Making It Ep.7: Top 10 Procreate Tools + Tips (Patreon)

Hello, my darling patrons and friends, and welcome to the seventh episode of the Making It monthly series, where I take you step-by-step through how I make important pieces of my freelance art business.

Throughout the series I’ll be sharing how I make my handmade earrings, enamel pins, custom portraits, process videos, stickers, product photography, and more, so you can be empowered to try making a new product or adding new techniques to your own process.

For this seventh episode, I’ll be sharing my Top 10 Procreate Tools & Features!

If you haven’t heard of Procreate, it’s a $10 drawing app that I use on my iPad Pro with an Apple pencil to make almost all of my digital art, client projects, and merch designs. I talked about an overview of my Procreate process in the last episode of Making It, but this time I’m going to dive even deeper into 10 of my most used tools and features on Procreate. I always find new little time saving and art-improving nuggets when I see other people’s favorite tips, so I hope you’ll find something to add to your toolbox here.

I’m going to skip over the basics here, but please comment if you’d be interested in a absolute beginner’s guide for a future episode!

Alrighty digital yeehaw cowbuds, let’s jump into my top 10 Procreate Tools & Features!

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

Tip 1. Center Art with Drawing Guides!

• Open Actions menu (wrench symbol)
• Turn on Drawing Guide
• Edit Drawing Guide

I use drawing guides for almost every drawing I make, at the very least to center my drawing, using the 2D Grid style with the Grid Size turned up to Max.

I also like to use the Selection Tool in conjunction with the Drawing Guides to quickly snap my drawing to center.

• Turn on Drawing Guide
• Select the layers you want to align with the Drawing Guide (Swipe right on the Layers menu)
• Turn on Snapping
• Align Layers to Guide.

You can also rotate and move your drawing guides for more precision.

• Open the Edit Drawing Guide screen
• Move the blue dot to move the center of the Guides
• Move the green dot to rotate the Guides
• Tap either dot and hit Reset to reset.

Tip 2. Draw Perfect Lines with Assisted Drawing!

Snap your brush strokes to your Drawing Guide by turning on Assisted Drawing. This is useful for drawing stripes or grids, drawing furniture or architecture in perspective, or drawing 3D objects. Just make sure to turn it off when you’re done, the Assisted Drawing stays on even if you turn your Drawing Guide off.

Tip 3. Use Selection Tool for Adjustments!

The Selection Tool can do so much and is pretty tricky to describe, so check out Procreate’s guide to the Tool for more information.

Most frequently I use it to adjust parts of sketches without having to redraw all of it. You can even select from multiple layers before selecting the section, and then you can manipulate them all at the same time.

• Select the layers you want to manipulate by swiping right in the Layer menu
• Open Selection Tool (tap the Squiggly S shape button)
• Usually I use the Freehand tool to draw around the part I want to manipulate, but there are so many different ways to do this, again, check out Procreate‘s guide for more information.
• (Note that with Freehand selection tool you can tap with one finger to add points to create your shape, tap with two fingers to undo your last point, and when you tap the arrow button it will automatically connect your first and last points to create a shape, so you don’t have to entirely close the shape before moving on.)
• Tap the Arrow button to adjust your new selection
• Resize the selection, rotate, warp, mirror by flipping horizontally, etc.

Tip 4. Separate a part of your Layer with the Selection Tool!

(Stop me if this is a roundabout way to do this)

Say you’ve drawn the line work for a person on one layer and you aren’t sure about the head. Here’s how I separate out a part of a layer for adjusting:

• Select the layer
• Tap the Selection Tool
• Select the part of your layer you want to separate - I usually use Freehand to circle it.
• Tap Copy and Paste to make a new layer from the selection
• Open Layer menu and tap the original layer
• Tap the Arrow button and drag the original selection off the page to delete it
• Now your selection is on a separate layer and you can create more variations without deleting the original!

Tip 5. Clean up and prevent stray marks with Selection Tool and Locks!

So helpful while drawing this book. Stray marks happen, and are a huge pain to go back and try to find. While using my selection tool and layers, if I notice that the bounding box for a layer is much larger than it should be, that means there’s a stray mark somewhere stretching it out.

I use the selection tool to quickly circle everywhere except where the art should be, then move it off the page to delete it. Ah, nice and clean.

To prevent that and other mistakes in the first place, I lock my layers until I’m ready to adjust them by swiping left and turning on the Lock.

Tip 6. Color shapes with a Reference Layer!

Great for coloring quickly without having your color and line art on the same layer!

• Tap on your line art layer to pull up a menu, tap Reference to turn on.
• Create a new layer for your colors
• Touch and drag from the colored circle in the top right corner into the area you want to color
• (If the fill is too strong and is bleeding out, don’t lift up your finger, just slight left or right to adjust threshold)
• Tap “Continue filling with Recolor“ when it appears at the top
• Drag the stylus to the next place you want to color, then tap each individual spot you want to fill
• You now have color inside the bounds of your Reference layer! Tap the Reference layer, tap the Reference button again to turn it off.

Tip 7. Try out different colors with Recolor!

Helpful to quickly cycle through different color options, and especially useful when used in conjunction with Layers or the Selection Tool.

• Select the layer or area you want to Recolor
• Drag and drop from the colored circle
• Tap “Continue filling with Recolor”
• Drag the flood slider to adjust how much to Recolor
• Open the Color menu by tapping the colored circle and adjust your color from there!

Tip 8. Flip Canvas to check composition!

I mentioned it last episode but I do this so frequently I have to mention again! Traditional artists often did this trick by holding their art up to mirrors, the mirroring effect allows your brain to disconnect from the composition to reassess more clearly.

• Open Actions menu
• Open Canvas section
• Tap “Flip Canvas Horizontally”
• Look at your art in a whole new way, woah man. Make some adjustments until it looks good this way too
• Then Flip Canvas Horizontally again! Repeat throughout process.

Tip 9. Flip through Procreate File Previews!

Super helpful while working on this book or any project with multiple files. Flip through high quality previews of your separate files without having to open them one by one or have them all in the same file.

• Head to your Gallery
• Pinch out with two fingers on a file to pull up a preview
• Tap once to pull up controls
• Tap the arrows to flip through previews of all your files or…
• Swipe to scroll through previews
• Tap on a preview twice to open the file!

Tip 10. Apply Texture and Effects with Alpha Lock!

• Swipe right on a layer with two fingers to turn on Alpha Lock
• (It’s ON if there’s a grey checkerboard background on the layer preview)
• Draw, erase, color, on the layer, it’ll all stay within the bounds of your shape!
• Swipe right again to turn off Alpha Lock

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

That’s all the tips for now, these are absolutely my most often used functionality features and tools. 

Were any of these features new to you or something you’ve heard of but haven’t really incorporated yet into your flow? Was the video companion helpful to visualize these techniques? Do you have anything to add or suggestions for improvements?

AND what do you think of these more deep-divey Procreate tips? I could absolutely make more articles for brushes, colors, files, beginners, etc. Please let me know in the comments if you want more specific articles and videos like this, it was so fun to make it! And if you make any new pieces with any of these tips, share them on the Community tab!

I’m so looking forward to your thoughts, and hope this makes your Procreate workflow more comfortable and speedy!

Have a wonderful week, and happy drawing!