Part 4: Colouring with Procreate

My Storybook Process

This part focuses on the gradual transition moving away from Photoshop and into Procreate.

image of Apple iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

2022 | March

I caved, period.

One weekend, I was toiling on handwriting again for digital import, and I reached a breaking point realizing my time can be much better spent if I simply stop stubbornly committing to my inefficient workflow. So I finally caved and got an iPad and Procreate.

To no one's surprise, it eventually became one of those “why didn’t I do it sooner?!” moment, kicking myself because I could have saved a LOT of time.

But by the time I got the iPad in hand, I was pretty drained from the grind toiling over the first draft that I decided I needed yet another break.

Drawing of a Bunny sleeping

2022 | April

Taking a break

Nothing much happened in April since I was waiting for people’s feedback on the first draft before I do any more work on it, so the timing worked out nicely.

The break did me a lot of good, because I came back with fresh eyes reading my ramblings and it made me realize I really needed to do an overhaul of the story.

This is why a lot of what was shared before you’ll probably never see in the final.

2022 | May to July

Back at it (yet) again!

I spent some time here and there fiddling with Procreate and learning through tutorial videos. It took some time getting used to drawing through the app, and at first my workflow was still 80% Photoshop and only 20% Procreate…

...but my friend swore by the all-Procreate process and thought I should do the same, sooner rather than later. And since I can now draw more efficiently, I should start redoing all my drawings so they can be even more consistent (aka not so half-baked).

Once again she was right, especially now that I’ve gotten more comfortable drawing digitally. It really was just easier to draw better ones with more convenient tools.

Year in Review:

---
---
---

Owl vast field scene (with time lapse)

Before and after drawing comparison of an Owl perched on a tree
Image of a Bunny and an Owl under a starry night scene

Fishy pond scene (with time lapse)

Before and after image comparison of a Bunny and a Fishy in a pond
Image of a Bunny and a Fishy in a pond
Image of digital colour palettes

Colour palettes

All the colours used in the illustrations.

Collage of pencil sketches of different Lion and Bunny poses

Character collections

Something I've learned along the way: saving a collection of every character pose I've drawn. The idea is that instead of redrawing from scratch, I can reuse them as a starting point, otherwise I find it harder to keep them consistent. I'm pretty sure others do something like this in various ways.

The "Starkeeper scene" below is an example of how they were used.

Starkeeper scene (with time lapse)

Before and after drawing comparison of a Lion and Bunny looking at a Star
Before and after drawing comparison of a Lion and Bunny looking at a Star
Image of a storyboarding sketch for book layout planning

My visual to-do list

For those who are more of a visual person like myself: instead of creating a to-do list with checkboxes of things to complete, try drawing a crude thumbnail layout of the book to mark up instead. This worked very well for me to visualize a percentage overview of my progress to completion.

Pink marks the pages I still need to populate or finish refining the illustrations. At this point all content needs to be read/reviewed on every page so there was no point to mark up what still needs to be written.

Next: Printing & Publishing