How to Draw on an iPad Using the Procreate App

• You can draw on an iPad with an Apple Pencil on the Procreate app, which you can use to sketch, paint, and illustrate.
• To draw with Procreate, select a brush and color from the toolbar at the top of the screen.
• To make a structured shape, you can customize and resize, draw a circle, square, or curve and hold the Pencil down at the end for a few seconds. 
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Thanks to the Apple Pencil, many people now draw on their iPad. In fact, the iPad has become a viable drawing tool for serious artists and casual hobbyists alike. Paired with the illustration, sketch, and painting app Procreate, it’s possible to create sophisticated and professional images on the iPad that previously required expensive desktop software.

How to draw on an iPad using Procreate

There’s a lot of power under the hood of Procreate, but it’s easy to get started drawing on your iPad because the app is relatively easy to use, with a simple layout, intuitive tool set, and easy-to-master gestures that combine both the stylus and your fingers. 

Create a canvas

1. Start the Procreate app. 

2. You’ll start in the Gallery, where you can see your existing images.

3. Tap the plus sign (+) at the top right and choose the canvas size you want to work with. 

Draw with brushes

Procreate is built around drawing with brushes, and you can vary the thickness, intensity, and opacity of your brush strokes depending on how much pressure you apply to the Apple Pencil. 

1. Tap the Brush icon at the top of the screen. You should see the Brush Library dropdown menu. 

2. Choose the brush you want to use. There are nearly 200 to choose from, divided into categories. 

3. Tap the Color icon. You’ll see the Colors dropdown menu. 

4. Choose the color you want to use from the color wheel. You can also use the tabs at the bottom of the dropdown to choose a color in a different way. 

5. Change the thickness of the brush using the top slider on the left. 

6. Set the brush opacity with the lower slider on the left. 

Now you can start to draw on your canvas. As you draw, varying the pressure you apply with the Pencil will affect the thickness and intensity of the stroke, just as if you were drawing or painting on a real canvas.  

Here are a few additional drawing basics:

• You can use the Eraser in the same way as the Brush. Tap the Eraser icon to choose an Eraser type, configure it with the size and opacity sliders, and then draw on the screen to erase. 
• Tap the screen with two fingers to Undo.
• Tap the screen with three fingers to Redo.

Draw with shapes

You can convert hand-drawn sketches into structured shapes that you can adjust and resize. 

1. Sketch a circle (it does not need to be extremely accurate) and, without lifting the Pencil, hold it down for a few seconds at the end of drawing the shape. After a couple of seconds, you should see the message Ellipse created at the top of the screen and an Edit Shape button.

2. Tap Edit Shape.

3. You now have several options, such as Ellipse, Circle and perhaps (depending upon how you drew the circle) Polyline. If you want to make your ellipse perfectly round, tap Circle. You can change your selection as many times as you like as long as your shape is selected.

4. You should also see that your ellipse has several control points. Tap and drag a point to change the shape, size, and orientation of your shape. 

5. To move the shape around the screen, tap and drag anywhere on the screen outside of the shape. 

6. When you are satisfied with everything about the shape — including the size and position — tap again on the screen outside the shape. The control points will disappear and the shape is now a part of the image. 

Color in your drawing

You can fill in sections of your image with color. Any area you want to fill has to have a well-defined boundary. If you try to fill in a circle drawn in chalk, for example, the color will “bleed out” through the chalk and fill more of the image than you intended.

1. Tap the Color icon.

2. In the Colors dropdown, choose the color you want to fill with.

3. Tap the Color icon and drag it to the part of the image you want to fill.