Hand Lettering Adventures in Procreate
I’ve been wanting to write something about my undying affection for an app called Procreate for some time now. Unfortunately writing things is definitely not one of my strong points (it’s why I draw pictures for a living) but I’m making a concerted effort to do more of it which in turn hopefully means I get a bit better at it. So here goes.
Back in late 2015 when I first got my iPad Pro, I had feint hopes that this might stall me buying a Cintiq for at least a couple more months. Little did I know what a massive part it would play in my hand lettering adventure.
I don’t want to spend time going over the basics of using Procreate as there are already loads of helpful posts out there that you can look at, like this one for example. There is also the procreate site itself which has an active community of other artists there to chat to and help solve any issues or problems you may come up against.
Instead I’m going to focus on some of my favourite bits about procreate from the point of view of a hand lettering artist. With some helpful nuggets (hopefully) of info like where I find my brushes and texture to some handy hints and bits I wish I’d known back when I first started using it. I’m going to jump straight into it with the thing most people seemed to want to know when I asked, the brushes.
The Brushes
So I should start this by saying the brushes that come loaded into Procreate are amazing, I highly recommend avoiding searching out new ones for a bit if you’re just starting and just use the ones in there. Some of my favs are the 6B Pencil for sketching, the Gel Pen for inking and then one I still use so much is the Bonobo Chalk, this is an amazing brush to add texture and shading to your drawings. I’ve even done a super helpful and not at all redundant pic to illustrate these brushes.
So when it comes finding and importing custom brushes it’s really easy to do and the most exciting thing is there seems to be a thriving community of creators making new stuff all the time.
Below is a list of some of my favourites and where you can find them. I also try and stay fairly organised with mine. This is important if like me you have a mild addiction to searching and installing new brushes on a weekly basis.
True Grit Supply
These guys are smashing the texture brushes, they’re some of my go to brushes when it comes to adding grit and grain to my work.
Georg’s Brushes
I defy you to find a brush that Georg hasn’t already made, and if you manage to he takes custom requests! So many amazing brushes here there’s too many to name but all awesome for inking and colouring.
Lisa Bardot
Some of my most used brushes have been created by Lisa, she has some amazing packages with various styles and it’s always really clear what results you’ll be able to get before buying as you can see the awesome illustrations she’s created with them already.
Grid Builder
Something slightly different but equally cool is this set of grid elements created by lettering artists Ian Barnard and Stefan Kunz. They make it really easy to compose grids and layouts to help sketch and plan your designs out.
Top Tip Time Alert
When it comes to importing them let me give you a bit of advice. This is something I learned the hard way. It’s all about the batch importing, for ages I used to download a brush pack and then spend the next hour installing each brush individually. Please for your sake have a quick look at this video and save yourself hours of dragging and dropping pain.
Digital Sketchbook
For me Procreate really has bridged the gap between sketchbook and screen. It feels totally natural now to start sketching and mapping out rough scamps straight on the iPad. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of bashed up sketchbooks but I find now they’re even rougher than they were before, I tend to use them for very initial sketches which I will then take into Procreate and develop.
This is not me saying the iPad replaces a sketchbook completely, it obviously can’t replicate the feeling of pencil on paper, the thing that it took me longest to get used to was the lack of friction between the Apple pencil and screen compared to drawing in a sketchbook. Something I did find that helped with that to a certain extent was Paperlike, a screen cover that goes a good way to recreating that feeling of pencil on paper.
The ability to manipulate your sketches as you’re doing them, resize, quickly rub something out or duplicate an element is something that really helps me when sketching.
One unfortunate side effect of embracing procreate as a sketching tool… I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve tried to ‘undo’ something when I’ve been drawing in my sketchbook.
Toy or Tool?
This is something I questioned when I first got the iPad, whether I’d be able to use it for ‘actual’ work or would it just be an expensive doodling rectangle. It didn’t take me long to realise it was most definitely the former.
For example, on a project we completed recently at Fieldwork I created posters ranging from A5 all the way up to A0, all of them at 300dpi and all the lettering done in Procreate. It’s really easy to create custom sized canvases measured in pixels, mm, cm and inches. From what I’ve found the higher you go with resolution and size the less layers it allows you to have, which kind of makes sense.
Another piece that tested printability of artwork created in Procreate was my ’50 Greatest’ print I’ve just made to celebrate the World Cup, I’d been wanting to have something Risographed for a while now and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out.
Risograph works a bit like screenprinting where you need to isolate each colour you want to print and supply it as a 100% black image. So with this design I decided to work on a separate layer for each colour and create the artwork like that. This made it so much easier when it came to supplying the final file.
One of the biggest things has been the amount of time saved compared to how I used to work. Where in the past I would have had to hand letter, scan and manipulate each piece individually working in Procreate is more reactive, giving me the same hand drawn aesthetic in a much shorter amount of time.
So, you’ve no doubt already worked out with side of the ‘tool or toy’ fence I land on. Procreate is obviously not going to completely replace the usual ‘adobe shaped’ suspects. It does however, stand right alongside them to give you a new, intuitive way to create hand drawn, print ready artwork. Pretty cool when you consider it only £9.99.
Some final handy tips
Again there are plenty of really awesome videos and tutorials out there showing you all kinds of helpful shortcuts and tips when using Procreate. Will Paterson’s YouTube channel is full of amazing content, as is Ian Barnard’s. This video in particular is really helpful when it comes to learning some time-saving tips.
The bits below are just some of my favourite super handy shortcuts and features that I wish I’d known back when I first started using it.
Drawing Straight Lines
I’m not saying wonky lines aren’t great. I’ve made a living from drawing wonky lines, but for when you want that straight line in procreate just hold pencil down after drawing your line and it will transform automatically to a straight one.
Then if you want to set it to a specific angle press a finger on the screen and it will move up incrementally, this is especially handy if you want to make sure your horizontals and verticals are all spot on.
Copy and paste
Really helpful when you want to isolate a specific bit of your drawing rather than just copying the whole canvas.
Using the lasso tool at the top just draw round your object then with 3 fingers swipe down on the screen to bring up the copy, cut, paste menu. From there you can duplicate it, cut it out. I also use the ‘cut’ option as a quick way to clear something.
Erasing and working with Masks
This is something i’ve not done lot’s of but seen it done really well by plenty of people. It’s a fun way of working over an existing photograph, illustration or pattern. You simply a solid fill layer, then use the eraser to work into it you revealing the image underneath.
Quick Fill
I’ve saved the best till last, this was something I only learnt fairly late on and it’s so simple, and has saved me so much time. All you need to do is drag the active colour from the top right corner into the space you want to fill and it will automatically fill it for you. All you need to make sure is that the shape you’re trying to fill is closed off otherwise the entire canvas will flood.
Obviously if you are going for a super sketchy hand drawn aesthetic then this probably isn’t the best time to use this but when you want to get some solid colour in fast it’s a life saver!
Thanks for reading :-)
So, I hope this has been a tiny bit helpful, I’ve not been doing this very long but wanted to share some of the things that excite me most about lettering in Procreate.
I’m sure there’s plenty more I could have written, I’m hoping to write more of these so if I missed or anything you wanted to know that I didn’t talk about do let me know.
You can view more of my work here, drop me an email and can find me on most active on Instagram @idleletters where I’m always posting new work, I am also on twitter but no one really cares about that.
