3 Things to Know Before Downloading Procreate

Learning Procreate was a game changer in my design and finding my own personal style. The app has a lot of freedom and flexibility which is perfect for someone like me who just wants to play around and undo her thousands of mistakes whenever she wants. With a lot of freedom though, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with the software and quit. Which, I did at first because I literally had no idea what I wanted to do. So, with that, here are some things to consider before getting into this app.

Procreate is an iOS application for the iPad and iPhone.

This app is available on the ipad, it’s called “Procreate” and the iphone version is called “Procreate Pocket”. They are exclusively available on the App Store for iOS. If you are considering buying an iPad or iPhone with designing in mind, an iPad is the way to go. It’s a larger surface area for creating, better storage than a phone and the Procreate app has more functionality than the Procreate Pocket. 

Everything works in layers.

If you are a newbie to the design world, allow me to give you a quick tutorial on layers. Layers mean that there are objects drawn on different planes that overlap each other. Designers do this for many reasons, one of the biggest is that then each piece can stay completely separate and isn’t affected by the previous layer. 

I drew this picture of a mug, and I made the steam, the phrase “I heart mom” and the mug on three separate layers. When you see the final view, it’s like you’re staring directly in front of the layers so the steam, phrase and mug all look like they’re one piece. But really, they are actually three separate planes stacked on top of each other.

Everything is raster graphics.

Raster means that it’s built out of pixels. If I draw a square in procreate using a canvas (artboard) size of 500 pixels tall by 500 pixels wide, then if I tried making that square bigger, it wouldn’t look as sharp, because we’re trying to make something bigger than it actually is. If you look closely at a picture in the newspaper, you can see the tiny little dots that make up the photo, blowing up the image, you’d see the dots become larger, but the picture wouldn’t look as nice, it would get fuzzy, kind of like what you see below. If you plan on finishing an entire project solely in Procreate, knowing the exact size of your canvas can help you keep the integrity of your drawing.

It’s pretty durable!

I highly doubt you’ll break it. If you’re considering trying it out, I say go for it! There are a lot of great Youtube tutorials out there. Just start with simple drawings and keep going! Practice is so important. One of the best pieces of advice i’ve received is that you should make something every day, even if it’s crap. So go out there and make some crap!