Procreate is an app that allows you to draw on the iPad, it’s very useful because of its quick response times and great pressure sensitivity. It also has a load of tools which you can use to get the look your after. You can create traditional-looking line art with this application which is quite impressive considering it’s only available on Apple devices.
This tutorial will show you how to create a realistic ink pen piece using a Procreate brush. It’s all done on the iPad so there are no complicated bits, this is also very quick to do if you follow these steps closely. This would look great as a print or poster.
You will need an image to trace, you can use any image as long as it’s high resolution and not too complicated. If your artwork isn’t looking right try and find a simpler image.
Open up your iPad and find the app called procreate. You can use this for free but it does have a lot of in-app purchases which is how they earn their money. Open up the image you want to trace with procreate, this will save it as a .proj file.
Procreate has a very nice selection of tools available, the magnetic lasso tool is what we want here. Just draw around your image until you get a fully enclosed line, it shouldn’t take long. Once you have this just tap on the outline and press done to finally select it.
Tap on the brushes icon and press “+” this will take you to the download section of Procreate. Search for “ink pen” and this should be the first result, download it and then open up that brush pack.
You can get some of the best Procreate brushes from Creative Market.
Creative Market
First, select the ink pen tool (It’s the only one with a fountain pen) and make sure it is set to “brush” mode. Outline your image, this should be pretty easy if you’ve selected a nice clear black and white image. You can use a pixel brush Procreate makes available in their app.
Now that you have the outline you can go ahead and ink all the different parts of your image with your new brush. You can also use a Procreate watercolor brush for this. Use the spotlight tool to find the parts of your image which you would like to ink, this is very helpful because it will zoom right in.
You may need to make some adjustments to the line weight using the select tool (the magnet) and also erase any mistakes or stray lines with the eraser.
Creative Market
The ink pen tool has a lot of different settings which you can adjust to give your line art more depth. I chose to use “stain” mode instead of the default paint mode, just try out some different options and see how it looks. I also used the dodge tool to brighten up some parts that looked too dark if you feel like it’s needed.
Once you’re done with that the only thing left to do is add some shading, this will make it look more like a drawing instead of just black lines on paper. You can use any dark color for your shading but I would recommend something darker than the color you are using for your linework.
Go back to the brush menu and select the ‘pencil’ this will give you a thinner outline than your original ink pen. If you use this on some parts of your artwork it should give it that extra finish, try not to go overboard though or it will just look messy. You can also use any other brushes as a tree brush Procreate and Creative Market has to spice up your artwork and add some variation, this will help to make it look less digital.
Now that you’re artwork is finished and looking the way you want it to, just export it as a jpeg and you’re ready to print it out! The procreate app makes printing easy because if you go into your settings there should be an option where you can select the printer.
If you follow these steps closely your artwork should turn out looking a lot better than if you tried to draw it by hand. This would look great as a print or poster in your house because it’s unique and not like the usual “digital drawing” posts all over Pinterest.
Procreate is a very powerful drawing program that you can use on your iPad or iPhone to create some incredible pieces of art. You don’t need any other apps because procreate has all the tools you will ever need available for free straight out of the box, you just have to use them in the right way.
