Make Your Own Watercolor Brushes in Procreate

1. Introduction: I'm an illustrator. California In today's course, we're gonna talk about how to make our own watercolor brushes and procreate. And then we're gonna test those brushes by using them to make our own watercolor cactus illustration. Grab your iPad, your apple pencil and let's get started. 2. Setup: The first thing we're going to do in this class is fire up our iPad pro, and we're gonna open up the app procreate. Once we have that open, we're gonna go over to the right hand corner, hit the plus sign and add a new canvas. I have eight by eight inches saved as one of my presets. If you don't have that, then go ahead and create a custom size and create that eight by eight campus. So that's gonna open up and the first thing we're gonna do is set up our campus. So we're gonna start with our layers were gonna click on the layers button over here, click on layer one and rename And we're gonna rename that watercolor paper one. And we're gonna change that too. Multiply, cook on the end, come over Instead of normal we're gonna click, multiply We're going to swipe and duplicate that layer Then we're gonna swipe and duplicate that layer again. Go ahead and rename that watercolor paper to and then rename the third layer Watercolor paper three. We're gonna add another layer and we're just setting this up so that we're ready to do our class project within this canvas, we're gonna rename this cactus, and we know that this is the layer that we can actually draw. We'll add more layers later, but this is a good start. The next thing you're going to do is go ahead and go into your brush. Um, tab. So in your brush library, you don't. You'll notice that you have all the preset brushes that come with procreate. They have a lot of great brushes, but not a lot of great watercolor brushes. If you go into artistic, there's watercolor. There's wash that can work at times. Sometimes acrylic is helpful is well, but there's really not a lot to work with. And making your own or buying your own watercolor brushes if you're serious about making watercolor and procreate is kind of something that you just have to do. So, uh, we're gonna add, we're gonna click on this. Plus I know we're gonna add a new set, and we're gonna call the 1st 1 water color, oops, paper, and then we're gonna add another set and call it watercolor. Okay, if you've done all that, you are set up and we're ready to start 3. Watercolor Paper Brushes: Now that we have our campus set up, we're gonna go ahead and create some watercolor paper brushes. We're gonna make three different ones. And this is gonna make the texture underneath our painting look like water color paper and make our painting just a little bit more realistic. So to start with, we're gonna make sure we're in the watercolor paper set. And then we're gonna click on this plus sign over here to add a new brush. The first screen that comes up is gonna ask you for your shape source and your grain source . We're going to get both of those from the pro library. So to start with the shape source, we're gonna click on swap from Pro Library and we're gonna get this hard circle. Then we're gonna go to our green source swap from for library, and we're gonna scroll way down to where all the squares are all the textures in the squares and we're gonna click on sketch paper. So this is the start of our first brush. So now we're going to go over to stroke and we're going Teoh, move this Facing up just a little bit to about 20%. If we're not right on, if it's 1% offer point, something percentages off. That's not a big deal. Not worried about that. Um, just do you know what spacing does, and I'll show you what some of these do is. We go if I think they're pretty important. But I won't spend a lot of time on it. Boring you. It's going to space out our shape so that when we draw a line, we've got a bunch of different circles all spaced out. You can also use that as a stamp. So, um, we're gonna turn that to 20% so that it's more of a smooth line. We're gonna leave everything else alone. We're gonna go over here, make sure pressure tapers turned on. We're gonna turn pressure all the way down and were new turns, size and capacity all the way up to Max. We're gonna skip shape for now, and then we're gonna go to grain. So we're gonna make sure movement is set to rolling, and we're gonna turn up this scale to about 40%. What's really nice about creating new brushes is that it shows you exactly what's happening within your brush. So when we turn the scale of the Grana, it obviously makes that green bigger. We're gonna also increase the zoom to about 15%. Okay, now we're gonna go over to dynamics, and we're gonna hit glazed, so you'll notice the difference. Normal kind of looks chalky, and then glazed is looking a little bit more transparent and glossy, I would say. And then wet mix. Obviously, it looks a little bit wet, so we're gonna go glazed for our paper brushes. And then, um, we're gonna make sure that flow is all the way to Max Pencil. We're gonna leave alone for now, and we're gonna go skip it and go over to general. Um, General, we're gonna go ahead and move that to about 50% on, and then we are going to max out our size limits, and we're gonna max out our capacity limits. So that is our first brush. We contest this. This should be a pretty big brush because you want it to cover your whole screen. Okay, so that's our first paper rush. We're gonna go back in to our to our watercolor paper, and we're gonna name this, um, before we do anything else? So let's name it. Watercolor paper one. Okay, there we go. I don't always name my layers, even though I should but definitely label your brushes, cause you're gonna want to know what their and it can get confusing if you have, if you make a lot of them. Okay, so let's go ahead and make our next one. We're gonna go ahead and click that plus sign in shape source. We're gonna go ahead and get that same hard circle green source. We're going to scroll down and right next to sketch paper, we're gonna hit on oil. Pastel. Okay, um, we're going to start on stroke and and make pretty much all the same adjustments, so let's go 20%. Uh, we've all that leave shape. Go to green rolling scale. Is it about 40% Zoom, is it about 15%? Uh, dynamics, we're gonna go glazed. Make sure flow, is it, Max? Um, we're in a skip pencil. Go to general, and, uh, go ahead and smudge down to about 50% size limits. We're gonna max out and opacity limits already maxed up. Okay, so after we do that, we're going Teoh Neymar Brush watercolor paper to. And then the last one. We're gonna go ahead and add another brush. We're going to use that same hard circle. Green source walked from pro library. We're gonna scroll back down to pastel paper. Click on that, go to stroke. Spacing about 20%. Skip shape. Grain. Scale it. About 40%. Zoom. 15% dynamics glazed. Let's get pencil, General. We're gonna smudge down to 50 and max out the size and capacity should be maxed. So now we're gonna label that watercolor paper three. And that is and these are our water Pillay paper. Uh, brushes in the next video. We're gonna go. We're going to start making watercolor brushes. 4. Watercolor Base Layer Brush: the first watercolor brush we're gonna make is our base layer brush. So we're gonna make sure we're in the watercolor set, and we're gonna add a new brush, are shaped source within a swap from pro library. And we're gonna scroll down until we find this oval for a grain source we're gonna swap from look, uh, pro library scroll down all the way to the bottom, and we're gonna click on stained paper too. Okay, so we're gonna start on stroke again, And these are a little bit more labor intensive than the, uh, watercolor paper rushes because we want them to do quite a bit more. So under spacing, I always like to kind of see what it would look like without, um, putting it together first. But we're gonna put seizing all the way down to about a three. Then we're gonna set streamline all the way up to about 75. So, um, what streamlined does if it's all the way down at zero and I draw on? Let's say my hands will shake you like you can see these little jagged edges if I turn. If I turn, streamline all the way up, it's gonna smooth out the edges for me, so I can't really have a shaky hand. It's really nice for, um, mostly for lettering. Or if you just have a shaking. And so about 75% there and we're gonna turn jitter up to about 5%. So this is just gonna give us a little bit of texture on the edges. If I turn this all the way up, you can kind of see what it's doing. It's really, um, expanding the shapes out this way. Um, worse facing spaces amount this way. Right. So we're gonna turn that to about 5%. What's from one 5%? Uh, and we believe fall off alone. Pressure taper. Uh, can young We're not gonna mess with that. And then we're gonna go to shape so under shape, we're gonna increase this scatter just a little bit. If you put this all the way up, it doesn't think pretty similar to jitter, but it's just scattering those shapes. And that's why it's creating a whiter line one time that to about 5% for a little bit of texture and then rotation. We're gonna turn all the way up to follow stroke. Okay, We're gonna go to grain source, and we're gonna make sure movement is unrolling, and we're gonna turn up this scale to about 55%. Okay? And zoom, we're gonna turn to about 55% as well. Okay. And then we're gonna go to dynamics, and we're gonna go to glazed. The flow is should be turned up to Max. Uh, capacity dynamics. The speed should be at about 50%. And the Geter has turned up a little bit to about 7%. So now you can see our brushes getting some character here, sighs dynamics. We're gonna just turn the judo up a little bit to about 10%. I go. Okay, now we go to pencil, and we're gonna turn this size up to Max. That's gonna create this nice taper on both sides. We're going to turn the capacity up to about 30%. And what? That what? That's going to dio This is all about the pencil pressure, right? So, with size, if I am really light with my pencil, the size is gonna be really small. If I'm hard of my pencil, size is gonna be big rate, so I can affect the size based on how hard a press, and then the same thing with capacity rate capacity is lighter. If I'm later and then it's darker if I'm harder with my stroke, Okay. Um then we're gonna go Teoh General, and we're gonna turn off off orient to screen. We're gonna turn on classic Taper. That's gonna just taper this it more a blend mode. We're gonna turn to multiply. Yeah, and it's much we're gonna turn Teoh about 50% our size limit is gonna be at about 85% and a past the limit to Max. Okay, so if we test this out, it's this really nice, uh, interesting go brush with some really cool texture. So we're gonna go back in and we're gonna name this fresh base layer brush. Well, we don't have to put brush on just basically, you're saying and we now have our first watercolor brush 5. Watercolor Smudger: the second brush we're gonna make is our smudge of brush. So we're gonna make sure we're still in the watercolor set and then add a new brush we're gonna swap from pro Library, and we're gonna find the water lead brush. So this one right here, now, some of these air very similar and could come with, um, some really similar, uh, effects. So I encourage you to play around here using different water blotches and swapping things out and seeing what you like. But for now, we're gonna go ahead and click on water Bleak. And then we're gonna select the green source and scroll all the way to the bottom again and grab that same stained paper, too. Okay, so here's their start. We're gonna go to stroke, and we're going to start with this spacing at 10% okay? And we're gonna turn the jitter up, Teoh about 20%. Okay. And then that gives us that nice rough edge. Then we're gonna go ahead and go into shape, and we're gonna turn, uh, rotation up to about 10%. And that's just gonna rotate their shapes a little bit, uh, and randomize those shapes as Well, then we're gonna go ahead and go into grain. Make sure movement is all the way to rolling scale. Is it about 50%? And I resume. Is it 5% like a next? We're going to go into dynamics and we're gonna use a wet mix. Do dilution. We're gonna turn just a little bit About 55%. And you'll kind of see what the's air doing to the brush as we go. Charge, we're going to turn up to 80%. There you go. Attack. We're gonna leave alone. Pull. We're gonna leave it 75% and the great we're gonna turn all hey up to smooth our size dynamics, we're gonna mess with and turn up to 25%. Now, we're gonna go ahead and go into pencil and turn that size of to 50%. We don't want a full taper here with arse measure, but we want just a little bit of it capacity. We're gonna turn up to about 50 55% and then we're gonna go into general. We're gonna click on classic taper, get a little bit more of a taper there, multiply smudge is gonna go down to 50% size limits. The max is gonna get about 80% and opacity limits should be up to Max. Okay, so this is our Let's name it smudge. Er brush. Okay. And let's see what this does. So what you'll notice is that it kind of mixes around like it is wet, and that wet mix is creating that effect working kind of pole capacity from one end into a lighter end. 6. Watercolor Texturer: the third brush we're going to create is our texture. Or so I'm gonna add any brush. And I'm gonna, uh, swap from pro library for the shape and I'm gonna click on, um Let's see here what I want. Yeah, let's go with Splash late here. This one's gonna get real funky. So we've got Splash, and then we're gonna go into the grain and we're gonna grab Lipsky's. Sorry about that. We're gonna grab. I saw it. A gate. Okay, so that's gonna be funky. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and going to stroke, and then let's leave it The spacing where it iss um, And turn up the jitter Teoh about Yeah, 30%. Okay, um, we'll go into shape and we'll turn the scatter all way up to Max. I got that school. So we're getting all that blotchy effect. Um, let's also turn on randomized. Oh, yeah, really cool. And now we can go into grand movement. Uh, let's bring down 75%. Ah, scale. We'll leave that at 25 zoom about 75% as well and no filter. So on this grain full term where you might go ahead and click on dynamics. We're going to turn it to glazed, uh, and Turner and make sure to flows all the way it max a passive dynamics. We're gonna turn the giron to Max as well. And the size dynamics, the jitter is also gonna be it, Max at school. So now we'll go into the pencil and the size will turn up Teoh around 80 something 82% capacity will turn up to about 15% and we'll go into general in general. We're gonna go ahead and turn on classic taper. Turn the blend mode. Teoh, multiply. Uh, I'm gonna turn off Orient to screen smudge down to about 50% size limits. Let's go to about 150 Pursat and passed the limit. Certain Max. So, uh, let's go and name that texture. And that is our third watercolor brush. You play with that? That is really of fun. Brush. Nice splatter 7. Watercolor Detailer: So now we have three brushes are fourth fresh we're gonna make is called our detailer. So we're gonna add a new brush. And at this stage to I could just go ahead and, uh, name it if I find that easier as well. Um shapes horse. We're gonna go ahead and go into the library again, and we're gonna find our hexagon grain source scroll down and we are gonna find Let's do you arrest three and so cool texture. Um, we're gonna start with stroke again. Turn this Facing to about 6% the stream lined up to about 75%. The jitter Teoh 6% and going to shape. Once we're in shape, we're gonna turn the scatter up just a little bit. About 5% rotation all the way up to follow stroke. And then we're gonna go ahead and get into green in grain will make sure the movements on rolling scale where will turn up to about 55%. Zoom about 55% and then we can go into dynamics. Dynamics are going to be glazed close down, maxed speed. We're gonna turn up to about 50%. Jitter is gonna be at about 7%. Sighs dynamics are will mess with the jitter and turn it up to about 10%. Going to pencil sighs lets Max that out. So we've got that nice taper capacity. 22%. Okay, um, that's good, General. We're going to turn off Orient to screen. Turn on classic taper in, turn on, multiply smudge it about 50 size limits. Go down a little bit to about 89 ish. Um, and then a passing limits are at max. Okay, so this is our fourth fresh, our detailer with a really cool texture. 8. Watercolor Edger: our final brush we're gonna make is called the Edger, And this one's a little bit more tricky cause we're going to create our own shape source. So to start with, you're gonna go over to your color picker, double click over in the black hairy, and that will give you a true black. And then we're gonna go ahead and go down to sketching and find bonobo. Chuck, you can do this with, um, some other, uh, pencils as well or different textures. But, uh, this is the one that I like to use, so I'm gonna as close as I can to the middle create a circle. I didn't have to be that big. This is a little better, so I'm just gonna create as close to a true surplus I can, and I'm gonna go over it a couple times, so I get a nice deep black, okay? And then I'm gonna go to my eraser, and it's also going to be on bon about shock, And I'm just going to start lightly. You racing the bottom almost like I'm making a sphere and just kind of keep shading, and I'm almost going to make the bottom completely disappear here and then a little bit lighter on the top. And then the very top should be a nice deep, dark black. So once you feel like you've got something and, um, try to make it a smooth as you can, um, and you can experiment with this is well, I encourage you to experiment with this as well with different shadings and see what those do for your brushes. So I'm gonna go ahead and use that. I'm gonna go into, um, my wrench and under add, I'm gonna click on copy canvas. Okay, so that's copied to go back into my brushes, and I'm gonna make sure I'm in my watercolor section. I'm gonna add a brush. This one was called Edger and then under shape source. I'm gonna hold down selection and click on paste, and that's gonna paste in my shape or my canvas. I'm gonna go to green source, swap from per library, and we're gonna go all the way down to the bottom, and we're gonna click on stained paper this time, Okay? When I look at source, I'm gonna go back to my shaped source, and I'm gonna say invert shape I'm gonna go to stroke, and I'm gonna, um, turn the, uh, what I want for spacing. Um, we're gonna leave the spacing. Let's go about, like, 10%. 11%. That's fine. Ah, streamline. We're gonna turn up to 55%. So the reason the way I got all these numbers is really just experimenting and messing around trying to figure out what was the best for the kind of effects that I wanted. So it really takes a lot of just playing around with different, um, with different features to get the the look that you want. Okay, um, let's go down to pressure taper and turn up the size and capacity to max pressure down. We're going to shape rotation, follow stroke, and then we'll go into grain and turn the movement down to about 65% dish and then scale up to about 55%. You're and zoom to about 55% dynamics. We're gonna go ahead and hit glazed. And then now we have that really cool edge lick. Um, flow is gonna be up to max. Capacity dynamics jitter. About 15% and sized. A name exchanger is gonna be about 15% as well. So you've got this nice little edging going on to so pencil, uh, size. We're gonna turn up to Max capacity about 20% and then we'll go into general turn off Orient Screen Classic Taper. I will turn this to multiply. Okay, a smudge. We'll leave it about 75% size limits. We're gonna let's max that out and then minimum. Let's turn to about 5%. Okay, um, capacity limits. We're gonna Max and no man. Okay, so let's see. We'll get rid of this shape and let's see what our edger looks like. All right, Cool. So I think it looks pretty cool. And we can also make it like, monstrous rate because our size limits are so high, but we have every size in between as well. 9. Setup for Illustrating: Before we can jump into making our cactus, we're gonna need to make a palette and also watercolor paper. So we're gonna do that. Now, I'm going to click on this, uh, color circle over here, and it's gonna take me into my palettes. If you're not in pallets, then it's down here in the right hand corner. I'm gonna add a palette. It's automatically sets his default. So then I'm gonna go over to my disk, and I'm gonna pick some colors. You can do this in classic as well as value, but I like disc visually for whatever reason. So I'm gonna go in between the greenish and bluish and pick kind of a decently bright green for my, um, for my cactus, and then I need a darker green as well. I'm also gonna grab pre break yellow, um, any fuchsia color for, uh, flowers and, uh, dark purple for my shadows, almost black. And then, uh, for my watercolor paper, I'm gonna go over to this, like, kind of orangish yellow color, and then just kind of pick a creamy color. So not quite white lips. Not quite white, but just a little bit creamy. Oops. Mama, It's Try that again. Council to yellow. Here we go. Okay, so the first thing we're gonna dio is going to our layers. And actually, let's go back to that pallet and let's Neymar her palate. Here we go. Um, let's say watercolor cactus. Okay, back to our disk. Okay, Perfect. So we're gonna go ahead and get in our layers and and start with watercolor paper one, and then we're gonna grab our water. Clear paper, one brush. And this is, uh, the biggest size, and we're just going to swipe it across our paper, and it's gonna cover entire paper. Now, me doing this in this light, creamy color is not gonna show up very well on the camera. So I'm gonna show you what that looks like with with the darker color just so you can see it. Um, and it's gonna create this really nice texture. And then I would go into watercolor paper to layer and then lay down this one, and I'm just creating this, um, depth that makes it look like rial watercolor paper. Now, green looks a little bit silly, right? Um, so I'm gonna go back and grab my cream color and start with watercolor paper. One starting watercolor paper, one layer, and if you're not positive that it's showing up, you can see it in your layer watercolor paper, too. And then the brush watercolour paper, too, and swipe it in and then watercolor paper. Three watercolor paper. Three. Brush and sway bidden Now when When you're doing this on your own iPad, you'll really be able to see the depth, and then it really does look like real watercolor paper. 10. Watercolor Cactus Project: now that we have our palate done and our watercolor paper Maine, we're gonna go ahead and start making our practice. So we're gonna go over to our palate and grab the lighter green. We're gonna grab our watercolor base layer brush the 1st 1 that we made. We're gonna turn it up a little bit and make almost and upside down teardrop shape. And what you'll see is that it's got this really cool edge on it and texture in it. Um, and you're gonna want to make sure that you don't pick up your pencil is you do this. Okay, so there's our start of our cactus, and then we can turn it down a little bit, make it smaller a little bit to make the teardrop shapes for, um, cactuses that come out a little smaller. These guys Okay, so here's our cactus. I'm gonna move this down a little bit. Just give myself a little bit more room here, and this is our base layer. The next thing we're gonna do is go in and add a layer in between or underneath our cactus layer, and then we're gonna go ahead and grab yellow. We're gonna grab our brush, uh, going to her brushes and grab our edger. Now, when you use the edger when you go up, let's try that up so you can see it. So when we go up, the, um edge is gonna be on the left side. And when we come down that I just gonna be on the right side so it can take some getting used to. But I want right now to put the edge on the right side. So I'm gonna go down and I'm in the layer underneath the cactus so you can kind of see that yellow coming through underneath, Okay? And that's kind of where I want that yellow highlight to be. And I'm going Teoh ad highlights all throughout. Um, this little practice. Okay, after that, I'm gonna go into my smudge er tool, and I'm gonna click on my smudge or brush as well, and just kind of, um, move this yellow around right to the edges of the green so that there's no hard line here, and it's hard to see if I turn off cactus. You can see that I've, um, just kind of smudged it all so that there's not really any hard lines here, Okay? So you can turn her cactus back on. Um, the reason you like to do that with, um, uh, with the cactus layer on it so that you don't, uh, get this overlay here. And so I'm gonna go ahead and use my eraser on my smudge er on that and just erase those well spots, that air kind of coming through. They're overlapping. Okay, It's now you can see a little bit of yellow, um, poking through there. The next thing I'm going to do is go into my layers and I'm going to turn Alfa lock on on my cactus layer. I'm gonna go into my pen and grab my texture and my dark green. Okay, So what Alfa Lock does here is make it so that I can't draw outside of the cactus, but I can draw inside the cactus. Okay, So I'm gonna go ahead and just give each of these areas a nice little, um, shadow where I want there to be a little bit of shadow and a little bit of grunge. The texture brush really doesn't Nice job of grunge in it. Up a bit. I'm gonna lower the capacity and just kind of feeling this her as well, so that there's a good amount of grungy nous, actually, here we go. Um, okay, so now I'm gonna go into my eraser, Actually, no, I'm not gonna do that. Sorry. I'm gonna go into my palate and I'm gonna grab that dark purple, and I'm gonna add I'm gonna liver that a little bit and add even more grunge on the very edge is here. So I have a really nice dark, um, shadow. Okay, then I'm gonna go into my eraser, and I'm going to grab my texture in the race and just lightly go over the places. It's big brush that I'm gonna lower the capacity here. Um, the places where I wanted to be a little bit more highlighted, okay. And so I'm gonna go through there and where I want that yellow to just kind of pop out a little bit more, Okay? And then, yeah, I'm gonna grab um, now, when I feel like there's enough yellow showing through and I like how that looks I'm gonna go back to my layers and I'm gonna pinch my cactus layers together. So now that now they're combined. So this is all on one layer. Now, I'm gonna go back to my erasure of the opacity a little bit, and I want there to be a little bit of white happening, um, throughout here as well. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that as well. And I think I want a little bit more. Um, at the screen color, you turn out, flock back on and push that green through a little bit more Here. Um, yeah. Okay, so now I've got this really neat, um, texturally watercolor cactus. And, um, I'm happy with the shading on it and the colors on it. Then I'm gonna go ahead. I'm sure make this a little bit smaller so that I have a little bit more room. Um, Then I'm gonna go ahead and add the details so I'm gonna create a new layer and I'm gonna grab my purple me dark purple gonna go to my brushes and grab my detailer And I'm gonna make this brush pretty small. See how that goes like 10% and I'm gonna draw That may be a little too big Smaller. Let's go vipers. Um, okay. there we go. And then I'm going to draw the spines of the cactus throughout. And this can either be like, bigger or smaller, you know, all over the place, or just a few. Whatever you want to know, it's that cactuses flair. - Okay , so once you're done putting the spines on, you can go back into your cactus layer, grab the smudge er and turn the opacity way down. Um, what is that, like, 30%. And then just create just a little shadow underneath where that spine is, Um, where that's fine is coming out of. And that's just gonna give your cactus a little bit more depth. Turnout flock off because sometimes once you race quite a bit, um, it won't. Your new color won't show up because it's Alfa locked and it doesn't show up on a blank canvas. So this party here is almost blank, so it's just not gonna pick up the pigment when it's in awful lock. Okay, so here's my watercolor cactus. The last thing that we need to dio is add, um, some little flowers on top. So, um, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna add another layer here and at this point I can. I can name these layers because I know what they're gonna end up being. So this is a cactus. These are spines. And this is flowers. Okay, I'm gonna go in and grab that, um, piggish, few shit ish color. I'm going to grab a new, um, brush. And that's gonna be my basically or brush. Let's play around with this and see how how we like it. So I'm gonna put a little flower on top. There we go. Um, and I think it's a little bit big for for that spot. So I'm gonna go ahead and grab. Uh, I'm gonna select it, and I'm just gonna shrink it down a little bit. And on top, we were gonna do the same thing over on these ones. Okay? Okay. So these air a little bit big machine things down, and there you go. Watercolor cactus.