Sketching A New Procreate Layer

Once you’ve got your initial sketch, you’re ready to add more detail. Tap on the layers icon and name your current sketch. Then create another layer by clicking on the plus sign. This adds a layer on top of your existing sketch.


Use your second layer to add detail to your image, trace and formalize any of the lines you drew earlier, and make adjustments to your initial sketch. Jarom decided he wanted to adjust the position of his character’s arms, so he’s doing that in the second layer:


Using The Selection Tool

By the time you’re finished, the second layer should be a finalized, detailed version of your original sketch. If you’re happy with the way it looks, go ahead and delete the first layer, so that you’re only working with your final sketch. Now, we’re ready to start blocking out our basic shapes, so we can add color and additional detail. Create a new layer, and click on the S icon to activate the selection tool. You’re going to start outlining the section of your sketch that you want to color, by tracing back over your sketch. Jarom wants one section of his character to be yellow, so he uses the selection tool to retrace that section here:



Once you have your shape selected, choose the color you’d like from the color menu. You can drag and drop the color directly into your selected area to fill it in:



Repeat this process with the selection tool, creating a new layer for each section you want to outline, tracing the section of your sketch and filling it in with color. Don’t worry if your colors aren’t perfect - you can go in and adjust those later. What matters is that you’ve blocked out the shapes from your drawing, in the way you’d like.


Adding Texture

Once you’ve blocked out all the shapes from your drawing, you can adjust coloring and add texture to each shape.


To add texture, choose the brush you’d like to work with (we like to use the ones filed under “Artistic” in the brush library). Once you’ve selected a brush, start adding texture to your shape, using speed and pressure to vary the effect.



Creating Backgrounds In Procreate

To change the background color of your artwork, open the layers menu and tap on the layer titled “Background Color”. This will automatically open the color menu so you can choose what shade you want your background to be.

If you want to add additional shapes to your background, simply create a new layer (or multiple layers, depending on how many shapes you’re adding). Sketch out the background shapes, retrace them using the selection tool, then add in color and texture.


Export Your Procreate Drawing

Once you’ve finished your illustration, tap on the wrench icon to open the Actions menu. Tap on “Share” and choose which format you’d like to export your artwork in. Once you’ve selected your file type, you’ll be able to choose where you’d like to save your artwork.




Organizing And Sharing Your Procreate Artwork

You’ll be able to view your Procreate drawings in Gallery View within the app. Here, you can name and reorder your drawings, and group them into “stacks.” You can drag and drop files back and forth from Photoshop, cloud storage, and whatever additional locations you may have — which also makes it very easy to share you art with the world.




Vogel’s finished artwork.