Mindful Doodling in Procreate: Finding Your Creative Flow

1. Introduction: Welcome to Mindful Doodling and Procreate, Finding your Creative Flow. I'm thrilled to embark on this artistic journey with you, where we'll explore the harmonious fusion of creativity and mindfulness in a world that constantly buzzes with activity and distractions. Finding moments of serenity and self expression has become a precious gift. This course is designed to help you unlock the meditative potential of digital doodling and create an artistic practice that fosters relaxation, creativity in equal measure. Hi, my name is Laurie Russell. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator. And I'm so glad that you decided to join me for this Mindful doodles in procreate class when I had the idea to combine the aspects of mindfulness and meditation along with art and creativity. Putting it all together in procreate, which is one of my favorite art tools, just seemed like the perfect fit. We'll learn how to silence the noise of the world and allow our creativity to flourish without self doubt, judgment or pressure. We'll explore the beauty of simplicity, the power of patterns, and the captivating allure of colors. I'll guide you through the fundamental techniques and procreate how to set up your creative space and share some tips on achieving a state of creative flow. But this course isn't just about learning a set of skills. It's experiencing the calming, rhythm of the creative process. A journey where the path itself is as important as a destination. Whether you're a seasoned artist or a complete beginner, this course welcomes all levels of expertise. The beauty of digital doodling is that it requires no prerequisites, just an open heart and a desire to explore your inner artist. In this course, I've put together a bunch of great resources for you that will help you along this journey. Including a list of art prompts that you can use for your class project. An inspiration board over on Pinterest where you can get some ideas for different types of doodles that you can use in your meditation. And of course, you can do anything you want. There's really no wrong way to do artistic doodles, But if you're feeling a little bit stuck or lost and you just want some inspiration, these can be a great starting point for that. Another optional resource that I'm including in this course is a link to a playlist I've put together that has over 2 hours of really nice, calm, relaxing music that you can put on in the background and have that get you into that zone of mindfulness and meditation as you're doing your art. This course is going to cover some of the basics of mindfulness and meditation. As an overview, then we're also going to dive into some of the different types of doodle things like mandlas and different methods that can help if you are feeling stuck. Then we're going to pull it all together. At the end, we're going to use the art prompts that are included in this course that will help us put together our class project. Make sure you watch the sharing your art video. You know how to export your final pieces and share them with us. In the project area of this class, I'll be in there giving feedback and answering any questions that you have. With all that said, let's get started. I'm so glad that you're here. 2. Resources: When you click the link to get the class resources. This is the page that you will see starting up here at the top. This is the download button to get the PDF with the free art prompts. This will just take you out to Dropbox where you can download that PDF. I've also included a Purist Inspiration board with a wide variety of doodle ideas for you now. These are mostly done on paper. Designs will work just as well in procreate. Some of these are a little more basic and some are more advanced. But basically you can take inspiration from any of the elements, the layouts, any of these designs. Just use them to make your own unique doodles. Some of these are videos that walk you through how to create some of these different types of doodles. Some of them are more finished products like this. Some have different color palettes. A lot of them are in black and white. Just focusing on the form, there's a whole bunch of ideas here for you. As a bonus with this course, I've put together a playlist with over 2 hours of soothing instrumental music that you can play in the background to provide a calming and relaxed environment while you practice your mindful doodling. Now this is set up as a private Youtube playlist with looped videos so you can access it from anywhere and just have the sound on. If you do choose to use headphones, that will, of course, give you an even more immersive experience. You can get free access to this playlist by just filling out the form here. In the next video, we're going to be walking through what your project will be for this course. 3. Project: In this class project, you'll create a digital doodle, artwork in procreate, that reflects your unique style and evokes a sense of relaxation and creativity. This project is an opportunity to apply the techniques learned in the class and explore the meditative qualities of digital art. Choose a theme or source of inspiration for your digital doodle. It could be nature, emotions, a favorite quote, or something that holds personal meaning to you. You could also use some of the art prompts from the included resources. At the end of the class, I'm including a bonus lesson with an optional expanded version of the class project. The next step is to start doodling on your canvas. Use the basic shapes, lines, and textures you've learned in the class to create patterns and designs embrace the meditative mindset by focusing on the process rather than the end result. Experiment with different brushes, color palettes, and textures to add depth and character to your artwork. Personalize your doodles to make them uniquely yours. As you doodle, pay attention to how you feel. Try to enter a state of creative flow where time seems to vanish and you're fully immersed in the art making process. When you're done, take a step back and review your digital doodle. Make any refinements or adjustments that you want to enhance your artwork. Remember, the focus of this project is on personal expression and relaxation. Embrace imperfections, and let go of any perfectionist tendencies you may have during the project. The journey is as important as the final artwork. 4. Setup: To start doodling and procreate, you simply need to set up a new canvas. I'm going to use screen size, that's usually the simplest way to go, especially if you know you're not going to print it, it's just for you. Then screen size works really well. If you think it's something that you may want to print later on, then I would use a higher resolution. You can come into canvas, canvas information, and go into dimensions. And here you'll be able to see your resolution. Right now, we're at 132 DPI, which is fine for a screen. But if you wanted to print, you would need to change this to 300. To start off my doodles, I usually always start with black and white. I just find that that's easier and I don't have to worry about color too much when I'm just getting started. You can always add color later on, but if you know that you want to use color, you can of course, start with that too. There's really no right or wrong way to do this. It's all about you and how this makes you feel and how you can process things while you're doing it. It's best to start with some basic shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, or lines. These are really easy to do using the quick shape feature. In procreate, you can draw something close to the shape. Hold your pencil at the end, and then put your finger down and you will get a perfect circle, square triangle, or a line. If you put your finger down with a line, it's going to snap to either horizontal or vertical. If you hold your finger down and drag it, it will go in even degrees. You can do digital doodling any time for stress relief. You can also set aside specific times in places for mindfulness and meditation practices with it. To do this, set an intention. If you're trying to relax or meditate with your doodle, focusing on something you want to express, achieve, or explore in your doodle can help guide your creative process. Try to create a calm environment. Find a quiet and comfortable space to draw with as few distractions as possible. You can also include soothing music. If that helps you remember, we have some of this available in the bonus resources. You can also choose to do a breathing exercise. Before you begin, start with a few deep breaths. Center yourself, inhale slowly through your nose. Hold this for a few seconds, then exhale slowly through your mouth. Here are some best practices for doodling art. The main one is have fun and experiment. Start with simple shapes. Try beginning your doodle with basic shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, or lines. These simple forms can be used as a foundation for more complex patterns. Embrace repetition. Repetitive patterns and shapes can be calming and meditative. Explore the beauty of repeating elements in your doodle, which can help you stay focused and present mindful colors. If you're going to work with color, choose hues that resonate with your mood or intention. Reflect on the emotions that different colors evoke for you and select them mindfully. We're going to talk more about color in a later lesson. Express gratitude before concluding your mindful doodling session. Express gratitude for the time you spent in creative meditation. Gratitude can enhance your mindfulness experience. 5. Not Just For Kids: Doodling, It's not just for kids anymore. In this video, we're going to cover an overview of doodling and meditation. The first thing I want to talk about is the creative flow state. This is when you become fully immersed in an activity and you feel a deep sense of focus, creativity, and timelessness. In this state, all your distractions fade away and you're entirely absorbed in the task at hand. Creation feels effortless and deeply rewarding. If you've ever been working on something and you've looked up and an hour has passed, in the blink of an eye, you've probably been in a creative flow state. When we doodle for meditation, here are some of the things we want to remember. First, stay in the moment. As you doodle, immerse yourself in the process. Pay close attention to the movements of your hand and the shapes emerging on your screen. Let go of worries about the past or the future. Next, don't judge your art. Believe me, I know how hard this is. I'm a perfectionist at heart. But mindful doodling is not about creating a masterpiece, It's about the act of creating. Try to release any self criticism and judgment that you may feel. Every mark you make is a reflection of your unique expression. Using a slow pace can help with try doodling at a relaxed and deliberate pace. Avoid rushing through your artwork. This unhurried approach allows you to fully engage with your creative process. Accept the unplanned. If you make a mistake or a line isn't perfect, embrace it as part of the process. Artistic imperfections can be beautiful. Allow your doodle to take its own course. Sometimes the unplanned elements in your artwork can be the most exciting and mindful parts of the process. Finally, complete the experience. When you feel that your doodle is finished, take a moment to appreciate it. Reflect on your intention and the journey you undertook. Consider what you've learned about yourself through the process. 6. Doodle Basics: Here are a couple different examples of how you could do something with circles. In this one, I've used just a basic monoline brush in a few different line weights, different sizes of circles, and spaced them out kind of randomly around the page. In this version I have let it be a little bit more messy and done something similar but filled in, let the circles cross over the edge of the page. In order to do that, you can just shrink your canvas. I'm going to hide this layer temporarily so you can see how to do this. You draw your circle in quick shape, the exact same way, but draw partially off of the canvas. Put your finger down, then when you let go, you still have that perfect circle arc, but it is partially off of your canvas. You can do this on the canvas, tap circle and move it, or you can draw actually off of the canvas. Put your finger down, and it will work the same way. That's how I did a lot of these. You can do a similar thing with squares, triangles. You can also do layered shapes. Here's one that I did with some different arcs. You can also add some shading layers in there. These are done in different groups. That's a little bit more involved, but it just depends on what look that you want. This is just duplicated. I basically made one row of these with the shadow, copied it, flipped it around, and repeated that. Here's another type of layered piece with different squares. I basically drew the squares first, similarly to how I did those circles in the other one. Some of them are going off the page, they're criss crossing at random angles. Then I went through and added some texture inside of them, Different line weights and different directions to give it some more visual interest. Also the practice of just doing these lines as you're doing the meditation that we've talked about. And setting the intention and the focus as real soothing they repetitive motion. This is a really fun one to do for that, for this exercise, we're calling it the shape study. I'd like you to choose one basic shape to focus on and just fill the page with it however you want. That can be something like this where there's a lot of white space or it can be a lot more filled in like this one. But it's just practicing using one of those basic shapes. You could even do the overlapping textures as well. Pick either a square, a circle, or triangle or some lines and fill an entire page with that. Mandalas are another one that is really good for this. This one is very detailed. It's not something that you have to do right off the bat. You could do something that's much more simple, but mandalas are really fun to use with the symmetry tool. Let's open a new canvas for mandala. I would recommend using a square canvas. It just looks nicer. With the symmetry tool, you go into your canvas here and turn on your drawing guide. Select Edit Drawing Guide. We are going to come over to Symmetry under options, we're going to choose radial and rotational symmetry. Then you can decide how much of your line, if any, you want to be able to see and what color it is and all that choose. Done. Now, when we draw our Mandela, we're going to get the symmetry on all sides, which makes these a lot quicker to make than they look. You can of course, change your line weights here. You can zoom in, you can use quick shape, on the color drop, all those kind of things. But using the radial symmetry to make a mandla is a really fun way to do this, a doodle. Then of course, you can also add shading and highlights. And you can even add color and all kinds of other things as well. Another thing that you can do is use different, you can use brushes with different textures, as well as using just different line weights and opacities in the inking set. Here there's this brush called Mercury, which gives a much different look than just a regular monoline brush. That one is fun. You can adjust the size and opacity of these as well, just depending on what look you want. The important thing is just to play around and have fun and just experiment and see what look that you like. This next exercise is to create your own Mandla using a combination of shapes, lines, and textures. I do highly recommend using this symmetry tool. It's up to you whether you would like to add your shape study or your mandala to your class project and share it with the rest of us. 7. To Color or Not to Color: In this video, we're going to talk about using color in your doodles. Adding color to your mindful doodles does offer several benefits. These include expressing emotions. Color can convey a wide range of emotions and moods, allowing you to express your feelings or set the tone for your artwork. Color can also add visual interest. This can make your doodles more engaging and captivating. Personalization colors can be chosen to reflect your individual style and personality. Making your doodles uniquely yours. Stress reduction, selecting calming, or soothing colors can enhance the relaxing and meditative aspects of your doodles. Creative exploration, experimenting with various color combinations encourages creative exploration can lead to unexpected and sometimes exciting results. However, there are situations where a monochromatic or even a gray scale color palette may be more beneficial to your process. These include simplicity and focus. Limited color palettes can simplify your doodles, allowing you to focus more on shapes and patterns and less on color decisions. Mindfulness emphasis, reducing color complexity, can actually enhance your mindfulness practice by helping you concentrate on the process of doodling rather than your color choices. Aesthetic appeal. Monochromatic or gray scale doodles can have a minimalist and elegant aesthetic that appeals to certain preferences or artistic goals, conveying a mood. Limited color palettes can very effectively convey a sense of nostalgia, tranquillity, or timelessness, which may be the desired mood for your art. Ultimately, the choice of using color or a limited palette depends on your artistic intention. The atmosphere you want to create in your mindful doodle. Both approaches can be valuable and have their own unique advantages. In the world of mindful art, if you choose to use color, procreate has some great built in tools to help you find the right color combinations. If you come down here in your color palette to harmony, you can set your color wheel to the different color palette combinations. Let's go ahead and choose red right here. Right now we're on analogous, which that color palette chooses, ones that are on either side of your primary color. We could have red, this pink, and this orange right up here, where this word is. If you tap that, you get some other options here, complimentary. That is going to be colors that are opposite on the color wheel. When we have this red right here opposite, that is going to be the cyan blue. Of course, you can use various shades of these as well. Split complementary is just what it sounds like. It's going to go on either side of that complement with this red. We're going to have this green here. And the darker blue, the last one that I would look at would be the triadic. That is very similar to the split complementary. You can see it just spreads them out a little bit farther. They're just on the points of a triangle. Again, looking at the split complementary brings these a little bit closer triadic is going to spread those apart. Then of course, a monochromatic palette is all going to stay with the same hue and just changing the value of it coming down here. If you choose classic, you're basically going to keep the same color and just change the lightness and darkness value of it. We have the main red. We could go a little bit lighter and a bit darker, something like that, would be a monochromatic color palette. So coming back to harmony, once you know the main color that you want for your piece, this is a great way to find some good colors that will go with it. My favorite is to use analogous or monochromatic. Those are always going to look really well together no matter where you put these. But some of these other ones can look really nice as well. 8. Sharing Your Art: As we're doing mindful doodling, keep in mind that this can be just for you, especially if you're choosing to do this just for the relaxation and the meditation aspect of it. But there may be some times where you end up with some artwork that you really like and you want to share it. Let's talk about how you can export it as a static image or as a time lapse video. You're going to come over here to this wrench icon, go down to share here. You can choose to save it as a PNG or a Jpeg that will allow you to save it to your ipad or to e mail it or share it in other ways. If you want to share a time lapse video that is also under the wrench icon, you're going to come over to video. You can preview it here by tapping time Lapse Replay. Yours is really detailed in your time lapse as long you may not want to export the whole thing. You're going to have a couple options here. When you choose Export Time lapse video, you can choose full length or 30 seconds. Just know that those are there for this class. Go ahead and save your class Project Art that you're going to share with us as either a Jpeg or a PNG. And upload it to the project area of this class on skillshare. 9. BONUS: If you enjoyed the class and you want to expand your project, you can use these art prompts included in the class resources to do your own five day challenge. And create a mindful doodle every day for five days. If these five don't resonate with you, there are some additional options on the next page. It's really just most important for you to relax and enjoy your time. Do what feels best for you. Here are some tips. Expanded project, set aside intentional time. Have a quiet, relaxed place to work. Use the bonus music if you want. Next, choose the prompt for that day. Next, decide if you're just going to doodle for you or if you want to choose to share it in your Skill Share project. 10. Thank You!: Thank you so much for joining me in this course on mindful doodles in Procreate. I hope that this was a great journey for you. I hope you learned a lot and you were able to find a way to be creative and relax at the same time and bring those things together. If you enjoyed it, I would really appreciate it if you took just a couple minutes to leave me a teacher review here on skill share. This just helps other students know what to expect from me and from this class in particular. Thank you so much.