Using Procreate® to Create Client Work - A Halloween Pattern

1. Introduction: Hello, I'm Sandra Bowers. In this class, I will show you how I create all the art work for our clients, pattern design in Procreate, and then I will bring it into Adobe Photoshop to assemble the pattern. I will walk you through my thought process of creating this sketch. I'll show you how to work with specific color palettes, defined files sizes, get super crisp icons and get the most of the amount of layers available in Procreate and how to create the icons in different ways so you can preserve the layers and be able to modify them later. I have used Procreate to create fabric collections, home baker collections, greeting cards and all sorts of designs and I wanted to show you how I created. So you'll get an insight into my process. No more using Procreate just for sketches after seeing how I work, maybe you'll start using procreate for all your final work too. I hope you enjoy it and it's been a very fun class to create and Halloween is a great subject so I can't wait to see what you create, bye. 2. Supplies and Class Projectt: For this class you will need an iPad procreate. I recommend that the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. You could use a different iPad that has procreate on it and a different stylus. For the class project, you will create your own pattern. You can do a Halloween theme or you can choose any theme you want, just make it fun and make it in your style. Please don't copy my artwork. You can follow along if it's for your personal use and not to share on social media. If you're sharing it or using it, please create your own artwork. Remember to share your projects into Project Gallery, I would love to see them and see what everybody creates. If you have any questions or comments, leave them in the comments area and I will answer them. Have lots of fun with it, and I'll see what you create. Let's go on to the class and show you how it's done. 3. Sketching: Now I'm going to talk to you about sketching and what to have in mind when you're doing your sketch for a pattern. Here, I have my sketch. I have created different elements. The more elements you have, the nature your pattern will be. What I'm doing when I'm drawing is I'm thinking of a square. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to drive, you can draw it also if you want. So I'm trying to feel into square with different shapes to make it interesting. Don't worry if in your sketch you have things that are very close together like here, and then you have bigger gaps, we can fix that when we're creating the pattern style. It's very important that you vary the shapes, the sizes, the scale, and the orientation of your icons. These will make your pattern more interesting and it's also good if you created little elements like these ones, which will be fillers later, and you can use to filling different gaps. So now that I have my sketch, I'm going to take a picture with my iPad, and I'm going to show you how to put it in Procreate. 4. Color Palette and File Set-up: Now that we have our sketch ready, we're going to bring it into Procreate. I'm going to create a new document, and I'm going to Create a Custom Size. I always like to work my patterns at 12 inches by 12 inches. Make sure it's 300 DPI, and the color procreate works with is sRGB, and you can name these, and now we have our file here. I'm going to import my picture, Image, Insert the photo. I'm going through a Rotator here, and set it. I want to make the icons as large as possible, so I can reuse these in other applications and not just a pattern. What I'm going to do? Is to select these, make sure magnetics is selected, and I'm going to make it really big. This way my skeleton fits here, and all these icons. It doesn't matter if it's cropped, I'll show you later how to bring those back. Let's set that, and set this layer to multiply, and make it very light. I like to name my layers, so it's more organized. For the color palette, you can click here, and you have different options for the colors. But you see that here you can always find a color palette. These ones you can create yourself, or there's some default ones that come with Procreate. What you do, is you select here, and it creates a new blank palette. Make sure it's set to default, and you can rename it also. Now you can choose whichever color picker mode you like best, I like this one. You can create your own color palette, these is the color that I selected. I can press hear one of these squares, and it will add it to my palette, and then I can add more. Or if you have a set color palette that a client has given you, then you have to work with those colors, that is the case. I am going to show you how to bring that color palette from Photoshop to Procreate, so the colors are kept intact. Let's say the client has given you these swatches, these are in RGB document. It's very important that you make sure it's an RGB document. They can either give you these swatches like these for you to sample, or they can give you a Pantone color, or a CMYK code, or an RGB code. Since Procreate works in RGB colors, you want to make your swatches in an RGB file. These colors swatches have been saved into a Dropbox file, and I'm going to go to procreate and open it there. I select here, Insert the file, I choose Dropbox, and here are my swatches. Just hit here to place them, and I like to zoom in so it's easier. Now what we're going to do, is to I drop them, and add them to our color swatches. I'll go here, I'll press on the first color until it appears there, there it is, and I will hit here once. I'll do the same with each color. I want to use this color, so I just let them pressed, and hit ''Delete''. Now I'm going to work with this colors, and it will match the colors my client gave me. Again, remember to grade your swatches in an RGB file or these won't work. I will show you what happens if you created in a CMYK file. I'm going to import my CMYK file from Dropbox again, they look similar but they are not, I will show you. Click on the ''Color Palette'', select the first color, add in here, then the second one, and keep on adding the colors. This way you are going to start seeing the differences. See how it varies, so don't do it in a CMYK file. I'll go back to Procreate and erase this, and I'm going to show you how I create a very fast color sketch. 5. Color Sketching: In this lesson, I will show you how to create a quick color sketch so you don't have to waste time recoloring your icons later, and so that your pattern looks cohesive, and the colors are well distributed. Let's erase these scholar swatch layers because we don't need them anymore. Delete this layer and this one, and this is our sketch, but it's cut out. I'm going to hide it for a minute. I'm going to insert the same sketch again, rotate it, and just fit it in a bit better. What I'm going to do here is to create a very fast color draft of my icons. On that same layer, I'm going to color with whatever brush, here I'm using the gouache brush. I'm going to color in my icons very roughly to see that the colors are distributed evenly. I actually like these muted color palette better, the top one. I'm going to erase the bottom one. I want to make my background dark. I'm just doing our rough color, so don't worry. It's just to see if it works before I actually paint everything. Then I choose the next color. I think the ghost should be light, maybe these things, they have some candy, this jar, then orange, obviously the pumpkin. What I'm thinking of is, it's very orangey here, but not here, so I would like some more orange. I'm trying to distribute the colors evenly because I don't like an agglomeration of orange here and then no orange in the rest of the pattern, but it's just a matter of taste. This is really good because you're not wasting your time up towards recoloring things. These are some spider webs and this has some spiderwebs too, so they have to be this color. I'm going to add some black for the birds and the spiders on the little details. I'll go to the color palette and select this gray, and then move this lighter here, so it's a darker gray, and just add it here. Don't waste a lot of time on this, it's just to see how the colors work. Well, I think that works, so what I'm going to do is select that layer, make sure magnets is selected and reduce it. We're going to keep it here as a little tiny thumbnails or references. In the next lesson, I will show you how to create the icons through different ways. 6. Creating the Icons: In this lesson, I will show you two options for creating the icons. I have a 9.7 iPad Pro, so at this size, and resolution, I only get 11 layers. If you have the bigger iPad, you will get more layers. I like to create my files with a lot of layers because I like to be able to edit things afterwards. I'm going to show you a way to do it so you don't have to be limited by the number of layers that procreate gives you. After you have the sketch here, you can add a new layer, and drag it underneath this sketch, and you can create one icon per layer. For example, this little spider. I created the base layer, and now I'm going to add some details. What I do is go into that layer, so I pick with two fingers to the right, and I get the checkerboard. You see there? That means its Alpha lock, so when I draw on it, I'm only drawing inside the shape I already have, I'm not drawing outside the lines. This is great for shading. I will select a different color, a lighter color, and I can create some highlights, and I can create some details, so there I have it. This will be one layer. I will name it spider. Then I will create each icon per layer, like this. When I get to the limit of 11 layers, there it is. What I do is, I go to the gallery, I swipe to the left, duplicate by going to that new file, and I can erase the ones that I already have, so I would delete all the icons I have already done, and create new layers for the new one. Then you will end up with a different number of files. 2, 3, 4 files, however many layers you have, but I will show you later how to merge them in Photoshop. It's very easy. The other option is creating one layer per color. I have already done in here, so I am going to show you. This is how I work every time, and I'm going to show you how to assemble these in Adobe Photoshop later. It's very easy, and it will give you more control afterwards, so everything that's orange is in this layer. Then I have a purple layer, a black layer, and the white layer, which sort of gray. By creating each element per layer. If the client comes, and tells you like, I really like this skeleton, but I don't like the eyes. If I had only one layer, it would be harder to edit the face, I would have to start erasing it, and recoloring, and everything, but this way I have the eyes in another layer, so I could basically just go back, and erase it, and redraw it. The other benefit of having each color separately is that I can shade, and decorate every color on its own. For example, here, if this stamp stone is only one layer, and I want to auto lock-in, and shade it, it would be harder, and if I wanted to change something like the color of the letters, then it will be a longer process. That's why I don't like this method, but some people that don't like layers do, so it's up to you. Let's say we have created all the icons. Now, if we take a look at our original drawing, we`re still missing these icons from here, so I am going to show you how to make those. What you do is you go to the gallery, you swipe to the left, you duplicate these, you select them, and then you're going to erase everything except the thumbnail. We're going to insert our image, rotate it, and now we're going to make it bigger. You could just set this to the size of the canvas, and color them all lean. I prefer making each icon a little bit bigger, because when I bring it into Photoshop, I will have more options if the icons are bigger, or if I want to print them in something that's not this pattern at this size. I'll have in mind that I am missing these icons here. I'm going to set it there, and all of this space will be wasted. This could be much bigger, so I can start cutting out pieces with the selection tool here. Three fingers down, cut and paste. I`m going to hide those for now. This one, I can make it bigger now, and now I can make these visible again, and if this one is overlapping, I can just select it, make sure freehand is selected. Now I can merge the two of them. Rename that, set to multiply, reduce the opacity theme, and now I can start adding layers for my icons again. This is the last of my icons that I have already painted. I want to color the background, so I'm just going to choose a brush here, and paint the background with a texture, choose other layer, and drag it down. This is going to be our background. Select any brush you want. I'm going to select the wash brush study you can find in artistic, and select my gray color set it to the biggest size, and then just color. If this happens, it's because the brush got lifted up, and read painted over. A trick is to make it really small, and just color back, and forth, so only if your pencil and there it is. I really like texture. At this point I'm done with my icons. I will go to the gallery, and I have my tool files here with the icons, icon one, and icon two, so what I'm going to do is, I'm going to swipe left, share, PSD, which is Photoshop, and I'm going to AirDrop it to my computer. Accept the file in your computer. Then next one, swipe to the left, share PSD, and that it. Now we are going to move into the computer and open Adobe Photoshop, and in the next lesson, I will show you how to assemble these files, and create your pattern. 7. Moving to Adobe Photoshop®: In this lesson, I will show you how to bring all the files together, and how to create a pattern. I open Adobe Photoshop here, and go to File, New. I will create a 12 inch by 12 inch file. That's 300 pixels per inch, RGB color, and hit "Create". This is going to be our pattern tile, so I'm going to save this. I'm going to open my two files that I imported from Procreate. Go to File, Open. Mine are in the Downloads folder. Select both of them, and here they are. I am going to erase my thumbnail layer. Just press "Delete". The sketch layer, press "Delete" and the background layer. I'm left with the colors here. Save this file in your computer for future reference. There's two options here. I'm going to hide the Option 1 and show you here. You could merge all the layers together. We're going to be using a command here called "Paste in Place". If you go to Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts, and go to Edit, Paste in Place. I have made my command "F" because I use it a lot. You can make it whatever you want, but make sure you have it, and hit "Okay". Now what we're going to do is select the Lasso tool here or press "L". Go around our first icon, Command X, cut. Then whatever you made your command to paste in place, Command F. It keeps it in the same place. We would do the same thing with every icon. Make sure you're standing on your original layer. You get the idea. Here we'd have one icon per layer. Then if you want to modify the eyes, you will have to come back to your original file and grab it from here again. I'm going to erase that Option 2, and I'm going to show you the one I work with. It's slower, but it gives me better results if I have to modify things. I start with the first layer. I go to the Lasso tool or press L. Same thing, select my first icon, Command X, Command F. But it only cut out the orange layer, so I have to go back to the black and do the same thing with the Lasso tool. Command X, Command F, paste in place. Now I have my icon here. What I do is select both of them, right click, Convert to Smart Object, and double-click on the name to rename that layer. Then I'd keep doing it for all the icons. Select those two, right click, Convert to Smart Object, and rename it. I will speed up the process here because you get the idea. Keep doing this with every icon. The more colors it has, the more times you have to do the same thing. Some of these only have one color, so just by doing it once, you get the whole icon. Even if it's one layer, you should make it a Smart Object. I will show you why Smart Objects are so smart later. I'm finished, and I'm going to save this. I'm going to do the same thing to my second file icons too. These little icons sometimes I like to make them individual icons so I can use them to fill up spaces later. Make each one a Smart Object. We're done with this one, so I'm going to save it. Now we're going to put it all together in our pattern file. 8. Creating the Pattern: What I'm going to do is start with the background. I select the background, I'm going to drag it into my pattern file. Since it's a pattern background, I cannot just set it like this and create a pattern because it won't pile perfectly. I have it here and I don't like that it repeats so much. I'm going to get this selection tool and just grab a little portion of it. Hit command X, command S, and I'm going to delete the background. What I'm going to do with this one is drag it to the right, make sure it's exactly lined up but doesn't go over. I'll go to Edit, Transform, click Horizontal. You can see you have a seamless joint there. I'm going to select both layers. Hold alt and shift while I drag it down. Release it. then zoom in and start moving it down until it's perfect. See? It doesn't match perfectly yet. It's because we need to go to Edit, Transform, and flip it vertically this time. Now, you have a perfect joint. When I zoomed out, I found these lines that you can't see when you zoom in. Select all your layers except this background. Hit command E to merge them all and see if that disappears. Here, we can see it's okay. Now, I have to make this bigger. You have to hit command A to select all, and center it here. Or else, it won't match when you create the pattern. You're not supposed to make icons bigger this way, like pulling them and blowing them up. But since it's a background and it's a texture pattern, it's okay. See here? You can see, it still looks okay. I'm going to rename that background and I'm going to lock it, so I'm not moving it around. I'm going to save and I'm going to start bringing my icon spin. I like to drag these here, select all my icons, and just drag them to this file. Then do the same thing with the second file, select everything except it background and drag it here. Now, I can close these files and we have some organizing to do. It's a good idea to have our sketch here so we can be guided by it. I'm going to go to File, Place Embedded, and place the color sketch or the sketch. You can place whichever you want. Then hit Enter and I'm going to bring it down so it's the last layer here. You can reduce the opacity of it, so you're not so confused between what's an icon and what's the background. I am going to show you the magic of the smart objects right now. See that this pumpkin is bigger than our sketch? We need to reduce the size of these icons. I select them all and I will reduce them. Since they're smart objects, I can take them back to the size they had before and they won't pixelate. If I did that with an object that was not smart, it would. Since it's a smart object, if the client comes back and says, "Oh, I don't like that pumpkin to be so smiley," you just have to double-click here on the icon, and go into the base layer, grab your lasso tool and modify the mouth, hit Enter, save it, and it will be changed in your file. It doesn't matter if you use that pumpkin 10 times in your file, it will automatically be updated. That is a huge time saver and clients really like smart objects too. I don't like my smiley pumpkin, so I'm going to go back and change it again. What you start doing now is just dragging your icons around and resizing them. I am showing you these way because this is the way that I work. The simplest way if you don't want to do all these is to just put the sketch on your 12 by 12 inch in Procreate, and create all the icons there at the same size in the same position, and then it will be faster to come in and assemble the pattern. But I'm showing you these way because this is the way I work. Because I've found it more useful, rather than having this big that small, I can have a bigger skeleton and then use it for something else like a greeting card or a [inaudible]. Sometimes, I would even make four files out of a pattern, but that has allowed me to use my Procreate art in huge banners, 78 by 33 inches for my trade shows. That looks spectacular. It would not work if I had this little icon here and I would blow it up. There's a trick in case you need to make something bigger. It works with these brushes that don't have sharp, straight borders. See? If you go to Filter, Sharpen, and you sharpen, it will make the edges of each sharper. That will be the chance to blow this up a bit bigger without losing a lot of quality. See? The borders look almost like these ones. The only thing is that it changes a bit of the texture. But if you don't have to match an exact texture, then it will look okay. If you're not sure, always print it and see how it looks when it's printed. Back to this resizing, I will speed this up so you don't have to watch the whole process. Don't be afraid to make things too small, like ooh, you made a mistake and then you realize they're bigger. Or say, you want some small ones, but they also want bigger ones. If these was not as smart object and you'll want to duplicate it. I'm going to hit out while I drag it and you want to make it bigger again, these would look horrible. It would be very pixelated, but sounds, it's so smart object, it's keeping the size it had before. I always create everything in smart objects. It laid out now. I'm going to raise my sketch. Now I'm just going to start moving and rotating things around to make it perfect like I wanted. Like make sure things are laid out properly and they fit. This is the reason why I sketch in a square format, because then when I bring it in getting here, the layout is very easy and I already half the middle of my square set, and I only have to fill in the gaps in the sides. That's very easy. What I'm thinking about at this moment is leaving gaps that are similar in size. Some people like very spacious patterns. I like my patterns to be very cool. I don't like large gaps. That's why these little icons help a lot. Because they will help you feel the little gaps. I'm trying not to touch the borders. But if something's overlap a bit, it's okay. I'm not going to go over that pattern creating process too much in depth because this class is about using procreate to create final art for clients. I'm going to show you how that works. But you can watch my class on creating repeating patterns here on skill shirt. I will add a link to it in the class description. Or you can go to my website and I have all my classes listed there. Once I'm happy with the distribution of things here, I'm going to select all of the icons and moved them to the right on the top. They are overlapping this sides. I'm going to select everything that overlaps to this side. Hold out while I drag it up to duplicate it. Hit command t and add 3,600 pixels, which is 12 inches, hit x which is what moves things horizontally. I hit Enter twice. I have my selection tool selected. I will drag from the top until I touch a bit of my canvas. Hold Alt while I drag up. Those layers have been duplicated. I hit command key or free transform. Now I'm going to add 3,600 to my y-axis, because y is the one that moves things vertically. He entered twice. There I have. So now it's just a matter of moving things around. Here's something is touching my ghost. You can decide if that's okay. Or if don't want it you will just start moving things around. You can also drag by holding Alt and duplicate things. If you're going to look something that's touching the border, you have to be careful. If I'm going to move these ghost. He is repeated here in the left corner, here in the bottom corner, and here in the bottom right corner. If I wanted to move him, I would have to select all the layers I am selecting and holding down my shift key. These autoselect layer is on. Now I could move him. Now he's repeating exactly in the same place every time. I actually like that better. I'm going to leave him there. Now I want to move these chandelier. Again, it repeats up here and down here. So I hold down shift and I move him. Here I could fill it up with one of these spiders. I think that works now, so I will just go to edit, define pattern. On the top of my file I can go to layer, new fill layer pattern. Select my pattern, go to 25. Now you can check it here. I like to see it really small because it's very easy to see gaps and mistakes here. Take a look at it. It looks very cohesive. I like the way the colors are distributed. I like the placement of the icon's see if you want to change something, then you can start zooming in. Checking, especially in the seams, make sure everything matches correctly. Here, where I caught it, like around here, everything looks great. Hide that layer and delete it and save again. Now you want to make things as easy as possible for clients. You don't want to have a very disorganized file. Well, I don't. What I'll do is I'll group things. I will group the elements. Right-click group from layers, and then name it icons. Then I have my background on my outer background. Now I saved the file again. And this is the file I would send to the client. If you want to be super organized, you can go into every smart object that has several layers. Either merge it by selecting them both on hitting Command E and naming it. Or I'm going to undo that, just naming every layer and saving it. I have created files these way for them to be printed in lots of home decor items, on fabric, collections, on greeting cards. They work perfectly the resolution works great. You can see here at 100 percent that it looks great. So some people say the only sketching procreate, I wanted to show you how you can create final art in procreate 9. Final Touches: As a bonus step, if I was going to submit these to companies, I would create a new file that's maybe, so letter size. I would create something like this is an a new layer. I'm going to use the paint bucket tool and fill it, deselect it. Go to layer, new fill layer, pattern. Your last pattern should be selected. Make it 50. Go to this layer, right-click. Create clipping mask. Then you can move it around by using the move tool. I would add my logo to the bottom and my contact details. I also have a class on creating portfolio pages like these to submit to clients. I will leave a link to it in the class description. Or you could also go to my website, which is sandrabowersart.com. In the classes tab, I have all my classes listed. I add my e-mail and my website. Now you have a portfolio presentation page that you can submit the companies. This is a very simple template to make, but I am uploading it to the class document so you can download it from there. This is it. I hope you enjoyed the class. I hope it helps you procreate. The iPad Pro has been the best thing that has happened to me, now I don't have to sit on my desk all the time, I can take it anywhere and I can actually create final artwork there. I hope you'll create a project and create your own pattern and upload it to the project area because I'd love to see what everybody creates. Remember to check out all my others Skillshare classes and follow me on Instagram, It's sandrabowersart. If you like the class, remember to leave a good review, maybe send it to somebody you know who wants to take it and would think it's interesting. Bye.