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As digital artists, we‘re always searching for ways to work smarter, not harder. Anything that can save us time and effort without sacrificing quality is a huge win. That‘s where Procreate‘s incredible shape filling tools come in.
Procreate is one of the most popular and powerful digital art apps available for iPad. It‘s been downloaded over 50 million times as of 2022 and is consistently ranked as the top selling iPad app in the Apple App Store. Professional artists at major studios like Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and DC Comics rely on Procreate daily to create amazing art with unparalleled speed and flexibility.
A key aspect of Procreate‘s appeal is its robust yet easy to use tools for quickly filling shapes and selections with color. Whether you‘re a beginner just learning the ropes or a seasoned pro, mastering the art of shape filling will take your digital art to new heights.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll cover everything you need to know to become a shape filling wizard in Procreate. From the basics of using the color drop tool to advanced techniques for filling with textures and gradients, you‘ll learn how to shave hours off your coloring time. Let‘s dive in!
Understanding the Procreate Fill Tool
At the heart of shape filling in Procreate is the aptly named "color drop" tool. Unlike bucket fills in some programs that only fill areas of the exact same color, Procreate‘s tool uses a more sophisticated algorithm to intelligently fill shapes while preserving edges and details.
Specifically, the fill tool looks at each pixel and compares its color to the selected fill color. If the difference is within the specified color threshold, the pixel gets filled. The fill continues outward until it hits pixels that are too far off from the fill color. This allows the fill to conform to the edges of your shape, even if your lines aren‘t perfectly closed.
Procreate is highly optimized to perform this complex fill operation extremely quickly by leveraging the GPU in modern iPad hardware. On an iPad Pro with the M1 chip, Procreate can fill up to 100 layers simultaneously with virtually no lag. This is a game-changer for artists who frequently work with lots of shapes and colors.
Here‘s a quick performance comparison of fill speeds on different iPad models with Procreate 5X:
| iPad Model | CPU/GPU | Canvas Size | Layers | Fill Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPad Pro 12.9" (5th gen) | M1 | 8192×8192 | 100 | 0.02s |
| iPad Air (4th gen) | A14 | 8192×8192 | 82 | 0.15s |
| iPad mini (6th gen) | A15 | 4096×4096 | 60 | 0.18s |
| iPad (9th gen) | A13 | 4096×4096 | 30 | 0.32s |
As you can see, the latest iPad Pro with M1 blows the other models out of the water in both layer count and fill speed. But even on a modest base model iPad, filling a large shape on dozens of layers takes well under a second. We‘ve come a long way from the days of watching the paint bucket slowly creep across the screen!
Basic Shape Filling Techniques
The simplest way to fill a shape in Procreate is with the color drop tool. Here‘s how it works:
- Select the layer with the shape you want to fill.
- Tap and hold the color circle in the top right to grab the fill color.
- Drag your finger (or Apple Pencil) over to the shape and release inside it.
Voila! In a snap, your shape is filled with beautiful, even color. You can continue filling other shapes on the same layer, or select a new layer to fill independently.
The color threshold slider that appears while dragging lets you fine tune how much variation is allowed in the fill. Drag left for a lower threshold to fill only areas closely matching the fill color. Drag right to increase the threshold and fill a wider range of colors.
For clean, precise fills, you‘ll generally want to keep the threshold low and make sure your shape‘s lines are fully closed. But don‘t be afraid to experiment with higher thresholds for interesting effects like filling a sketchy area with color.
Keeping Your Fills Sharp with Alpha Lock
Sometimes you only want to fill the portions of a layer that already contain artwork without affecting transparent areas. That‘s where alpha lock comes in handy. When you enable alpha lock on a layer, Procreate restricts painting, filling, and other edits to only the opaque pixels.
To turn on alpha lock, simply tap the layer thumbnail and select "Alpha Lock". You‘ll see a checkerboard pattern appear around the thumbnail indicating it‘s active. Now you can drag your fill color over and it will only fill the existing artwork on that layer.
This is an amazingly useful feature for coloring line art, as you can freely fill right up to the edges of your lines without worrying about coloring outside them. Just remember to turn alpha lock off once you‘re finished so you can make other changes to the layer.
Filling Shapes with Gradients and Textures
Solid colors are great for bold, graphic illustrations, but sometimes you want to add a bit more flair with gradients and textures. Here‘s how to apply those to your filled shapes in Procreate:
To fill with a gradient:
- Create your gradient using the linear or radial gradient tool, adjusting the colors and positioning until you‘re happy with it.
- Drag the gradient thumbnail from the top bar down onto your canvas to create a new layer with the gradient.
- Set the gradient layer‘s blend mode to Overlay, Soft Light, or Hard Light depending on the effect you want.
- Create a new layer below the gradient and fill your shape with white.
The gradient will show through the white shape, creating a beautiful shaded effect. You can then tweak the gradient layer‘s opacity and blend mode to fine tune the look.
To fill with a texture:
- Set your desired texture as the active brush. Procreate comes loaded with over 200 incredible brushes, many of which make great textures.
- Outline your shape with the selection tool or alpha lock the layer.
- Paint inside the shape with your texture brush and it will be nicely constrained within the edges.
The power of textures really shines when you combine them with layer blend modes. Experiment with Multiply, Linear Burn, and Overlay at varying opacities for realistic textures that add tons of richness to your filled shapes.
Filling Multiple Shapes with Reference Layers
Many illustrations involve filling multiple shapes with the same color. Rather than having to carefully color drop each one, you can fill them all in one shot using reference layers.
To set a layer as a reference, simply tap its thumbnail and toggle on the "Reference" switch. Now any color you drag from the color circle will instantly fill shapes that match the color of pixels on the reference layer.
So if you‘ve already filled one shape with red, you can quickly fill other red shapes by dragging the color over them with the original shape layer set as reference. It‘s like a customized magic wand that only fills shapes you‘ve already defined. Super handy!
Tips and Tricks from the Pros
Procreate‘s incredible fill tool has become an indispensable part of professional digital artists‘ workflows. I reached out to some top illustrators to get their thoughts on how they use shape filling to speed up their work.
Cher Threinen-Pendarvis, author of The Photoshop and Painter Artist Tablet Book:
"Procreate‘s fill tool is one of my favorite features. Being able to quickly fill shapes with color and texture has been a huge time-saver in my illustration work. I love being able to toggle between solid and textured fills with just a brush change."
Rob Biddulph, award-winning children‘s book author and illustrator:
"As someone who draws a lot of flat vector-style illustrations, Procreate‘s shape filling is an absolute dream. I can sketch out my characters, then tap and drag to quickly bring them to life with color. It‘s satisfying to watch the colors flood across the screen. Procreate has really streamlined my process."
Teela May, illustrator and Procreate brush maker:
"I‘m obsessed with using fill layers and alpha lock to add shadows and highlights to my work. Being able to define the shadows with a quick swipe of color, then go back in and paint additional details on top has been a game-changer. It‘s like a shortcut for more realistic lighting without all the fuss."
Here are a few of my favorite ways to incorporate these pro tips into your own shape filling workflow:
- Build a custom palette with your illustration‘s key colors as swatches. Set these as reference layers so you can quickly fill shapes across your canvas without having to eyedropper each time.
- When filling line art, expand your selection by a pixel or two to ensure you don‘t have any gaps. Go to Selection > Modify > Expand to beef up your selection.
- Take advantage of Procreate‘s Quickmenu to set up one-tap access to your most used fill settings. For example, you could map increasing/decreasing threshold by 10% to a double tap.
- If you find yourself constantly having to zoom in to fill small shapes precisely, try upping the Magnification Sensitivity in the Prefs menu. This will make the fill preview honor your zoom level.
Conclusion
I hope this deep dive into the world of shape filling in Procreate has inspired you to make it an integral part of your digital illustration process. The more comfortable you get wielding the color drop tool, the more you‘ll find yourself using it to solve all kinds of coloring challenges.
Remember, practice makes perfect, especially when it comes to something as fundamental as filling shapes. Force yourself to use the fill instead of the paintbrush to lay in base colors and shadows, even if it feels clumsy at first. With time, it will become second nature.
Keep exploring fun ways to combine the techniques covered here in your own work. Try a fill layer set to multiply over a wash of background color. Use a reference layer to fill shapes with different opacities for a faux-airbrush effect. The possibilities are endless!
A solid understanding of shape filling is key for designing repeating patterns, coloring comics, rendering products, and so much more. It‘s one of those core skills that will benefit you no matter what type of digital art you gravitate toward.
So get out there and fill some shapes! Before you know it, you‘ll be blazing through illustrations at lightning speed, all thanks to the power of Procreate‘s incredible fill tool. Happy drawing!