Letter Your Photos in Procreate

1. Introduction: Handwriting can add personality and a human touch, and I love bringing that into the digital space through my photos. Hi, I'm Ab C. I'm a multidisciplinary artist, author, and educator. I've been documenting my creative journey on social media for over a decade, and I love telling stories through images by adding a little bit of personality through hand lettering. Welcome to my class. Letter your photos in Procreate. In this class, I'll show you how to add hand lettering to your photos using the Procreate app on the iPad. We'll transform a photo into a more expressive piece by adding a hand lettering word or phrase. Guide you through my creative process and share with you some tips on how to make it your own. This class is best for anyone who has a basic understanding of the Procreate app. Whether you're preserving a moment, sharing a memory, or simply looking to give your photos a creative touch. I hope this class invites you to experiment with your handwriting. Let's get started. 2. Your Project: For our class project, we'll add more personality to a photo by lettering a word or a phrase. In the Projects and Resources tab, I will share the main photo we'll be using for this project, as well as a fonstyle cheat sheet for your reference. We'll be doing three different font styles, and I encourage you to try all of them so you can experiment and have fun. But if you only want to try one, that's also totally fine. Of course, after you work on your projects, I'd love to see it so I can provide some feedback and offer more suggestions. When you're ready to upload your class project, head to Projects and Resources and click on the Submit Project button. First, you'll upload a cover image that you'll be using for the project as long as supplementary photos or videos if you have them. Then add a title with your additional photos or videos if you have them, and then hit Publish. I'm looking forward to seeing some of your projects after the class. 3. Tools and Materials: Before we start, we're going to be a little bit digital for this class. You're going to be needing an iPad, an Apple Pencil, and the Procreate app downloaded. Personally, my setup is a bit more portable. I use an iPad Mini, an Apple Pencil Pro, and of course, I have the latest version of Procreate on my iPad. You can use whatever you have on hand, make sure that the Procreate app is available because that's going to be the main app that we'll be using throughout this class. The pencil, also make sure it's compatible with the iPad that you have. So for my iPad mini, it's the Apple Pencil Pro. It just looks cute with this pencil situation over here, but it's really an Apple pencil. And the pencil brush that we're using is actually in the Procreate app, so we don't need to download anything new. It's called the six B pencil. It's my personal favorite. It's the one I've been using for all of my projects. So make sure to have that, as well. And last but not the least, this is optional, but I'd like to have a MT screen protector for my iPad. That way when I'm drawing on my iPad, it's not too smooth and has that paper feel that I usually look for when it comes to drawing. Once you have all of those set up, let's head to the drawing board, and let's set up our canvas on Procreate. 4. Setting Up: Okay, so let me quickly show you how I usually set this up with Procreate. I'm going to open the Procreate app. I'm going to click the plus sign here. This is where you can start a new Canvas. I usually have a bunch of different sizes here, but today we're going to be focusing on 1080 by 13 50, which is the usual size for social media, for Instagram, and it gives me this nice portrait format. Now you have this specific layer which is going to be the first layer. From here, I want you to open the photo that we're going to be using for this project. So I'm going to click on the wrench here, and from the wrench actions insert a photo so this is the photo that we're going to be using. I actually formatted it already to fit the exact size. From here, I like to set up a grid. So the grid is a drawing guide, and you can find it as well. Here on the action stab, I'm going to click on Canvas. From Canvas, there is this button here for drawing guide. You just tap it. And the drawing guide is basically a grid. You can't see it, so we're going to edit it according to our preference. So here you have a bunch of colors, and from the colors, you can either use a white one or a yellow one or green one. I'm going to be using a green one for this. Usually, it's like green or turquoise, and you can even edit the size. So we're going to make it a little bigger so it can fit our letters. And then you can also edit the opacity. That way, you're able to see it, and don't worry about it being big or thick. We'll be able to remove this later on as we continue with the project. Right now, it's just nice to have this grid so you don't feel as lost when it comes to tackling your photo, where to put the text, and where to put the letter phrase that we're going to be doing for today's project. Mostly using the color white. So on the color stab, I'm just going to head to the white as part of the gradient. And for the brush, we're going to head to the brush tool here. I usually just go from the library. You go to sketching, and you will find the six B pencil. This is the one I use 99% of the time I am Procreate. Personally, I just love how you can use it as it has this sketchy effect. Another property that I want you to look at that you can tailor fit to your preference is when you go to the second tab here, there is this function called streamline. So the more streamlined it is, the more you don't have to control the stroke. And I think it's great, but personally, I like to keep it not too streamline because then it's easier for me to control it and pretend that it's like doodling on a notebook, for example. But having a little bit of streamline is definitely helpful. At this point, I also want you to sort of, like, figure out the size of the brush you want to use. This depends on your handwriting. You know, do some strokes. If you're not ready to head into full on drawing mode, you can always remove this layer. Add another one and do some warm ups and kind of figure out where you want to write and where you want to draw. So yeah, once we have the photo and then we have the drawing guides, I'm just going to add another layer, and this is where we're going to be drawing. So I'll see you in the next lesson, and let's start with the first font style. 5. Font 1: Handwriting: So for the first fontstyle, we're going to be doing handwriting fontstyle. I think this is the easiest way you can get to doodle or letter on your photos. From the photo that we have here, I specifically picked it because there's a lot of space where you can draw. And one thing that I like to look at when it comes to choosing which photos to use is that there's enough space for you to write things on. So for example, here, we have this kind of autumnal situation where all the leaves are kind of enveloping this more right corner of the image and then a little bit on the upper left. And then here, it's completely blank. It's a lot of, like, blurry areas, which is the perfect location to add your text. That is presently a rule of thumb I like having because from there, I don't have to think too much. I'm like, Okay, this is where I can start doodling. So with the first layer, we don't want to go on final and just immediately, you know, be like, Okay, we're going to draw and that's it. So I want you to think of what you would like to write here. I'm going to be very specific and write autumn. So I was like, Okay, maybe we could do something like a hello autumn. So with your handwriting, I always like just keeping everything in a certain width or height. That's why I also kept this grid size. So just write autumn in your handwriting. This is step one. And then we're going to write Hello. I wanted to do this in script. So something like this, little comma there. And obviously, it's not proportionate. We're going to use this arrow tool here, and then you can always adjust as you see fit. So honestly, this itself is already pretty good. But what I like to do is I like to alternate the letter heights. You can see here. It's like AUTUMN. You can kind of, like, play it out a little bit. I'll show you more techniques on that in the next lesson. But if this is your draft, which is usually what I like to do, now that I have, like, this placement, I'm like, Okay, I think placing it here would be nice. I usually lower the opacity of this particular layer, so you can still see it, but not 100%. It acts as my guide so that when I do my next layer, which is ideally my final artwork, it's a bit easier for me to figure out, okay, the placement would be kind of in this format. So what I want to do is add a little variety. So I'm going to elongate the loop here for the H and also, these are things that are a bit more intuitive that you can kind of play around once you look at your photo. I also like the habit since my iPad is pretty small. I like to zoom in and out and make sure that I like it. I don't like it. And then for the word autumn, I'm going to alternate the heights. And you don't have to write everything in a straight way. It can be kind of diagonal, a little bit more playful. I love this format of switching the heights just because it doesn't do much, but it does enough to showcase a little bit of variety, which is what we like in regards to the photo as well, because we have this photo, but then we also have this text, and we want to play around with both aspects. So you have this over here. You can always resize them. I like to rotate it a little bit and tweak as I see fit. I'm going to remove the initial layer that we had. And then, you know, if you want to edit some more stuff, I'm going to remove the drawing guide so I can see it a little clearer. Okay. I kind of want it a little smaller. And usually for this layer, you have, like, a little bit of the brush tool going on. But if you want to make it a little darker, one tip I always do is I duplicate the layer. So you're just going to move your pencil to the left and then click Duplicate. So it's now a little bit darker. You can always adjust the opacity of this as well. So it has a little bit more sketchy effect, but not too light. So this is the big change that you're seeing here. So yeah, this is one way I like doing it with my handwriting because it's very simple. And also, you can also always switch out the size. You can make autumn a little bit bigger. I figured with having this specific area, it was just subtle enough that if you zoom out like this, pretending it's like on Instagram, you're like, Okay, I can still see the leaves, but then I can also still read. And one thing that I want you to take note of when you are doing lettering or writing on photos is make sure that it's readable, because that's really what you need to take note of. And that's the purpose of lettering on your photos. So having that is pretty much like the best way that you know that your artwork is successful in a sense that people can read it. So this is the first fontyle. It's handwriting. Feel free to experiment, but we have this as a basic as this is going to be like the easiest way to integrate it into your lettering journey. 6. Font 2: Block: Next up. Let's add a little bit more character to our photos with some block lettering. I also want to show some ways that you can kind of doodle and add a little bit more embellishment with your photo. So on this new layer for this one, if I feel like I want to go beyond and write over the leaf here, I'll show you a technique on how we can make that possible and still readable. So we'll start with some block letters. I still adopt the same technique of switching out the sizes and also making some experiments with the height. I think this helps create dimension when it comes to your images, and it also gives a little bit more character. Also, one thing I want you to keep in mind when you're working on these is it doesn't have to be perfect. It's what makes your work so personal and expressive. So there's no rhyme or reason. I just like kind of putting the T a little bit more to the left. And then maybe the next letter would be a little bit more on the right here. And since this is digital, you'll know what we can do, right? If you want to switch things or resize them, you can simply click this button over here, and then the arrow tool. So then you can transform it. You can move it up, you can move it down. You can do a 180. And it's just pretty flexible, which is what I love about Procreate. It's such a game changer, especially if you love drawing and you want to do it in the digital context. G to add our letter M here, letter. I know we're going towards the end, so, of course, I have to resize this. One thing you will also figure out with the size of your iPad is whether or not you'll be resizing your canvas as much as you can, or you're just more used to just one specific way. I find that if I'm using my iPad mini, since it's portable, it's great. But also, I do run the risk of always kind of zooming in and, like, working towards the end. So we now have everything sort of like the whole way here, which is also fine. If you think about it, I'm going to move this a little bit around. I'm going to resize this. And I still want to add the word hello. So that's what we're going to do over here. I'm thinking here would be a good area. It's not a long word, and I'm going to adapt the same lettering from my handwriting. So then it's like a little bit in print. Hello, autumn. Okay, that's too big. Let's resize it. Also, if you want to erase something, head to the eraser tool. My personal favorite is the airbrushing category because it just erases things in one sweep like this. And, of course, if you want to undo, just do two taps of your fingers, two fingers and your back. So let's connect them a little bit more. It feels a little bit far away. Yeah. With the playing of the heights as well here, you can see that because I did like a height variation, I can also do that with the letters here, and then they sort of become cohesive in that sense. Okay, now we have something going on. I do feel like this part is a little bit empty and also this part. So we're going to mimic the leaves, the autumn leaves. I mean, we don't have to draw this complicated one, but I like to just start with a stem like sgo and then do some little leaves like this. Can also go add some here. Can also add more of these. Why not? And just a little one at the bottom here. I think that would be nice. It doesn't do much, but I feel like it complements the entire image, so it doesn't feel separate from it. So it has that connection of, like, Oh, yeah, this is an autumn photo with leaves, and then we have little leaf doodles. You can also always resize them as you see fit and see whether it's good or how many leaves do you need. But, yeah, so this is one way to do your block letters. I personally love this format, especially for basically anything that I do, one technique I want to show you is we're going to duplicate this layer, so it's a bit darker. And now, what we're going to do is this part, while it's still readable, we do want to enhance it a little bit to create some kind of shadow, and there's no specific shadow tool on Procreate, so I like to create my own version of shadows. And to do that, I'm going to create a new layer on top of the photo. And then we're going to go to the black or actually like the brown. And we're going to use the airbrush brush tool. I usually use the soft blend one. And here on the left hand side, we have the opacity at the bottom left, and then this is the size. So for the size, I try to just feel it out. Again, if you don't like what it looks like you can always delete it. Opacity. The goal is to not make it so obvious that we have a shadow, but still enough to be like, Okay, I can read it a little bit more. Okay. Sometimes it also doesn't show. I'll just try using a black one. Okay. Now you can see it. It's a bit subtle, but because it's very dark, we're going to lower the opacity. We don't have to do the entire letter, you know, we just have to, like, kind of tighten those parts with a little bit of If you don't notice it, you're like, Where is it? You can always remove the layer and see. It's also a bit tricky to figure it out. You kind of get used to it, the more you do it there. Okay, I think there is a little bit here. Add more here. But, again, we're not so challenged, especially with this particular image because a lot of it is already pretty much easy to read. But here's the subtle change, you can see here. Yeah. I illuminates the lettering even more, and it adds this, like, kind of subtle shadow that we want, especially for this kind of work where you really need to read it. So this is the block letter version of Hello Autumn. 7. Font 3: Vintage: Okay, I definitely am saving the best for, and it is a little bit more complicated. This particular font style. I call it vintage. So when I started doing hand lettering more than a decade ago, this is one of the font styles I personally developed because I just love the mix of a serif font and something a little bit more retro and vintage script inspired. Now, that sounds a little too loose, but let me show you what I mean. So when we start with a serif, it has something like this. These are the serifs. Apart from this particular font style, I like to add a little bit of script. So how I do my script is, for example, if this is the serif A, this is how I would do my script A. And the vintage script that I created, which you'll see in the resource file is kind of a combination of these two. So with this style in this style, I usually adapt this curve from the script, like so. And then I close it up with a little bit of serif. So it kind of looks like this. I think the main inspiration of this is kind of like wedding invites, but also old signages, like typography signages, like hand lettering signages. It's fully customizable. I just created it because I personally loved using it back in the day for my lettering pieces. So this is mostly how we're going to approach this particular phone style. But since we're only going to Letter Autumn, we only need the capital letter A, which is what I showed here, and the rest will be in lowercase. So in lowercase, it's nothing too fancy. Let's say we have the letter U like this. I'm usually converting this serif into a little bit of this curve here, so it's like this. Which is kind of similar to the script, right? If you write incursive for the letter t like this, but it could be also as rigid as you want. I'm not putting any rules to this. You can also do it like this, which I think is a good combination of both the serif and the script. So we can definitely adapt this. What I love about this format is that you can exaggerate your swashes. So with the A earlier, you can have it like this. You can also elongate it. You can also twirl it around like this. One thing I sometimes like to add is this round thing here, which is called the ball terminal, I think it adds a little bit of pizzas to your lettering, and it's a little step, but I think it really establishes something different, you know, with the A here. So, now that we have that, let's try to warm up for our vintage font style. I'm going to start with a new layer. Okay, definitely overlook that. And then we have N here. So, one thing I also like to do with lettering on Procreate is I don't have to make all my words the same fun. We're using autumn as, like, the main word and the main visual for the lettering aspect of the photo. And so hello kind of comes in as like a sub like, it's like hierarchy wise, it's kind of second to the main word, which is autumn. So that's also why I am using a smaller size font and a more I would say basic fontstyle compared to the more decorative fontstyle that we have here, which is very distinct now that you're looking at it. I would move this a little bit more here. And one thing I also want you to pay attention to with regards to this kind of font style is it's very flexible. So I'm looking at it now, and this has a capital letter, and then everything else is lowercase. And there seems to be this space here and space here. So what you can do is actually extend this line of the T. So I'm going to do it a little bit like this instead of the one we have here. Always erase that. I think it connects everything more. And with that, I also would consider maybe making the A a little bit bigger. And it could be here, but since we're sort of touching the leaf, I want to put it a little bit down. And remember, you can always rotate things, so I'm going to rotate this. We also have this swash over here on the left hand side, and I think in order to have it balanced, I would also consider having a little bit of swash on the right hand side. So I'm gonna close it up like this. Definitely I want to add in the ball terminal I mentioned earlier, so it's something like this. A not shortcut way of doing this is you would actually do a ball. That's why it's called a ball terminal, so you have a small circle here, and then you can kind of slowly connect it to your stroke. Same goes for here. Yeah. And then we're going to slowly add in the serifs and the stroke. So I'm going to add a little bit here. And a little bit here for the U. Just because there are two US here doesn't mean we have to make both of them exactly the same. That's a beauty of lettering. You don't have to make them look identical. It could be complimentary, but also enough to inform you that we have the same letter kind of going on here. Now we have this rough draft. I'm going to lower the opacity and use it as my guide for my final lettering. One thing I wanted to share when it comes to using Pcate is it's a little bit of a learning curve, especially if you're used to drawing by hand, the pressure that you use to add in your strokes, like what I'm doing here. I would say it's a little bit of an adjustment. I struggled when I started as well, and I think on average, I do put a little bit of pressure. I just don't, put it in so deep because I don't want my tablet to break. But the purpose of also, like, doing drafts and doing, like, tracing templates like these is so you're not so focused on having to make it perfect. You can always delete the layers, add the layers. I'm always like waiting to make sure I get the exact stroke right. But also, it's a reminder, you know, you don't have to do one full stroke at the same time. I can slowly work my way around it and be patient with myself. So I'm going to thicken this part a little bit, just enough to make it a little more bold, especially since the size of this particular word is bigger. Color that in. And then here Kana keep the serif on that. This is a very distinct serif. You can see the serif and the script sort of combining together in this particular letter. This is probably a very well known fact, but I love lettering A because it's also A for Abbey, and personally, I love the characteristic of the letters, and then we'll slowly get into the lowercase letters. For the pencil tool, it doesn't really act as a brush, but the more pressure you see what I'm doing here. The more pressure I put on the pencil, and then the lighter it is when you lift it up. It sort of becomes thinner. So I think use that to your advantage because that way you don't have to keep coloring things in. And if you look at it in a way, this kind of also feels like a little bit of brush lettering. So I'm just putting the pressure here, and then I'm lifting when I go up. But you can so, of course, just do it the traditional way, which is like, I'll do a stroke here, then slowly add as I go. Let's go with the. And you can always go back. Remember that. Feel like I'm running out of space with the end here. So I'll just finish this up and resize the word autumn because it kind of goes to the end another thing I want you to think about is kind of have an invisible border for your lettering. I just personally don't like it going super close to the edge like this. So what we're going to do is using the transform tool. I'm just going to resize the word autumn, not the word hello because hello is doing fine over there. Resize it, move it a little bit. This is where the grid comes in handy. We have a little bit of space here, and then also a little bit of space there. I think it's enough to draw that boundary and have that invisible border still show up. At this in. See what it looks like without the tracing lines. Okay, I'm gonna, darken it. And same as earlier, I'm going to slowly add in some shadows because we are hitting some parts of the image where we have these leaves just enough to create a shadow, like so. Again, this is a learning curve in a sense that the more subtle your shadow is, the better it will become because you don't want it to be like, Yeah, there's a full shadow that we're seeing over here. So actually, if I do remove that, you can see it, but it's not so obvious when you zoom it out. You can also just adjust the opacity, you know, if you don't want it to be so obvious, I think this one is more than enough. So yeah, the format thing is a little bit different for this one. I feel like everything is more towards the center, and it's totally up to you. You know, you can also consider adding this particular Artwork. Here, if that's the case, then you can also add a little bit of text here or like a photo diary and so and so. I just merge the layers. You don't have to, but obviously, you will eventually do that. So exporting the image, I usually just click the wrench tool here, and then you go to share. And then there are so many different ways to export this. You have the Procreate file. You also have the PSD file for Photoshop if you want to edit the layers. JPEG, PNG TV. I personally just export it to JPEG and send it to my computer via Airdrop in case I want to print it, or I transfer it to my phone, and that's where I upload it. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you the different ways that you can share your work. So I hope you enjoy paw style number three with the vintage style. 8. Ideas and Inspiration: Once you finish your projects, here are a few ways to use and share what you've created. Of course, you can share it on Instagram as it's fully formatted for social media and sharing. But another thing I like to do is print out this artwork. You can put it in a frame, a photo frame, put it up your wall, especially if it's the time of year where it's autumnal. I like to format it in ASIC size or whichever size your frame has. Make sure to have that in format so that everything fits in the frame. Another thing I love to do is if you love journaling like me, I also suggest printing it out on a photo printer. So, for example, an IstaxPhoto printer or a cannon photo printer that can be able to print it in a smaller format. I love being able to see something like this, like this photo printed in several different sizes. You'll see the effect of how it permeates throughout your work and through the things that you do. Let me know which one you try, and I'm looking forward to see that as well. 9. Final Thoughts: You've made it to the end of this class. Thank you so much for spending your time with me, and I hope you enjoyed lettering your photos together. Now that I've shared my process with you on hand lettering, I definitely encourage you to experiment and try out different phone styles using your own photos to add more personality and make them a little more expressive. Make sure to submit your project to the project gallery so I can see them and offer feedback as well. Please consider leaving a review for this class if you enjoyed it, and it'll offer me some suggestions on how I can develop more classes in this format. And if you're looking for more ideas and inspiration, I have some classes on journaling that you can check out on Skillshare. Thank you so much and always be creating. Bye.