Tech

I Can’t Draw, But I Love Procreate and So Might You

It’s only for IOS and iPadOS, but it’s amazingly good

If you don’t own an Apple iPad or at least an iPhone, this article is not for you. You might want to read it anyway, because the Procreate software is so good that it might just get you to buy something from Apple. I know some local artists who have done that and some well known artists have done the same, including an illustrator for the New Yorker magazine.

You might want an Apple Pencil too, though you can use several other styli. The pencil is the most versatile with Procreate, though, so you should consider it if you can. In a pinch, you could even use your fingers, though that isn’t a great experience. But if you just want to try it out and get an idea of how it works and what it can do, sure, use your finger to do that.

I am not an artist.

The funny thing is, almost every person in my family is at least somewhat capable of drawing decent sketches. Some of my ancestors even had some claim to fame as artists. But I’m not good at it. Here’s something I tried to sketch recently:

Cartoon of a metal chair by author

Pretty sad, isn’t it? Barely good enough for a cartoon, but here’s the thing: doodling stuff like this is relaxing for me. It’s using a part of my brain that doesn’t get much exercise and has to concentrate very hard even to do something as crude as that. It distracts me and relaxes me. I enjoy it.

Given that I am not much of an artist, I would not have spent much money on drawing software. It wouldn’t be justified for the small use I would get from it. But ProCreate is just $8.99, a surprising bargain. I happened to already own an 11 inch iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, but Procreate can be used on models that cost half of what my equipment cost.

My oldest daughter inherited the artistic gene that was suppressed in my brain. She never did much with it beyond a few sketches now and then. But then a few years back she was up on vacation and she and I were sitting in our living room. I was doodling in Procreate and she was playing Scrabble on her own iPad. In between moves, she looked over at what I was doing and asked “Hey, can I try that?”