Paint a classic fairy tale scene

Chrissie Zullo uses Procreate, the affordable and much-loved painting app for the iPad Pro, to create an iconic moment from a fairy tale

Procreate has quickly become my go-to digital painting app. Thanks to the portability of the iPad Pro, its appeal to me was to be able to create high-resolution digital paintings from anywhere, with the same quality you would find in a desktop program.

Procreate’s clean and simple interface makes it welcoming to new and novice artists alike, and once paired with the Apple Pencil, I found it to feel the most natural way to draw digitally. Don’t be fooled by appearances, though: this application offers all the tools you’ll need to create higher-level artwork. The more I use this app, the more new tools, adjustments and shortcuts I find.

For this workshop, I’ll be painting entirely using the Procreate app. The process is similar to working in Photoshop: making use of multiple layers, colour adjusting and using a variety of brushes. All of the brushes I use are straight from the Procreate library, but the app allows for easy import of downloaded or imported brushes as well. I try to work in the least amount of layers possible, so it feels more like painting on a canvas.

I decided to pay homage to classic fairy tale illustrations for this piece – in this case, Snow White and the poison apple. I love the old storybook paintings, and decided to try my take on the subject matter.

1 Start with a sketch

Procreate has a great selection of “sketching” brushes, and my go-to is the 6B Pencil brush. I loosely sketch out the concept of Snow White and the apple, not worrying too much about details and specifics, but just blocking in very general ideas. I know I can change and tighten ideas later on, so I keep the sketch simple.

2 Refining the Idea and Inking

Next, I lower the Opacity of the pencil sketch layer. I create a separate layer on top and choose the Brush Pen from the Calligraphy Menu. I choose a dark brown colour to ink, avoiding black (for now) for a softer look. Using simple strokes, I ink over the drawing.