Once you’ve understood the basics of Procreate, you can have a go at experimenting with different brushes. Procreate comes with a number of fantastic brushes already downloaded, but you can also buy brushes from other artists on places like Gumroad and Etsy.
These brushes can replicate everything from a fun and funky pattern, to impressively realistic watercolour paint. Take some time to look at what’s available and see how you might use the brushes in your artwork. Over time, you will probably find favourite brushes that you come back to time and time again.
You can also use brushes to smudge or erase your artwork. When you have smudge selected (the icon to the right of your brush), you can use your brush shape, texture, size and opacity to blend the colours of your drawing. Lots of artists use this for shading. Your eraser works in the same way, using your brush to erase layers.
You can edit brushes even further by clicking on the brush in your brush library.
Here you can edit absolutely every aspect of the brush, from simple concepts like the spacing and size, to the way colours wet mix together.
This is also where you can play around with a setting called “Streamline”, which will subtly neaten the curves of your lines so they are less jittery and uneven. This may be a helpful setting while you are still getting used to drawing with Procreate, or if you are creating detailed linework.
When you start to understand the brush settings, you can even use them to create your own brushes that are perfectly catered to what you want!
