I love Procreate! It is a great programme for digital art and has a whole bundle of different drawing options (watercolour, charcoal, pencil) so that you can create loads of different styles perfect for illustration.
I have been using Procreate for about a year as I write and I have produced some real rubbish as well as some artwork I am genuinely proud of. I even learned to do my first GIF for my nephew’s first birthday. Check out Bardot Brush, she has a great tutorial for how to try it yourself.
Books illustrated on Procreate
This is a very short list just now but as I come across good examples of books created using Procreate I will share them with you and add to this list.
The lovely book We’re All Wonders by R. J. Palacio was illustrated by the author all on Procreate. This book is big and the illustrations are so creative and simple but engaging.
Prince Martin Wins His Sword was written and illustrated by Jason Zimdars who wrote a great article on Medium detailing his experience with it and sharing some tips for illustrating your own book on Procreate.
Using Procreate to Illustrate my Books
I haven’t yet produced proper illustrations for an actual completed book. So far I have been working on my style and developing backgrounds rather than characters. Here are a few examples. As you can see, the style varies a lot.
There are some very important rules you need to follow too if you want to use Procreate to illustrate a children’s book (some of which I am still learning).
DPI. It seems that the DPI (Dots Per Inch) should be set at (at least) 300 for printed material. The DPI of the images above was only 132 DPI as that was the template setting. I had changed the size of the ‘canvas’ to 8.5 x 8.5 inches when I started using Procreate as lots of children’s books are that size. I couldn’t use any of those images in a book now even if I wanted to as the quality would be compromised.
Keenan Hopson is the illustrator that produced some drafts for my Lovebirds book and my lovely little ABC monster. I love his style. Hopefully with practice I will develop my own.
Thanks, have a great day.
Anna
Anna Styles 