A Tiny Slice of How I Use Procreate for My Children's Picture Book

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The image below is a slice from an 8000x4000 pixel cover image. I’m redrawing and repainting my Momma Jay character for the tenth time. In this case I’m painting on the layer below the line work. I’ve drawn a selection beneath that follows the line work for her head and I’m about to delete the over-paint. The diagonal selection lines that indicate the borders of the selection are quite faint in this small image, but they are there. The next step is to click “Invert” and then delete. That’s the awkward part of this process because I now have to go to the layers panel, click on the thumbnail for the image, find the “Clear” option, and click it. It’s a little clumsy, but it works okay once you’ve done it a thousand times. It’s definitely a First World problem.


Momma Jay in grisaille

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And now Momma Jay. She’s looking a little tired here after all the business with Jimmy Jay and the chimney. I can hardly blame her. I watched Steven Reddy’s Bluprint course called Dynamic Detail in Pen, Ink,& Watercolor. I’ve got my 1-ounce bottles, my Rotring Tikky and Uni-ball Vision pens, my Rapidograph ink, and my Canson Montval All-Media art books, and now I’m working to get the hang of ink washes.

Today I thought I’d show Momma Jay at the local beanery staring down a heavy duty cup of espresso. I wanted a foreground, middle ground, and background. Overall I’m happy that today’s drawing is a one-inch improvement over yesterday’s. Next time I’ll work to get the foreground object popping a little more.

I can see that I didn’t mix my 50% and 100% washes quite dark enough. I resorted to using Photoshop to pump up the contrast and clean up some errant drops of ink.

I’m trying to keep about 50% of the page white. My darks could be a little darker, and I’m going to work on drawing daintier hands for Momma.