Procreate is my go to app for my artwork, it’s brilliant! It has everything an artist could possibly want. Not to mention it makes awesome time lapses automatically. I find it quite fascinating when I look back through the stages of my art – I surprise myself at how often I flit and change my mind. But interesting to look back and see how a piece evolves!! I usually get there in the end, although sometimes I don’t. That’s the advantage with working on the IPad I guess, you can experiment to your hearts content, which is a great way to practice and learn. 🧡
If you’re not familiar with #Procreate App, basically you can either use brushes to draw and paint from scratch or if you need a little help along the way as I sometimes do, you can use brush ‘stamps’ which can be anything from leaves and flowers, to figures and faces, and just about anything in between. The brushes are in any medium you could wish for …pencil, charcoal, Watercolor, acrylic etc. Yep. It’s amazing what you can turn that lil’ ol’ #IPencil into! And no mess. Yay!!!!
And here’s the time lapse, followed by an explanation of what I was doing at each stage throughout.
I do sometimes work totally from scratch (honest, gov!) but brush stamps can be a great timesaver. I have loads in my Procreate arsenal – all bought with the necessary commercial use licenses of course! So in this artwork for example, I used a combo of stamps alongside my own hand drawing, painting and blending. As you can see, this time I started with stamps for the lips and outline of the eyes although often I’ll draw these from scratch. I’d recently bought some great eye stamps so wanted to try them out. I then colored the irises using the various blend modes which Procreate has to get a translucent effect for a sense of realism, and added lines and shadows for depth. I used a stamp brush for the rather impressive eyelashes manipulating them with the warp tool to fit the eyes. Then came the face … I hand drew the shape and painted in the basic layer in flesh tones, then started experimenting with hair. As you can see lots of variations tried to no avail! So decided to leave the hair for a bit and concentrated on adding shading to the face and neck. I love adding and blending the different tones. It’s the point when the picture starts coming to life – literally taking shape! Procreate have a great blender tool which makes this a joy to do. Very therapeutic!! Next stage was trying some background colors and opted for a blue watercolor at first. I used a stamp for the hand – I find those very tricky to draw from scratch 🤪 I colored in some rosey cheeks and eye shadow. Then back to hair! I opted for a hat (again using a stamp) which subsequently changed color! I eventually opted for abstract gold block type hair and blue for the dress. The nose took a while to get right as you can see! Noses can be make or break. I added a little more shading and some finishing touches such as gold stars and leaves using stamp brushes. Then saved it! A few days later I decided to use the same basic drawing for a different variation. I used the same Procreate doc, hence the #timelapse continued to record as the new picture came together. I kept the actual face the same, but with some added brows. I felt no hand for this one and as it was on its own layer I was simply able to turn the layer off, and then tidy up the area underneath. I worked on the shading around the neck area.
Then of course came the hair – more experimenting! I changed it to wavy long and black at first, and quite liked it simply black but couldn’t resist experimenting with autumnal colored strands in reds and browns on top of the black. I’ve bought some brilliant hair brushes for Procreate. I have loads now in fact, which is possibly why I spend so long working on hair, experimenting with the various brushes and colors. Unlike for the first picture where I didn’t use a hair brush, just a block type brush then added a gold texture on top. For the dress, I used a collage technique, importing a patterned texture into the Procreate doc, and then rubbed out the edges to get the correct arm and shoulders shape. Lastly, I imported in licensed clip art leaves, and used some star stamps, which I colored in different shades, to finish it off.
So ready to go. I thought about which Zazzle products they would work best on so I could add them to my #Zazzle store. As well as canvas wraps and posters, I chose some home decor, notepads, postcards, clocks and more. The beauty of Zazzle is that customers can transfer the artwork to other products too. Although the artwork may need adjusting a little to fit. Here’s the whole collection to date, please click to view all 29 items in store.
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