Portrait skills in Procreate
Traditional painter George Pratt puts down his brushes, picks up his iPad and explains how he creates artwork using Procreate
George Pratt puts down his brushes, picks up his iPad and paints with Procreate.
ecently I produced a workshop on painting my Fables cover for Vertigo Comics (see issue 109). On a whim, I sent ImagineFX some images I’d done using Procreate on the iPad, thinking it would be interesting for the readers to hear how an app intrigued a traditional painter enough to dive in digitally and have fun.
I’m no stranger to Photoshop, but find that I have to jump through too many hoops to accomplish simple tasks. When painting traditionally I grab a brush, mix paint and go. I longed for that kind of simplicity in a computer program. Ringling College of Art and Design,
Rwhere I teach full-time, has the largest installed base of Cintiqs in the country; however, it still requires that I use Photoshop, and the lag drives me nuts. Same hoops, different day.
Along comes the iPad. Artist Ron Lemen had me try ArtRage, which he swears by (I’ve tried all the various drawing/painting apps on the iPad: Brushes and SketchBook Pro, to name but two). Ron achieves beautiful results with ArtRage. During the Illustration Academy out comes his iPad and he paints the restaurant, the bar… beautiful stuff. So I tried it. Again – too many choices and the interface gets in my way.
Along comes Procreate! I immediately found myself loving how the interface gets out of the way, enabling me to enjoy the act of drawing and painting.
In my classes I’ve used Procreate for simple tonal plans and colour studies. I use it to do paint-overs on my students’ works. I’ve used it to illustrate value or colour ideas using the Color Picker on a painting by Harvey Dunn, to show the palette used as well as the tonal and saturation range. It’s an incredibly helpful app. So in this workshop I’ll lay out the general steps I go through in painting on the iPad using Procreate and how to create a brush in the app as well. Let’s go!