How to Paint Abstract Portraits in Procreate

Hey there! Let’s look at my process for how I do my more abstract digital painting and portraiture. To get started, I’m using the largest size canvas my iPad can produce at 300 DPI IN CMYK colours so it will be ready to print. In my case that’s either a 25inch by 25inch or a 24x18inch canvas (these sizes also correspond to the printable canvas sizes on printify)

First thing I do is pick a colour palette, I use an app called coolers that generates colour pallets and then I screen shot them and import them as an image layer into procreate so I can create a custom colour palette in my swatch library.. I put each base colour along the middle slots and then pick a lighter and darker variation to go above and below it. I typically also grab some grey scale swatches in case I want to work out the values on grey and add the colour as an overlay.