iPad Pro Journey Combined Days - Using Procreate As a Beginner

By Toni Hetrick

I’m a little behind on posting each day’s experience with my new iPad Pro.  Worry not, I have continued drawing each day, I just haven’t had the time to create a blog post each day.  I have decided to consolidate a few posts into one to bring you up to speed.  

On day 3 of drawing, I started off by again spending a little time experimenting with different brushes.  I did this by selecting a brush and seeing what effect it gives off when in use. I am still in awe with the number of brushes that come with the Procreate app.  I’m happy that as a beginner, at least so far, I have been able to follow tutorials using the brushes that I already have without having to purchase anything additional.  After taking a few minutes experimenting with the brushes, I moved onto YouTube. 

During my search I came across a tutorial from Holly Pixels: “Bullet Journal Doodling in Procreate How to Draw a Pencil”.  This kind of tutorial is right up my alley for multiple reasons. First, it wasn’t an incredibly long tutorial and the image seemed simplistic enough. Since I’m new to this, I feel it’s best to learn the basics before tackling a very difficult tutorial and feeling defeated. Also, I am very interested in creating images that will work well as stickers to include in orders for my business.  This is something that I have only been able to do a few times because I have been purchasing from companies where you must place a minimum order of let’s say 100 stickers. It’s rather expensive, and then you are stuck with 100 of the same exact sticker.  Words cannot express how excited I am to be able to do this on my own.  

The tutorial went smoothly.  She does a great job explaining the process.  I don’t use a bullet journal; however, I do use a planner and am happy that I’ll be able to create my own stickers to use.  Even though this was a very simplistic tutorial, I believe this was the first time where I made a light sketch in pencil and then created another layer to create a bold outline of the shape that would be used from that point on.  This is as simple technique that will be used for several drawings in the future. I was satisfied with the end result and plan on following Holly Pixels to try more of her tutorials.  

Here’s my finished product. :)

Here’s my finished product. :)

The finished product.  :)  Looks yummy.

The finished product. :) Looks yummy.


After successfully completing the pencil tutorial, I was pumped and craving more.  I headed over to Art with Flo’s channel and chose one of her tutorials. This time, her tutorial, “ANYONE Can Draw This DONUT in Procreate”, caught my eye.  Her tutorials are great and I’m happy that I found this one. If you are new to procreate I strongly suggest that you check out her channel. It was fun and I learned new techniques on how to achieve different shading and depth perspectives.  Without this tutorial, I can say I don’t think I could have created something like this on my own, at my current level. If you haven’t already picked up on this, I am a huge fan of tutorials.  It’s absolutely amazing the amount of information available for free. Below is the exact tutorial I followed. To the right is my finished product. I foresee many donut creations in the future.

Again thank you for visiting the blog. If you enjoyed this tutorial please click the heart below to show some love. Stay tuned for future blog posts following my new digital art journey.

iPad Pro Journey Day 1

Over the last 6 months, I have worked very hard and have been very blessed with sales. That work has allowed me to achieve yet another goal for my small business….purchasing an iPad Pro.  My reasoning behind setting this goal was, with an iPad Pro and some additional software; I will begin the journey of learning how to design my own graphic images.  I already make simple designs using silhouette software, but I’m always looking to step up my game and excel in any way I possibly can. In addition, I used to LOVE to draw. I was actually quite good at it.   However like with many things in life, I got older and busier and didn’t set time aside for drawing. Getting back to drawing will allow me to love my small business even more by creating pieces of unique digital art that can be displayed in many ways.  I’m hoping that as I move along in this learning journey, I can share my experiences with you. Perhaps you are a beginner as well. Perhaps you are considering the same type of purchase for similar reasons, or maybe you just need some entertainment. At any rate, I’ll try my best to share my journey with you.

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I was in luck that the new 2020 iPad Pro was just released and was on sale.  I purchased from Amazon and approximately 4 days later, this 12.9-inch beauty arrived at my doorstep.  I also purchased the Apple Pencil from Amazon. It shipped and delivered in 2 days. Praise Amazon Prime! Not going to lie, unboxing the iPad made me feel like royalty.  Nerdy vibes were high that day. The crisp white packaging, simplistic yet modern, stole my heart.  

I am already an Apple user, which made setup incredibly easy.  There were just a few simple steps to follow, after which the iPad was able to connect to my iPhone and that was basically all she wrote.  There were a few steps that I choose to skip over like setting up Apple Pay, etc. I don’t feel that I will need those, and if I do, they can be updated at a later time.  Once everything was up and running, my next step was to install an app called Procreate. Why Procreate? After much research, I feel that Procreate is a very popular tool that several designers use.  It appears to be user friendly and there is plenty of tutorials available online. The best part is the price. It’s just $9.99. From what I understand if there are any updates that are made after your purchase, that update is included in the $9.99 fee you have already paid.  I priced other software companies and this was a great deal less expensive.

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My first project was a guided YouTube tutorial from Art with Flo.  I chose this video because she starts off by saying, “Anyone can draw this”.  I took that challenge and was pleased with the end result. I did have to stop the video and replay in different sections, as I felt she went too fast for me as a first time user.  The only spot that I hit a snag was when I needed to download the two free brushes from her website (thank you for that btw) and get them installed onto the iPad. I ended up installing them on my laptop and moving them over to dropbox.  I then opened the Dropbox app on the iPad and easily installed the brush by just clicking on the file I wanted. I should have timed myself on this first drawing, but unfortunately, I did not think of that. For the very first project, I would say it went well.  I have put my finished product below for you to see. I plan on trying more of her tutorials to continue to learn the app. I have also posted links below for the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. As always thank you for visiting the website and reading the blog. Feel free to leave a comment below and if you enjoyed this post please show some love by clicking the heart below.

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