Tag: Procreate

Hyacinth Jar

hyacinth in jar studies

Three stages of a drawing in Procreate experimenting with different ways of showing textures in an iPad drawing. This is a practical exercise from Brooke Eggleston’s Procreate Dreams animation course on Domestika. For this exercise we went back to the original version of Procreate which has a wider range of drawing tools.

6B Pencil

At first I stuck with the virtual 6B Pencil, which felt close to my regular fountain pen sketchbook drawings.

Smudge Tool

As an illustrator I like to keep things clearly defined, so that the final printed version stays sharp, so stage 2, where I start creating tone by smudging with a virtual Damp Brush, isn’t my usual approach.

The nearest to that in my sketchbooks is when I’m using soluble ink in a fountain pen and I brush over with a drop of water to create a pen and wash effect.

Texture Brushes

In the final stage I used some of the preset texture brushes such as Twisted Tree, Heavy Metal and Rusted Decay from Procreate’s folder of Industrial brushes. I tried to find equivalents for the cross section of soil, roots and moss in the jar and for the sprouting hyacinth leaves.

There are various sparkle brushes available in Procreate but I felt the best way to get the effect of highlights in the glass was to knock back everything but the highlights by brushing in tone, in this case with a Short Hair brush from a Procreate course I took a couple of years ago.

This was intended to be an observational drawing but I could imagine some of those texture brushes being useful if you were trying to evoke a particular style: such as a 19th-century engraving.

I’d come back to this exercise again.

A Useful Tip

On a practical note, I tried replacing the PenTips tip of my Apple Pencil, which I’ve been using for at least a year, perhaps even two. That and cleaning the PenTips magnetic clip-on textured screen protector with my glasses spray and a microfibre cloth seemed to give me better control – more of a feel of drawing on paper.

Lighthouse

Experimenting with Procreate and loosely based on Coquet Island lighthouse but minus the puffins, sandwich and roseate terns this is my take on the first project in the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Procreate’. My thanks to freelance director and artist Izzy Burton for her step-by-step tutorial.

Werewolf Storyboard

My next practice exercise in illustrator Martín Tognola’s Animated Illustration in Procreate: Tell a Story with Movement Domestika course is to use word lists, mind maps and a ‘visual data dump’ to come up with an idea for a short looping animation.

As I’ve been thinking about my Baring Gould centenary show in Horbury’s Redbox Gallery for a while now, I’ve skipped the word list stage and gone straight on to a visual mind map. I’m a visual rather than word-based thinker.

I realise that I’m not short of potential material.

With mid-Victorian factory smoke and steam in the air plus the ‘Flame and Flood’ in the title of the novel inspired by his time at the mission at Horbury Bridge, I’ve got the basis of a swirling movement to frame the snapshots of Baring Gould’s life and literature that I’d like to include.

What, Who and Where-Wolf?

storyboard

Martín suggests looking for a not-too-obvious but not-too-obscure middle ground solution for an animation idea. His example is for an illustration to accompany an online editorial article but my animation will be stand-alone, so I’ve gone for instantly obvious versions of each idea, answering the questions what, who and where:

  • Baring Gould’s ‘Book of Werewolves’ clunks down into the frame and an assortment of historic werewolves pop out from the pages.
  • Carrying his carpet bag, Baring Gould, the new curate, arrives by steam train at Horbury Station, steps out of a billowing cloud of steam and introduces himself by doffing his hat.
  • We zoom in on a graphic version of the Redbox Gallery.

The Redbox Gallery sequence would be along the lines of the film production intros that precede a movie. I’m thinking of the intros that have a graphic, hand-drawn look such as those for Bad Robot and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free production companies.

Frame from hand-drawn animation for Scott Free intro, in which a running figure morphs into an eagle.

Redbox Format

If I’m technically able to show my animation in the Redbox Gallery, a former telephone box, a screen aligned in portrait format would be the most appropriate. To make the animation Instagram friendly and more versatile in general, I’ll set it up in Procreate in a square format but make sure that the main action is always fits into a portrait-format rectangle.

Canada Goose

Canada goose spread

This morning a skein of 60 or 70 wild grey geese went over, heading west. Our local Canada Geese meanwhile had gathered on a shingle bank on the quiet inner bend of the meander of the River Calder around the marshy field known as the Wyke.

Canada goose

This is my final spread for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate Domestika course by Román García Mora, drawn on the iPad in Procreate.

Canada goose

Canada Goose Plumage

plumage studies

Canada goose plumage swatches, drawn on the iPad in Procreate for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate Domestika course by Román García Mora.

Fur and Feather

fur and feather textures

Fur and feather textures drawn for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate
Domestika course by Román García Mora, using some of the virtual brushes he created.

Fur Balls

Back to my animal illustration course and today we’re making our own Procreate brushes to represent animal hair. It’s the equivalent of using a fan brush or an old splayed brush in traditional watercolours.