Thursday, January 30, 2020

Stumpy Pencil for Procreate



For those of us who have taken to the iPad Pro, and the accompanying Apple Pencil, there is probably no better digital illustration application than Procreate. It's a matter of opinion of course, and there are many other competing illustration applications for the iPad that are worthy. But for me, Procreate is easily the best. It has a lot of usability and workflow features that I just love. It's amazing responsiveness makes drawing feel organic and natural. It's user interface is an exceptional combination of simplicity and depth, taking great advantage of the touch interface and the Apple Pencil. It's wide range of native brushes, that are included in the one-time purchase, puts other illustration apps to shame. I could go on, but this isn't really meant to be a Procreate review.

Recently, Procreate 5 was released, and it came with a lot of new features. Like all previous versions, this update was free to existing customers. One of the main new features was the ability to import brushes from Photoshop. This was great because, while I liked all of the "pencil" tools native to Procreate, none of them were really "The Stumpy Pencil." So I joined the Beta team when it launched, and one of the first things I did was translate the brush over to Procreate.

I don't know if it was because of the early Beta version of the software, but the brush definitely did not behave the same way as it's Photoshop parent. The translation function in Procreate has probably been refined considerably in the months since that first beta, so I don't mean this to be a knock on the software. Regardless, I had to dive into the extensive brush settings to get proper performance out of this brush. And I'm happy to say that I've refined the brush to the point that I'm happy to release it.

I hope you find this brush as fun to use as the Photoshop version. I find that, combined with Procreate, this brush is even more true to it's inspiration. It's meant to feel like a hand sharpened No.2 pencil. It's "lead" is fairly soft, meaning it gets fat and dark with only a little pressure, yet can still hold a light thin, light line with practice. This is my "default" brush to start, and often finish, any illustration or animation project.

As always, I offer it for free, but request samples of your artwork created using the Stumpy Pencil that I can post on my blog. It's not a requirement, just a request. And I rarely have time to update my blog so I can't guarantee you'll see it posted in a timely manner. But I really enjoy seeing all the great work, and I will post it when I can.

Although this brush is pretty well developed at this point, I will probably tweak it slightly over time. So check back occasionally to see if there are improvements. 

The Stumpy Pencil v.3.0 for Procreate is available here.
See this video for instructions downloading and importing this brush on iPad.