Digital painting and the tools related to it have always fascinated me. Being well versed in this, one of my friends once wanted to know about creating digital papers. He asked if I knew how to make digital paper in Procreate?
Luckily, this is something that I have done numerous times. Being an avid Apple product user, I know a majority of the iOS apps like the back of my hand. This is due to constantly needing to jump between platforms and software for different purposes.
If you’re looking to make digital art or some digital paper, I would highly recommend using Procreate. Let’s dive right into the process now!
Contents
- 1 What is Procreate?
- 2 Digital Papers
- 3 Creating Pattern Brushes
- 4 Frequently Asked Question
- 4.1 What if I don’t own an Apple device like an iPad or iPhone?
- 4.2 Can I draw and create digital papers without having a pen tablet or touch screen?
- 4.3 What if I don’t have any prior drawing experience?
- 4.4 Which method would be the easiest to follow for someone who wants to quickly create some digital papers?
- 5 Conclusion
What is Procreate?
Procreate is an iOS exclusive software. It is a graphic editor; painter app. Apple iPads have vast capabilities in artistic cases. Procreate utilizes every ounce of that potential and provides the best set of tools to create art.
But that’s not all there is to this! Procreate can be used to design beautiful brochures, posters, and designs as well. Procreate also excels at creating beautiful digital papers. Learn how to make digital paper in Procreate in a few simple steps.
Digital Papers
But what are digital papers? Digital papers are digital files found in vector image or png formats. These files are essentially artboards or paper-sized (letter or scrapbook) with patterns and designs that you normally see in scrapbooks or designed notebooks.
Different Fill Methods in Procreate
Tessellation in Procreate is a neat little feature that helps in creating fills with natural-looking textures. When you drag a color on a shape, don’t lift your pen up yet. You will notice a fill threshold bar on top.
Now if you drag your pen to the left or right, you can increase or decrease the threshold. Your shape will not have weird artifacts on the inside edges if you follow this method.
The Procreate pattern fill has a slightly different workflow. Patterns are essentially textures that can be painted with or painted on top of. You can create a layer mask on top of a layer and draw on it to create the pattern fill.
On the layer mask, a darker color will result in lower opacity and lighter color will result in higher opacity of the paint. The opacity of the layer itself can also be lowered or increased to add strength to the effect.
Creating a Seamless Pattern
To make digital papers, you first need to know how to create a seamless pattern in Procreate. Seamless patterns are the very essence of digital papers. There are two ways you can approach this as well.
The first way would be to draw a tile by yourself. Move it around to tile it and make it seamless. The other one results in more repetition of the pattern but is quick and easier. That is using the Procreate symmetry settings.
Drawing and Tiling a Seamless Pattern
To start out, make sure to make a 300 DPI canvas to prevent pixelation. Square-sized canvases are best as they are easier to make seamless. If you use a different size, you will need to adjust your design adequately to match it.
Now that you have your canvas, you can start drawing out a pattern in any way you like. It can be floral, organic shapes, mechanical, or even something retro! Make use of the two-finger tap undo command to make the drawing process easier.
While drawing, make sure to stay within the boundary of the canvas. Otherwise, the design will clip and not be seamless when repeated.
In order to ensure you are tiling the image properly, there are two methods you can use. You can either draw four gray dots on each corner or use a color fill layer beneath to check overlaps.
Of course, if you are familiar with grids and incremental move of tiles, you will not need any of these. For ease of usage, we will be drawing four small-sized circles on each corner with a shade of gray.
Now that you have your first tile all drawn and ready it’s time to duplicate it. Now you will have two of the same layers. You will notice that the gray circles are much darker and almost seem like a near-black shade now. This will only happen when the circles overlap.
Select one of the layers and move it straight upwards by 50%. You will notice the snapping grids while moving. The bottom edge of the layer will be centered with the canvas.
Now do the same with the other layer, only this time you will move it downwards. Fine-tune the edges to prevent overlaps. After that’s done, you can merge the two layers. If you drew on more layers, make sure to select them all during the first duplication.
Now with the single layer with the entire tile, duplicate it again. Follow the same steps as before but this time, you will move the layers to the left and right each. Make sure to again check if the layers are placed correctly with no overlaps.
Remember to delete old circles and draw new ones on the corners to help with alignment. Now you can fill in the empty spaces in your canvas. As these parts will always be in the center, they will not clip or overlap with your pattern.
Merge all the layers and you’re almost done. Export the image as a PNG or SVG file. You can make use of some repeat pattern design apps like Instagram Layout to test if the pattern repeats seamlessly.
Creating Pattern Brushes
Now, wondering how to make a pattern brush in Procreate? Well, if you followed along, half of your work is already done!
You can use the pattern you’ve already drawn. Make the art layer white and the background black and export the image.
Now in the brush settings, you can create a new brush that will have the grain of this image. Now you can find your newly defined brush in the brush presets menu.
Now, how to make a seamless pattern brush in Procreate? The steps are again very simple and straightforward. You can use the symmetry settings in Procreate to design a big canvas. Make sure to stay within the symmetry tile. Otherwise, clipping will occur again.
With your canvas designed, import the image and select as the grain of a new brush preset and you are done creating a new pattern brush!
With that being said, we are done creating our digital paper. You can use the pattern brush to cover your desired sized page with the pattern you want.
Frequently Asked Question
What if I don’t own an Apple device like an iPad or iPhone?
There are many alternative software available that you can use to create digital papers. For pain alternatives, you can use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. Krita and Gimp can be used as well if you are looking for a free-to-use software than a paid one.
Can I draw and create digital papers without having a pen tablet or touch screen?
Yes, you can! Having a graphics tablet makes the drawing process much smoother and easier. As you will have more control over your brush strokes with a pen on a tablet or touch screen than using a mouse.
However, you can achieve almost the same results with a mouse as well. To make the process a bit easier, you can draw on paper first, scan it into your device, and pen over the art with a mouse.
What if I don’t have any prior drawing experience?
Being experienced in drawing helps a great deal in creating art or illustration for digital papers. However, that is not a must. You can create beautiful digital papers even without having drawing experiences.
You can look up on the internet for inspiration from other illustrations and arts. Even the basic geometric shapes can be used to create eye-catching digital papers. Of course, you have to be dedicated and not lose hope!
Which method would be the easiest to follow for someone who wants to quickly create some digital papers?
We suggest using multi-point symmetry to create digital papers very quickly. If you use the symmetry settings, you can quickly cover up an entire page of numerous tiles.
As previously explained, using symmetry allows you to recreate the same pattern over the entire page with much ease. This saves up time as you don’t have to manually duplicate and move around layers to make tiles yourself!
Conclusion
Procreate is an extremely fun tool to play around with. The artistic possibilities of the app are just way too much. If you have an iPad or an iPhone and want to dive into the world of creating art, you should consider giving Procreate a chance.
It costs only about $9.99 which is a bargain for the features this neat app has. From creating digital art to beautiful illustrations and designing posters, this app can do it all!
And now you know how to make digital paper in Procreate, start designing some right away! You can print and use the papers for yourself or even add them to your portfolio for elegant touches.
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Last Updated on April 20, 2021 by Timika Sandra
