Nostalgia ALERT! Today we’re going to be creating beautiful scratch art in Procreate. I remember doing this for hours when I was a kid - using markers to make a background, covering it with black crayon, then scratching off my designs with toothpicks, chopsticks, or even a fork! It was SO much fun!!
In this video, we’re going to walk through a couple of designs and I’ll give you my tips and tricks along the way. You can do all of this with built-in Procreate brushes, so let’s dive in!
If you'd prefer the text instructions, those are below.
Step 1: Lay down the background color:
use a textured brush
Painting Set (most will work): Old Brush, Wet Acrylic, Tamar, Oil Paint
Sketching Set: Oil Pastel, Soft Pastel, Artist Crayon
Artistic Set (most will work): Wild Light, Aurora (one of my favs because it's multi-color)
Rainbow, Monochrome, and Analogous color palettes look good for this!
*Pro-TIP: try to spread out and mix the colors, so you don’t have too much of one color in an area (not too large an area)
Step 2: Blend the color (see the video for more details on this!)
Smudge tool (tap & hold for same brush) OR
Liquify OR
Gaussian blur gradient method
Step 3: New layer + mask
Add a new layer at the top
Color drop black/a dark fill color OR paint/blend a fill color layer with dark, contrast colors
Tap the fill color layer and choose “Mask” (this adds a Layer Mask - don’t choose Clipping Mask, that’s different!)
*Pro-TIP: swipe R on the fill color layer to de-select it, so you’re only working on the mask layer when you scratch.
Step 4: Scratch!
You could just erase on the fill layer itself to “scratch”, but that would be “destructive” editing.
We’re using the Mask so that we can do “non-destructive” editing and make changes any time.
On the Mask layer - use Brush with Black to scratch and White to “erase”
Drawing Set (most will work): Styx, Eaglehawk, Little Pine
Inking Set (most will work): Thylacine, Syrup, Ink Bleed, Technical Pen
To move elements in scratch drawing, Select > Freehand, then Transform (make sure you’re on the Mask layer or this won’t work)
You can duplicate the color background and try different effects by hiding layers.
Doodles are great to relax/meditate
Mandalas, vines, leaves, swirls, basic shapes/patterns