My Digital Art Practice and Journey with Procreate

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I will share my recent journey to make digital art a bigger part of my life using Procreate on the iPad.

I’m doing this video to share how I used the last several months to get into digital art.  My hope is that some of the specifics that I figured out along the way may help others who are thinking about walking down this path.  I’m gonna talk through the following things: a little bit of background, the importance of daily practice, why I chose digital art over traditional art, the Procreate app, my supplies, training, ideas for topics or projects, and building a supportive community. Let’s get started.

Background

Are used to draw a lot as a kid. The last time I did anything serious was probably when I took a couple of studio art classes in college. And apart from some creative signs and birthday cakes, I haven’t done much for the last several decades.  

That said, I am from a family who creates things. Pretty much everyone in my family of origin makes stuff. My dad and my brother are both inventors and have lots of creative side hobbies. My mom is a basket maker and seamstress. My aunt is a visual artist and bear maker, my grandma was a quilt maker. You get the idea.  

I have been recently thinking a lot about the balance in my life between creating and consuming. My very first video on this channel was a deep dive into my thoughts on this. Anyway, I am always looking for ways to increase the level of creation in my life. Unfortunately, I don’t love the products of many of the craftier pursuits, so I’ve turn to visual art.

Now, some people use visual art as a way to express their feelings and emotions. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s me.  I do perfectly fine expressing my emotions verbally. Instead, I want to focus on being able to replicate the work of others and have fun doing it. I figure my style may emerge as I mimic the style of others.  

Daily Practice

If you watched any of my other videos, you know how much importance I place on the building of habits. I know you can’t do everything every day, but it’s really important to work on your craft on a regular basis.  Whatever you are trying to get better at, a little practice every day will help you to build that muscle.  I want much of my art rendering to become embedded in muscle memory. And the only way you get there is through practice. Even if you spend just three minutes a day sketching, you will build this muscle. Throughout the past four months, I’ve had more time than usual, and I have tried to devote 30 minutes to an hour every day to some kind of drawing.  Now that life has gotten a bit busier, I require just 3 minutes a day of sketching.  Now, although I am fairly disciplined, I get bored easily, so for me it is important to have a variety of ongoing projects and art styles to keep things interesting.  Which brings me to

Why digital art?

I started out this process just drawing on a sketchpad, but soon decided to turn entirely to digital art.  There are three reasons. First of all, I love new technology. I really enjoy learning how to do new things using software and just exploring new apps. To me this is exciting and not a chore. This makes me an ideal candidate for digital art, which has an enormously steep learning curve.  The second reason is that, if I explore the reasons why I hesitate to do art, much of it has to do with lack of supplies and the time required to set up and clean up.  Digital art eliminates all of that. There is no mess – well, except for the one that you’re making on your computer or iPad. And there are no expensive supplies to run out of or to procure. There is a significant initial investment and there are certainly digital tools that you can continue to buy online, but there are no expensive canvases, paints, paint brushes, etc.  You can also do digital art anywhere.  I can take my iPad outdoors and paint alfresco or I can use the time while I’m waiting for a doctor’s appointment to sketch on my iPad.  So digital art eliminates the barriers of cleanup time, lack of supplies, and location limitations.  And finally, as I said before, I’m interested in a wide variety of art styles, so it’s great that with digital art I can switch easily and seamlessly between techniques. Right now I am drawing a manga style comic, but yesterday I did watercolor and the day before that pen and ink.  It’s easy to switch back-and-forth and there are no additional supplies required. 

Procreate App

In order to make this decision, I had to have at least a superficial understanding of the different art apps that are available. Fortunately, I had dug into this about two years ago, and learned quite a bit about the Procreate app.  Procreate is available for the iPad (there is also a version for the iPhone) and is best used with the Apple Pencil. It is incredibly powerful, with hundreds of different brushes, infinite colors, and layers to work with, so it allows for lots of creative customization. It is the gold standard for iPad-based, pixel art software. Somewhat unbelievably it is only $10.  I may do some videos on Procreate in the future, but there are a ton of great tutorials on YouTube for beginners. 

Supplies

So, I have a 5-year-old iPad Pro and a first generation Apple Pencil, but I soon determined that I was going to need a bigger iPad. My current iPad is only 9.6“.  Since I like to have my reference photo side-by-side with Procreate, I only had a teeny tiny space for drawing.  Hobbies can be expensive, as you know!  So, I researched and bought a refurbished 12.9” iPad Pro from Walmart for 500 bucks and bought the three-year warranty to go with it.  It is old enough so that I can still use my first generation Apple Pencil. I also purchased a case that has a holding space for my Apple Pencil and a screen protector that has a paperized texture. This really helps to make the experience more realistic otherwise the iPad screen is kind of slippery. Next, I went looking for some

Training

If you look at my book shelves, you can immediately tell which hobbies I want to pursue by the sheer number of books I’ve collected on different topics.  This is my stack of books on art and drawing.  To start out, I followed this book (BOOK NAME?) and did almost every drawing exercise in it to remind myself of basic, foundational techniques.  You don’t have to have any art background to start with these exercises.  Next, I downloaded and subscribed to Skillshare.com. This is a subscription service that cost about $20 every month. I probably will not continue this subscription forever, but it was so helpful in the beginning to give me ideas and remind me of foundational concepts.  Skillshare employees fantastic teachers (not just Art but on a variety of topics), who teach classes. Most of them have some sort of project that you can attempt during or after the class. I have learned a lot about the Procreate app and art techniques through watching these very skilled and generous teachers.  And finally, YouTube is a fantastic resource. I don’t have to tell you all this, but there is tremendous talent out there, and people are generous enough to share their wisdom with you through video. With Procreate in particular, I really like Art with Flo’s channel. She does this whole series called “You Can Draw This” where she spends 30 minutes drawing some kind of impressive landscape or eyeball, etc. These videos were extremely helpful for me to watch how she used layers, what brushes she used, and how she used many of the less well-known Procreate tools.  So, sometimes I’m drawing based on the project assigned by an online teacher, but otherwise how do I come up with

Art Topics

This can be another barrier to creation. What should I draw today? Some days you have tons of ideas, but some days you just can’t think of anything.  Mostly, I am drawing from reference materials on the Internet. It could be a photo or someone else’s artwork that I’m trying to replicate. I don’t draw from reality much right now.  But even then, sometimes getting to a point where I knew what even to search for was difficult. So, I sat down and brainstormed the kinds of things I wanted to be able to create. And I came up with seven categories: Portraits, human figures, animals, landscape/cityscapes, objects (like still life), patterns, and lettering.  Once I had this list, I brainstormed the sort of styles or techniques that I wanted to be able to attempt. And I came up with six of those: pencil drawing, pen and ink, watercolor, painting, abstract/avant-garde, and cartoon. Then I created a spreadsheet where I randomized the combinations of these lists. It works out that there are seven in one category and six in another, because lettering does not need to follow a specific style.  This makes up my projects list. Generally, these projects take more than one day. I search on the Internet for, say “pen and ink landscape” find something that I want to try to mimic, and get started.  Once I’ve completed the project, I take a screenshot, crop it, and save it to a Google Photos album for that category. Then I update my spreadsheet with the date that I completed the project. I’m also not totally militant – I will skip around if I don’t feel like doing whatever is next on the list. And then, some days, particularly when I just have a short period of time to do a drawing, I won’t work on a project, instead I have another list of just ideas to draw. I got my list from this website, but if you Google “ideas for drawing”, there are a ton of good creative topics out there. I went ahead and copied some into a spreadsheet, so that I can also check these off. It eliminates yet another barrier to creating. And finally, I’ve tried to

Build a Community

When you are really passionate about something, it’s always fun to have like-minded people to talk to about it. You can certainly talk to your friends or your husband, but it can quickly get boring for them unless they are similarly passionate.  I started out by contacting my aunt, who makes a living as an artist. She is easy to share with, since she is so supportive, and she can also send me some of the things she is working on. In addition, I mentioned to a friend that I was taking up this project, and coincidentally she was putting together an art group. Now, it turns out, these are “real artists“ – I consider myself more of an artisan/hobbyist, but my passion level is just as strong, so I am enjoying the conversations about technique, inspiration, and shared interest. Community is important to keep you going when your energy runs a little low, and to inspire you to take chances and stretch yourself beyond your typical comfort level.  

And that’s it. I’ve been pursuing this for about four months and, even though I know my interest will wax and wane, I hope to continue this journey throughout my life. Let me know what you think. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching.