Transcription
Hi, I'm Lisa Bardeaux, and today I'm going to be teaching you 30 of Procreate's most useful gestures, plus one iOS gesture that you're going to use all the time. Mastering these multi-touch movements will help you use Procreate with ease and make art more quickly.
Understanding gestures in Procreate is crucial to mastering the app. Many tools and features can only be used with gestures, while other gestures can really speed up your drawing workflow. In fact, you might become so familiar with these gestures you'll find yourself trying to use them in real life. If you're new to Procreate, I highly recommend watching my Intro to Procreate tutorial so you can learn all the basics. If you want to learn more about drawing, illustration, and working in Procreate, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon so you don't miss any future tutorials.
Let's get started!
Let's begin with the gallery view. To get a quick look at your files, use a two-finger spread gesture to quickly pull up a full screen preview. Tap on the left or right to cycle through the files in your gallery. You can double-tap on a file to open it completely, or you can pinch back out to close it.
To quickly select multiple files at once, tap "Select" in the upper right, then swipe over as many files as you'd like to select them. Swipe left with one finger to reveal options to share, duplicate, or delete. Tap, hold, and drag a file to rearrange your gallery. Drag one canvas over top another to group them into a stack. This is really helpful for organizing your artwork. To take a file out of a stack, move it to the upper left, hold, then drag it back to the gallery.
Next, we'll take a look at gestures for the Procreate canvas interface. Use two fingers to spread or pinch to zoom in and out of your canvas. Turn your fingers to rotate your canvas. I use this all the time to zoom in on my art and work on fine details or to get a better angle as I draw.
Now, this is probably my most used gesture: tap with two fingers to undo and tap with three fingers to redo. Tap and hold with two fingers to continuously undo. Tap and hold with three fingers to continuously redo.
To clear a layer, take three fingers and move them across your screen in a scrubbing motion. This also works for clearing out the contents of a selection. Slide three fingers downward to invoke the copy-paste menu. When you use the paste feature, the contents of your selection will be pasted onto a new layer.
This is the sidebar; it contains sliders for adjusting the size and opacity of your brushes and a programmable modify button. You can move this section up or down by dragging a finger from the edge of the interface over the modify button, then drag the sidebar to a more preferable location.
And this isn't a gesture, but here is a helpful tip for you left-handed artists: to move the sidebar to the other side of the screen, go to the Actions menu, Prefs, and toggle on Right-Hand Interface.
Next, I'll show you some helpful gestures in the Brushes panel and tools. You can rearrange your brush sets by tapping and holding one of them and moving it up or down. I like to store my most used brush sets together and at the top of my Brushes panel.
You can create a new brush set by pulling down on the list of sets. A plus icon will appear, and you can create a new set. Select multiple brushes by swiping right on them. To move a brush to a different set, tap and hold and drag it out over the name of the brush that you want to put it in. Hover until the set opens, then drop it inside the panel.
Tap on a brush set to invoke options to rename, delete, share, and duplicate. To share, duplicate, or delete an individual brush, swipe left on that brush for those options.
Over here are the smudge and eraser tools. Tap and hold the eraser tool to select the same brush you are using as your brush to use as the eraser. This will ensure your eraser marks will be consistent in texture to your brush marks. You can use the same gesture to select the same brush for your smudge tool.
Layers are probably the most useful tool for digital artists. I'll show you some handy gestures to level up your layer game. Here is the Layers panel. To rearrange your layers, tap and hold, then drag it into your desired position. Merge layers together by pinching together two or more of them.
Select multiple layers by swiping right on each of them. You can move one or more layers to another canvas: tap and hold, then drag the layers out of the Layers panel. Do not let go with your other hand; tap "Gallery," open a different file, then open the Layers panel, then drop the layers into the panel. Keep in mind that not all layer settings may transfer when doing this. Things like blend modes and groups will be reset.
This little checkbox toggles on a layer's visibility. If you tap and hold it, you will turn off visibility for all other layers, leaving this layer visible. Tap and hold that checkbox again to make all the other layers visible again.
To select the contents of a layer, hold two fingers down on that layer. There's even a gesture for adjusting your layer opacity. Do a two-finger tap on a layer, which will invoke a blue bar at the top. Slide your finger left or right to adjust the opacity of that layer.
Swipe right on a layer with two fingers to turn on alpha lock. Alpha lock is probably one of my favorite and most used Procreate features. You can learn more about how to use alpha lock in my Procreate mask tutorial. Repeat the same gesture to turn it off.
And now, some gestures to help when working with color. Tap and hold with your finger anywhere on the canvas to invoke the eyedropper. Drag around to select any color that is already on your canvas. This is the color button. Tap and hold it to select the previous color. For a quick color fill, drag the color button out and drop it into any closed shape to fill it with color.
If the color isn't quite filling all the way or if it's spilling out everywhere, you may need to adjust the color drop threshold. To do this, drag the button into the shape and don't lift your finger. A blue bar will appear at the top of the screen. Slide your finger left or right to adjust how much of the color bleeds into other areas.
Quick Line and Quick Shape are two very handy tools for making perfectly straight lines and shapes. Here are a couple Quick Line and Quick Shape gestures you might not know: to make a perfectly straight line with Procreate, draw a line and don't lift your pencil from the screen. The line will become straight. Place another finger on the screen, and now the line will snap to 15 degree increments. This is especially useful for creating perfect horizontal or vertical lines.
You can also use this feature to create round shapes, rectangular shapes, triangular shapes, arcs, and polygons. After drawing the shape, don't lift your pencil, and place another finger on the screen to create a perfect circle, square, or equilateral triangle.
I have one more gesture to show you. This is actually a feature of iOS, but it's incredibly useful when working in Procreate, and that is the split screen view. Apple calls this multitasking. Multitasking allows you to have Procreate on one side of your screen and another app on the other side. I use this all the time to pull up photos to use as references while I'm drawing.
To use multitasking, drag a finger up from the bottom of the screen until your dock appears, tap and hold one of the apps, and then drag it to the side of the screen. Then release. This will split the screen between the two apps. You can also adjust the width of the other app by dragging this little gray handle in the center. This feature is perfect for browsing an image search, Pinterest, or watching your favorite Procreate tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching! I hope you've learned some fancy new finger work and are well on your way to mastering gestures in Procreate. Please be sure to subscribe to learn more about drawing, illustration, and of course, working in Procreate.
Again, I'm Lisa Bardeaux, and I teach people how to find their creativity through drawing on the iPad. I am the owner of Bardo Brush, one of the leading brush creators for Procreate. If you'd like to support me, I hope you'll take a look at my premium brush sets that inspire creativity at bardobrush.com.
I also run the Making Art Everyday challenge, a free series of daily drawing prompts, tutorials, motivation, and a supportive community, all with the goal of helping you overcome creative fears and establish a daily art-making practice. Learn more at bardobrush.com/joinmae.
If you're posting artwork to Instagram made with my brushes or tutorials, I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #bardobrush. Thanks, and happy art making! If you like this video, please subscribe for more awesome tutorials and check out one of my other videos. Have a great day!