Procreate Tutorial (Shading)

I’m going to explain a technique that I figured out on my own, using the Procreate app, on an Apple iPad Pro, using a type of stylus called an Apple pencil. I’m showing a technique you might use to shade a character who belongs more in the background than a central character in that panel. This happens sometimes when you have a group of characters in a room together and you want to focus on one character who is speaking.

This pertains to drawing a comic book page with Procreate.


First, here are the layers I used:

Balloons (for dialogue balloons and caption boxes)
Inking
Colors 2
Colors
Pencils
Panels

I use a template I got online for the guidelines for making the panels.

After drawing the panels in black ink on the Panels layer and doing the penciling in blue ink on the Pencils layer, I inked on the Inking layer in black and dismissed the pencils layer. On the Colors layer, which is beneath the Inking layer, I filled in the drawing with colors.



I’ve cropped part of a panel showing a character named Hannah wearing a Greek goddess outfit, and O.G. Girl wearing a purple denim vest and t-shirt.

I want to shade O.G. Girl, so I go to the Colors 2 layer, which is above the Colors layer. I pick a paintbrush and edit it so the brush strokes don’t overlap, like when you use markers. I set the color to black and set opacity to 50%, and filled in the character with a transparent dark color, making her darker. I once used 75% opacity, but found it too dark; I think 50% opacity works best.



The next step is to use the eraser, and set it to 100% opacity, or it won’t remove everything. Subtract this darker color from around the figure, leaving it only where you want it. Because the Colors 2 layer is above the Colors layer, the colors are unaffected by the eraser removing the dark areas from around the figure.



I hope you found this tutorial useful, if you have any other questions, please let me know.