Why the Procreate app is the coolest thing ever

This post is not about WordPress, but about an awesome iPad painting and drawing app called Procreate.

I’m telling you that upfront, so that if you’re only here to read the WordPress goodness, you can feel free to move on. No judgements!

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… Still here? Great! Let’s great started.

I know that a lot of you are creative types, but maybe like me you get bogged down in admin, or code, or marketing, or just anything except creative pursuits. But I want to encourage you to put all that aside for a minute, and flex your creative muscle. It’s so important to feed your passions and take a break from your work, so you can come back stronger and more inspired.

Recently, I have been trying to carve out more time to do just that.

I decided that I wanted to learn more about creating artworks on my iPad. So I invested in an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, and signed up to Caroline Kelso Zook’s excellent iPad Lettering for Beginners course. In the course, Caroline goes through every feature of the Procreate app, to show you how to create beautiful works of lettering art.

The above piece was my final class project for the class: a lettering piece combining several of the techniques I learned in the class.

The Procreate app works much like Photoshop, with layers and blend styles, brushes, smudging, and erasers available to help you create complex and textured works of art. And with Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro detects the brush angle, pressure, and speed, so you feel like you’re drawing with a real pencil or brush. I have never had very good skills with drawing or painting “in real life,” but the portability and convenience of the iPad frees me up to express myself in a new way.

With the combination of these tools, you can choose from hundreds of diverse brushes, and even create your own brushes, to paint and draw directly onto your iPad’s screen. It feels like magic!

If you don’t have an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, maybe consider putting them on your Christmas list? I promise you will love them!

What creative, “just for fun” stuff have you done lately? Comment below to let me know!