One of the many tools I enjoy using as an illustrator is the digital drawing software Procreate running on my iPad. Used in conjunction with my Apple Pencil, I can carry it in my bag easily. It makes no mess and it the drawing is always exactly as I have left it. Procreate on iPad is incredibly handy for commissions and working on the go, as the files are already digital and need no processing or editing before being sent to the client. While I still love working in physical media, most of the commissions I have created in the last few years have been made in Procreate. As such, I thought I would showcase a few of the drawings I have made in Procreate here.
The drawing above was made in December 2024 on the iPad running Procreate. The brief was to create a pet portrait with a light, summery theme. I wanted to try and evoke a warm summer’s day at the beach, perhaps in the late afternoon as the shadows begin to lengthen.
The main drawbacks of working in Procreate are, for me, the lack of spontaneity. No mark happens unless you make it – there are no slips of the brush, no water drops and no colours flowing into each other unexpectedly. You have to decide every mark you make, and if you are happy enough with them to not instantly erase them. In the drawing above, I selected areas of the work and then went over them using the Nikko Rull brush to create small pieces of colour and a layering effect. By using techniques like this, I hope to counter the innate lack of spontaneity in Procreate and other digital tools.
In the two portaits above, I used Derwent Pencil and Nikko Rull, both of which come bundled with the basic Procreate software. I like these two brushes a lot because they give a sense of mark-making akin to physical materials. I also feel that this brush combination prevents me from being too precious with my drawings. Although when working to commission for portraits it is obviously important to try and make the drawings like the subjects, I feel that this works better when it is done through atmosphere, pose and colouring, rather than through slavish copying.
One of the most wonderful things about Procreate is that it allows the creation of work to a high finish, with colour, in situations where it might be difficult to bring in boxes of pencils or paints. I drew the two illustrations above on Procreate while still at the midwife-led clinic where I had my son. In this instance, having a simple and tidy way to draw whatever I felt or saw in the moment, was really wonderful and helped me document my experience and that of my family.
At times when bringing an iPad with me might be ill advised, such as when hiking or camping, I like to sketch during the trip using coloured pencils on my moleskin notebook, then work on the illustrations on Procreate when I get home. These drawings could then also act as a springboard for other ideas or future illustrations.
Overall, I find Procreate versatile and handy. However, I do not think that physical media will every lose its fascination – it provides endless avenues for exploration and a reason to keep learning, expanding our practices and improving our skills. I am happy, for now, to keep working and experimenting with both physical and digital media in my practice, and hope to create many more illustrations using a variety of techniques now and into the future.
Tools used:
- iPad 2017
- Apple Pencil
- Procreate (software)
- Coloured Pencil
- Moleskin notebook
