My First Instructables--How to Color in Procreate

This is my first Instructables! I'm an artist who uses Procreate, and my Instagram is @cosmic.tea_

- Apple iPad

- Apple Pencil

- Procreate for iPad

- A transparent background png line art

So first you're going to want to get yourself a line art you want to color! You want to be sure it has a transparent background, and you're going to want to add a layer beneath it to begin with your flat colors (colors that don't have shading yet).

I always like to start with the skin, but this step can apply to any section that you like to start with! For your first color layer, you want to be extra careful to stay within the lines, since it's on top. I like to outline the entire area I want colored, and use the ColorDrop feature. You have to be sure that everything you want that color is enclosed in an outline of that color, otherwise your whole drawing will be filled with that color.

Then, you want to drag the circle in the top right corner into the area you've outlined!

Here, you want to add a new layer beneath the layer you just colored on.

For the whites of the eyes, you never want to use pure white. It gives the eyes an unnaturally bright look, since eye whites aren't technically white anyways.

I use a slightly tinted white!

I like to color everything that is the same color in one layer, so I colored her eyes along with her blue gems in this layer.

I added a layer above the eye whites, since the irises are ABOVE them.

You basically use the same steps for each color, adding a layer beneath the last for each different color. Keep in mind that the colors of the objects that are "on top" or "in front" of others should be on a layer above them (i.e. they eyes/gems on top of the eye whites and crown).

To add the blush, you'll want to use a soft airbrush and a nice reddish/pinkish color, depending on the skin tone. You'll be doing this on a layer ABOVE the skin.

Once you have your color, you'll want to click on the skin's layer twice, and a row of buttons should pop up. Choose "select." This will make it so that none of your brush strokes go outside the boundary of that layer's contents.

Go back to your new blush layer and draw on the blush on the cheeks, nose, ears, and lips.

Well, that looks funny, huh?

To fix that, you'll want to change the opacity of your blush layer.

To do that, select the "N" icon on the layer. A whole bunch of things will pop up, but we want to focus on that slider. Push the slider back until you find that the blush is a reasonable shade.

For the shading of anything but the gems (I'll cover that next), you'll want to grab your base color again.

You can do this by pressing and holding your finger over the color you want, and a circle should show up around that area. Make sure you're getting the color you want!

Then, on your color wheel, you'll want to bring the slider inside of the circle down and to the right a little bit, and the one on the outer circle toward the redder values. This will give you a nice, saturated shade color, instead of a boring grey one.

For the gems, you want to use the same process of selecting your base color and getting your shade color by sliding the outer circle slider a bit towards the purple (which is the redder color).

You'll add a nice section of that shaded color at the bottom of the gem while leaving an outline of your base color.

Then, you'll add some circle highlights toward the upper half of the gem. You'll get this color by sliding the slider of the outer circle a little towards the green, and by moving the inner circle's slider up and to the left.

After that, I like to add just a bit of the base color inside of the shade with the soft airbrush.

This is only optional, but I love adding a little bit of ambient (reflective) lighting against my shading!

I do this by outlining the bottom of each object with a thin line of the base color, as seen above.

You're all finished!