that you will enjoy it. Make sure that you've finished this lesson with at least one flower already. If you feel like making more than one, that's awesome, you can share them in the project and resources gallery when uploading your project. In the next lesson, we're going to flatten all of our elements and I'm going to show you how to export your layers into PNG files. [MUSIC] 22. Saving Layers as PNG Files: [MUSIC] I like using my hand-painted assets across various projects. The same barriers can be used to create a repeating pattern, a greeting card, a composition to be printed as wall art, and so on. This is why saving layers as PNG files with a transparent background, is one of my best discoveries when using Procreate. Storing these images within files in Procreate isn't bad at all, but it's hard to visualize them individually when you go to the main gallery. Sometimes there are hidden in invisible layers, and you end up forgetting about them. That is why keeping our assets in PNG images within our photo library is excellent. We can flick through them and import them back into Procreate when we want to use them. We're going to merge all of our assets into a single layer. If you wish to keep them separate in layers, that's fine. Just duplicate the group and make one of the two flats. Remember that you do this by tapping on top of it and selecting "Flatten" from the drop-down menu. You can also pinch your fingers to do this. When you're done, turn on all the layers you wish to export as PNG images. Only the layers containing the flat images should be active. Since we want our images to have a transparent background, we're going to make the background invisible. You should see this checkered background surrounding your image. This means that it is transparent. Let's export the images as PNG files. Tap on the "Wrench Icon", tap on "Share", and down here under the share layers, tap on the "PNG files". When you get this menu, tap on "Save X Images option", the X number will be defined by the number of images that you have visible. Now if you go to your gallery on your iPad, you should see all of your images in here. They will be ready to use whenever you want. Before closing this document, you should remember that the undo actions will be lost. If you flatten your groups into a single layer and you are sure about it, great. But if you did this and wished to maintain the separate layers, go back to what it was before closing it. Remember that closing a document behaves like save and you won't be able to go back after doing it. In the next lesson, we will open our new file and import some of these images back into Procreate[MUSIC]. 23. Importing Images Back into Procreate: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we will open our new file and import some of these images back into Procreate. Go to the main gallery and open a new A4 document. There are two ways of importing images back into Procreate. The first one is using the import photo function. Tap on the wrench icon, tap on the first icon, and tap on insert a photo. Choose one of your images and tap on the arrow highlighted in blue to finish the import. This arrow is used to move elements across the canvas. I will show you how to use it in the next lesson. The other method of importing images is splitting your screen into two parts. Swiping your finger at the bottom of your screen, selecting the photo icon, and dragging it to one side of your screen. Tap and hold one of your assets and drag it into your document. It is super easy doing things this way. To finish the import, tap on the arrow icon highlighted in blue. You can also import various images at the same time, which I find easier. You can select all of them. Tap and hold your finger down and drag them to your canvas. You should see them appearing in here. To exit the split view, you'll have to tap on the division black line and drag it to the right. In the next lesson, I will show you how to use the move and transforming tools so that you can display all of these elements in a single page to share them in the project and resources gallery of this class. [MUSIC] 24. Move & Transforming Tools: [MUSIC] Let's see how to use the Move and Transforming Tools to display the initial elements across our Canvas. I'd love to see the leaves that you carved out of a single one. A fruit or berry, a flower, and if you did more assets, you can display them as well. Towards the end of the lesson, I will show you how to export this image as a flat JPEG that you can upload to the project gallery along with your final project. Open the Layer panel, and as you can see, each image has been placed on its own layer. One of the great things about working with layers is that you can individually move and transform them to create a composition. Tap on the arrow icon and you should see a bounding box surrounding the image that is on your currently selected layer. Now I can move my selected object anywhere on the Canvas. Something important to remember is that if you move your objects outside of the Canvas and exit is small, everything left outside will be lost. In other programs like Photoshop, this doesn't happen, but in Procreate it's good to remember this. If I select the arrow again and move the object inside, you will see that the other half that I left outside has been erased so just keep this in mind. When the Move tool is active, you will see a menu in the bottom center of your screen with different transforming tools available. The first option, Freeform, allows you to alter the objects proportions freely in either direction. If I tap on one of the corners and move it, you will see that I can transform my shape and change the horizontal or the vertical scale. If I tap on the green handle, I will be able to rotate it and if I tap on the yellow handle, I will be able to adjust the bounding box. The second option, Uniform, allows you to transform your shapes and maintain their proportions. In Distort, I can move each corner separately, which is excellent for achieving a bit of perspective. You will see that in the first three options, the bottom menu remains the same. If you type in Snapping, you can activate magnetics and snapping and you will see some guides appear when moving the object. I can stick it to one of the borders and when I rotate it, I can do it in angles of 15 degrees. I use this option a lot when creating repeating patterns in Procreate. You can flip the image horizontally and vertically, rotate it at perfect angles of 45 degrees and fit your artwork to the Canvas. The next icon goes for the Interpolation settings and with these three options, you can define in which quality you want to transform your images. Nearest neighbor is the fastest method, but the one with the poorest quality. Bi-linear takes more processing time but maintains the quality a bit better. Bi-cubic is the one that keeps more importance to pixels when resizing your images, so it preserves a higher-quality. It is also the slowest of all the three methods, but I like to keep it in here to preserve the quality of my assets. The Wrap tool gives you the most freedom and control when transforming your objects. It allows you to move not just each corner separately, but each of the squares within it. Now open the Layer panel and start moving and transforming each element so that they all fit in this page. Once you're done tap on the "Wrench" icon, tap on "Share" and this time select the JPEG format. Tap on "Save Image" and you should see your assets in your photo gallery. Please upload this image along your final composition into the project and resources gallery. Towards the end of the class, I will show you how to do this. In the next lesson, I will show you how to use a selection tools and copy paste and duplicate your assets menu. I use these functions a lot, so I want to explain this using these images before moving into our final composition. [MUSIC] 25. Selection Tools and Cut, Copy Menu: We already saw the benefits of using layers when moving elements separately, but what happens when they're all in the same layer? This is when the selection tools come in handy. Let's go to the layer panel and merge all of the layers with our fingers. If you tap on the arrow icon, you can see that the bounding box now appears surrounding all of the content of the layer, so I can move all the assets at the same time, but not separately. Tap on the third icon on the left of the screen, which looks like an S or a ribbon, and you will see this menu appear on the bottom center of the screen. The first icon is automatic, and it is used to select areas of your artwork which share the same color. I use this option primarily when I need to erase the background of drawings. If you go to the layer panel and make the background invisible, you can see that the area surrounding the assets is empty. Let's keep a white background to our assets so that I can show you how this works. Make a new layer, fill it up with white, and move it to the bottom. Now, merge the two layers. Select the ribbon icon and tap on automatic. Tap on the white background, and you will see that it turns black. If your flower is very light, you might see it being selected as well. Do this action if this happens and tap, leaving the pen down. Move it to the right and to the left as this way you can control how many colors are being included in the selection. Move it until you see only the background selected. When it turns black, it means that it has been selected. You will see the black because it's the opposite color of white. But in every color you will see the opposite of the one that is selected. By the way, if you ever leave this mode and want to enter these menu again, you have to tap and hold your finger down on the ribbon icon. Go to the layer panel, tap on top of the layer and select "Clear" from the drop-down menu. You will see that the background has been removed. As you can see, this option is great for removing backgrounds. The second selection mode is called freehand, and it allows you to do the selection manually. This is the option that I use the most. You can select things by enclosing them with your pen. Let's select one leaf by enclosing them and let's tap on the arrow. As you can see, I can move it individually and even transform it, so whenever you have barriers elements in a single layer and you only want to move one, now you know how to do it. But what if you want to put an element back into its own layer? Select an element first and then swipe three fingers down on your screen, you will see these wonderful hidden menu up here. With this menu, you can cut copy. With the copy all option, you will copy the image that you'll see on the screen without taking in account the layers. The duplicate option makes a copy of the selected image and paste it on a layer on top. We'll practice these loads in the next lesson. The cut and paste option, will place the item into its own layer. When using these options, you have to check that you're standing in the right layer. If you see a weird cut, it might be that you're standing on an invisible layer or something, so always go and check the layer panel before copying or cutting your assets. These options are very practical for when you will draw mistakes and want to get rid of them or when you draw elements on the same layer by mistake, and you want to place them onto their own layer. It's also practical when you want to duplicate elements across the same composition as we will be doing in the next lesson. Practice and place each element into its own layer using the cut and paste the option. Before moving into creating the final composition, I have one more fantastic tool to show you. In the next lesson, I will show you how to use the transform the color and contrast of your assets using advanced tools. 26. Color Transforming Tools: [MUSIC] Before we move on to our final composition, I will show you how to adjust the color of your assets. Sometimes depending on the background color that we're using our leaves or flowers can look a bit desaturated although and adjusting the contrast can make them pop out. In this lesson, I will show you how to use a Hue and saturation tools and the curves function. Tap on the icon which looks like a magic wand and then on Hue saturation and brightness. These three sliders give you control over the general quality of color in your image, when you move them, all the layer contents is affected. Hue determines the color tone using the image. With this lighter, you can make your leave look more terminal and dry or have a vivid green or look more summary. Same with your fruits and flowers. You can tweak the colors of your berries to look more like a blackberry or a red current. Saturation determines color strength. Move this slider to the left, to desaturate the colors down towards gray and right to make the colors as vibrant as possible. Brightness, say the overall lightness or darkness of the image. To commit to your changes and leave the adjustments, tap the Adjustments icon again. Curves are the most advanced way to adjust colors and contrast in your image. Tap adjustments curves to enter the curve interface. These tool represents the tonal values of your layer as a straight line or graph. You will see a blue node on each side of the line, which you can move independently. If you drag a node up, you will affect the lightness of your layer. Drag a node down to affect the darkness and if you drag a node to the left or right, you can affect the contrast. If you tap anywhere else on the line, you can create new nodes. To delete them, you must stop on top of them and select Delete. The best way to understand how curves work is to experiment with them and watch your own layer changes. By default, when you start using curves, you're changing the overall Gamma, which means that you are adjusting all the three color channels, red, green, and blue simultaneously. The awesome thing about curves is that you can adjust each color channels in isolation. Adjusting curves on individual color channels allows you to achieve an immense variety of colors. As I said before, the best way to understand how curves work is to experiment with them and watch how your layer changes. It might be that you don't want to modify any color now but if when composing your final image, you feel that you are lacking a bit of contrast, now you know how to adjust it. Great, now we have seen all the necessary tools and functions to create illustrations. In the next lesson, we will start our final compensation and practice then move transforming tools and copy and paste menu a lot. You will see how easy it is to create a final composition with just a few assets. 27. Composing Your Final Plant: [MUSIC] It's time to work on your final composition and make one plant combining the elements you have done so far. You will play with all of your elements and move them around your Canvas until they fit well together. You will be amazed at how much you can do with just a leaf, a single flower, and the fruits. We're going to open a squared document. Depending on the size and capacity of your iPad, you'll have to decide which size to use. The important thing here is that you work with at least 300 DPI and you get access to at least 20 or 25 layers to work comfortably. I'm going to open up 30 per 30 centimeters Canvas. With an iPad Pro, I can access 49 layers with the size which feels more than enough to work with but it might change for you. Twenty per 20 is also a lovely size and it will make an adorable greeting card. Designing in a squared format will give us a bit more flexibility when creating our plant, as it will not constrain us vertically or horizontally. The first thing is to import our images from our photo gallery. Import three items to your Canvas, one leaf, one fruits, and the flower. We need to ask them to hold these elements together. I will select the studio paint and a darker green, but you can choose another brush and color if you prefer. Draw a curvy line, which will be the main branch and then smaller ones coming out of it. Make good use of the Canvas and don't just stay in one corner. Make your leaf layer visible and place it on top of the branches [MUSIC] You have two options to duplicate your leaf. Either you tap on top of the layer and select Duplicate, or you swipe three fingers down and tap on "Duplicate." You will see that the move tool has been activated and you can place it wherever you want. I find the second way of working faster and more efficient. Once you have placed a couple of leaves here and there, activate your fruits. If you did an orange, you might only need two or three, but if you did a berry, you might need to duplicate it more times. I'm going to use my berry, but towards the end of the lesson, I will show you two images with how I create plants using oranges and lemons. I'm going to draw a tiny star on one side of the berry to make it look more natural. I will start duplicating the berry and placing it in different parts of the plants. You might have to move your elements constantly and just so you know, this is part of the process, I find it really enjoyable. If something doesn't look right straight away, be patient, and move things around until the arrangement of the elements start making sense or looking natural to you. If at any point you run out of available layers, don't be afraid of merging various layers into one. You can always import the initial asset from your photo gallery, and this way, you will be able to control the number of layers that you are using. This is one of the best things of working with PNG files with a transparent background [MUSIC] Since I already have a good amount of berries displayed across the plant, I'm going to create a new layer and with a smaller size of brush, draw some little stems to connect them to the main plant. One thing which I find very helpful when it comes to working on the composition is to constantly zoom in and out of the Canvas. I also like to rotate it as this gives me another perspective. In this case, I think that having four sets of berries make my plant look a bit stiff. I will remove one and erase this stems from the layer using the cut and paste option from the hidden menu. I could also very well use the eraser tool. I'm going to group all my berries as this will help me stay organized [MUSIC] Here is when you might find that your leaves could look better with a bit of contrast or at least some of them. I will use a color adjustment tool to modify their color and make them a bit darker. I will also place a couple of more leaves here and there, and using the transforming tools, change their size and shape. See how I'm using the flip vertical and horizontal to give a new perspective to my leaves. Finally, I'm going to place a couple of flowers here and there [MUSIC] As you can see, there's a lot of moving around when composing an image this way, but putting a good amount of effort into creating the initial assets means that you don't have to spend so much time on the final composition. It looks clean, neat, and very professional. I think that the final result is stunning. The best part is that you can start building a library of elements to create new plants in a super easy way. Two example of plants I did using oranges and lemons. As you can see, to create this, I only used a couple of fruits. See how in the orange plant, I sent some to the front and some to the back. You do this by moving the layers up and down the layer stack. If you make more than one composition, please share it in the project and resources gallery. I would love to see how you make the most out of your assets. Working this way can make you very efficient. I use this method when working in Photoshop, and if you have enjoyed this way of working, I highly recommend watching my class botanical scenes in Photoshop, incorporating watercolor into digital design [MUSIC] 28. Exporting Your Artwork: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to export your artwork. I will talk about the different formats and what they are for. Once you have finished your art work, you should go to the actions panel under the wrench icon, tap on "Share", and where it says Share Image, you will see various options. The Procreate file will allow you to open a document on another iPad with Procreate installed and preserve the layers. PSD is for Photoshop and this type of file can be opened in this program, maintaining the layers and the resolution. Complementing Photoshop with Procreate can help you create more advanced designs if you're a designer. To understand the rest of the files and what to use in each occasion, it's essential to note the difference in-between lossy and lossless compression file formats. When we save our files in a lossless format, our image will get smaller without losing its quality. This is generally better for printing. A lossy file will sacrifice some of the information like colors and details, but it will make the file much smaller, which will be helpful when uploading your images to social media or websites. JPG is a lossy format, and it is perfect for when we want to share our artworks across social media or on websites. To share images in the project section of this class, you should upload your files as JPG, so we're going to tap on this option for now. You should see the exports successful message on your screen. If your export is unsuccessful, try again and don't interrupt the process whilst the image is saving. If you go to your photo gallery on your iPad, you should see the image saved in your gallery. The TIFF and PNG formats are amongst the highest quality graphic formats available and they will preserve the quality of your image over time. They are lossless formats. That is why when printing your artwork, these are the best formats to go for. Now let's see how to export the time-lapse video. Under the actions panel, you will see an icon with a triangle that says Video. Tap on it and you will see these three tabs. If you tap on replay, you will be able to see all the things that you did to get to where you are, which is really cool. If you tap on export time-lapse video, you will get two options, full length or 30 seconds. I usually export my video in full length as I love to see it from start to finish. If it's too long, I can always shorten it with a video editing app. Tap on "Save Video" and you should see it saved in your photo gallery. Sharing a video with a time-lapse on social media as a reel or a story is great to gain followers. If you do, I would love if you can tag me on @socreative.art, so I can see your process and share your video with my followers as well. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to share your project in the Project and Resources Gallery of this class. [MUSIC] 29. Sharing Your Artwork: [MUSIC] It's time to share what you have done in the project and resources gallery. Please share an image with your initial assets and your final plant or plants, if you have made more than one. The more you make, the more you will practice, and the better prepared you will leave this class to approach more complex illustrations. If you took the chance to play around with geometrical shapes to make watermelons or houses, I would love to see those as well. Nothing motivates me more to make more classes than seeing my students projects come to life. On this class project and resources tab, you will find a green button that says, ''Create Project''. Tap on it and you will enter this window. You can add a title to your project in this box. Under the project description, you can upload photographs and texts. I love when students post their images and share some thoughts along them. You can either tap on this button that says "Image" and select it from your computer, or you can drag it directly into this box. Below, you can share some thoughts about the exercise, if you struggled or particularly enjoyed something. Reading a bit of texts can give me a broader idea of your process and it will help me to leave a more accurate review. You can make your project private by ticking on this box that says, make this project private. Lastly, add some texts. Botanical illustration, procreate, digital art are some which would work great with this project. Once you're ready, you can hit the green button up here that says ''Publish'', and your project will appear on the gallery of this class. If you decide to print your project, you can take a photo with your phone and upload it onto the gallery of this class, as I would love to see it. [MUSIC] 30. Reasons for Starting an Image Library: If you have seen my other classes, you know how much I love making my own image libraries. Saving layers as PNG files with a transparent background is one of my best discoveries when using Procreate. I want to explain why this way of working can be incredibly beneficial, especially when creating certain types of illustrations. I like to illustrate my botanical assets in one document and then make my final composition in another one except for when I'm making scenes or drawing people. But why? I do this for three main reasons. First, I tend to use my hand-painted assets across various projects. The same berries can be used to create a repeating pattern, a greeting card, or a composition to be printed as wall art and so on. Storing these images within files in Procreate isn't bad at all, but it's hard to visualize them individually when you go to the main gallery. Sometimes they're hidden in invisible layers and it's easy to end up forgetting about them or losing a lot of time having to open each document to see if they're there. Keeping our assets as PNG images within our photo library is excellent. We can just flick through them and import them back into Procreate whenever we want to use them. The second reason is very specific to working in Procreate. I don't like getting access to a limited number of layers when working on large documents. There's nothing more annoying than getting a message saying you've reach your maximum number of layers, whilst working. By illustrating my elements into, let's say, an A4 document, which is not too big, I can access a good number of layers and enjoy refining my assets as much as I want. Once my assets are saved into my photo gallery with a transparent background, I can import them into a larger document. Let's say that I want to design a poster. I can import the assets that I have already made and start transforming them and duplicating them as much as I want or until I reached the maximum number of the layers available. In that case, I just have to merge some of them, knowing that I can always import the original element to keep working on my composition. The third reason is to maintain the best quality of the original botanical elements in which you've spent so much effort and valuable time. When you transform the size of your assets, they tend to lose their quality, even if it's just a little bit. If you make them smaller and then enlarge them, you will see them looking a bit blurry and less defined. When composing an image using the method that I'm showing you, it's common to transform the size of your elements until they fit well together. If you're working with the original images, you can damage them in a permanent way. By importing them back into Procreate, you're working with a copy of the element. The original is still intact in your photo gallery, so you can play as much as you want, changing the size, shape, and color without the fear of losing or damaging it. I hope that with this explanation, you start understanding why it can be beneficial to start saving your images with a transparent background in your photo gallery and start building an image library. If you are illustrating scenes, spaces, or landscapes, this concept might not be so helpful. But when working in patterns and designs, believe me, this way of working can be the best. 31. Final Thoughts: First of all, thank you so much for taking this class with me. Sharing my creative skills with others is invaluable and if it weren't for students like you, I wouldn't be able to keep doing what I love. I hope that you leave this class feeling happy, empowered, and excited to keep using Procreate. I hope that you saw how easily it can be to create botanical artworks. Have in mind that all the tools I've shown you can be applied to other styles and subjects. If you want to take these concepts further, I highly recommend taking my class Botanical Scenes in Photoshop, incorporating watercolor into digital design. I teach not only to create plants out of a single sets of assets, but how to create breathtaking, complex botanical compositions with them. You will learn the logic behind creating flowers in different positions to make your compositions look more dynamic. You can use the same logic I use in Photoshop, but using Procreate. Surprisingly, I have already had some students who have shared that they use Procreate to complete the class project. Besides, you already know how to erase a white background. If you want to learn how to digitize watercolor, I invite you to give it a go. If not, you can just paint the petals and leaves with the tools that we have seen in this class and take it from there. I would appreciate if you could review this class. A single review even if short goes a long way and motivates me to keep creating more classes. Knowing what my students think means a lot to me. This is the first of a series of Procreate classes I will teach. By the way, you will be ahead with the skills that you have learned in this class. If you want to get notified about those upcoming classes, don't forget to press that little button up there that says "Follow" and you will get notified when the new one is out. Let's be friends on social media. For more Procreate on art tutorials, you can subscribe to my newsletter. I am leaving you a link in the description of this class. For video tutorials, you can also follow me @socrative.art on TikTok and Instagram. I often feature student projects, share tutorials and bits of inspiration, especially around art and design subjects. If you love botanicals as much as I do, you will see many of those things around there. If you'd like me to share your project, leave me a comment with your username along with your project description. This way I can tag you and share your work with my followers as well. If you want to get to know me a little better, you can check my website or my personal Instagram, silviaspina.art. You will see me making murals, watercolors, procreate, ceramics, maybe singing sometimes, and doing other creative things. I would love to meet you there and follow you back. Remember that I will be hosting a giveaway with this class. All you have to do to enter is read the description below and you will get a chance to win a year of Skillshare membership. I hope that you enjoy this class as much as I enjoyed creating it. Thank you so much. Let's stay in touch and see you in my next class. Bye.