Did you know you can do Scratch Art in Procreate?

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