I’m relatively new to the iPad Pro as an illustration tool, but since I can’t be the only one, I’m excited to share a super-cool feature I discovered by accident yesterday. It’s so incredibly simple, but if you don’t know it’s available, you might not think to look for it.
Creating a new palette in Procreate, the painting app, is straightforward. You just click the plus sign and a new, blank palette appears, ready for you to add swatches. Here’s the fun part:
There’s a pull-down menu that allows you to create new palettes using photos or files from your smartphone, on the iPad, or stored in the cloud. And the results are amazing.
I picked a random selfie of mine from a few years ago, one I’d taken with my SLR and enhanced in Photoshop. I always liked the combination of warm and cool tones, but when I chose the photo as a source image for a new palette, I was kind of stunned at how lush the colors were.
I also created a palette from the album cover for Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. Gorgeous. I’ve got a pile of delicious midcentury jazz album covers saved on Pinterest that will all be getting the full treatment.
I love the notion of working in the method of the Old Masters, creating tone from existing tone, but with a 21st-century machine. Best of both worlds.
Randi Gordon | Design + Illustration 