Digital art companies – like any other technology or software company – want user loyalty and an inescapable ecosystem in return for their hard work and unceasing development.
Quite a few are successful at this perceived walled-garden approach, but none quite reach the fan loyalty and overall industry good-guy standard that Procreate has managed to command. You can download Procreate for Windows from here.
Interestingly, Procreate’s developers – Savage Interactive – never even tried to build this fan loyalty. They just created such a genuinely fantastic product, and they understood their user base so well that they’ve garnered a highly loyal fan base.
How To Use Procreate Glazed Brushes
One of the ideologies behind Savage Interactive’s thinking and design process is the vast customization and freedom it provides users. And one of these freedoms is the “Brush Studio.” The Brush Studio is Procreate’s way of granting users complete control over how their brushes function and allowing them to customize and mess around as much as they want.
The Brush Studio is a very vast subject and does not fall under the scope of this article’s subject material. This article will only cover one subsection of the Brush Studio, i.e., the glaze settings.
Procreate’s glaze settings radically change how you use brushes and can completely alter strokes, thus fundamentally affecting your art. Procreate’s Glaze feature is a way of digitally recreating real-life paint strokes. Glazed brushes only affect when your opacity is not 100% since it affects how the multiple strokes interact.
It has several options detailing an impressive portfolio of effects that can completely alter the look and feel of a brush and your entire Art piece. Designed with care and patience and surely a lot of trial and error, the glaze effects are enjoyable.
Before I can get into the functions of the glazes and how to use them, I need to explain how to navigate to the menu with the glaze options. The steps detailed in this article are with the Procreate app in landscape mode. Some U.I. elements may move around, and instructions might vary slightly if you use them in portrait mode.
To Get to the Glaze Options
- Once you have to Procreate open, tap on any project file to open it.
- Tap the brush menu in the top-right, next to the smudge menu.
- Please navigate to the brush on which you want to apply the glaze effect and tap to select it.
- Tap once again on the selected brush to open the Brush Studio.
- The menu should have eleven attribute options to the left; we’re looking for the “Rendering” menu. It should be the fifth one from the top.
- Here, you should be able to see “Light Glaze,” “Uniformed Glaze,” “Intense Glaze,” “Heavy Glaze,” “Uniform Blending,” and “Intense Blending” under the subsection titled “Rendering mode.”
This might look complex and confusing, but don’t worry; they’re easy to explain and remember. Starting with Light Glaze, the option should already be set at this if you’ve never messed around with these settings before. This is Procreate’s default blending mode, which most people will already use.
Next, Uniformed Glaze is essentially the same rendering used in Adobe’s ubiquitous Photoshop. “Intense” is just a more exaggerated and stronger touch to the canvas, and “Heavy” is the strongest and heaviest it gets without touching the blending modes.
The last two options on the list are two “Blending” options: “Uniform” and “Intense.” These are mostly for the effect Savage Interactive calls “Wet Mix.” Wet Mix is about how the brush strokes interact with each other in a true “wet” paint simulation. These parameters can be adjusted next to the “Rendering” section.
These two blending modes represent the Wet Mix effect, and Procreate’s website claims these “exaggerate” the effect. Uniform Blending again takes inspiration from Adobe Photoshop rendering, somewhat similar in principle to Uniformed Glaze, but mixed in with a more destructive and corrosive rendering style.
As for intense blending, it is supposed to be representative of thick brush mixing strokes. It’s the strongest mode that Savage Interactive offers at present.
Stick with the glaze brushes if you’re going for a cleaner look without accidentally building opacity. A glaze rendering option will not build up over itself until you lift your drawing tool and place it back down.
However, a blending brush will interact with itself even inside the same stroke. Both types have their individual uses for different art styles. Cleaner lines and a smoother aesthetic? You’re probably better off with one of the glaze options.
A more painterly style where you want clear brushstrokes and texture? The blending options might be the right choice in that specific case.
Remember that the brushes will still carry their texture, pressure curves, and styles unless you edit them individually. This means you can try mixing and matching to get something much more interesting than the classic expected tones and stylistic choices.
You could pick a heavily textured brush under the painting section and use it with the Uniformed Glaze option. It should look very different and interesting unless you repeatedly lift your drawing tool and place it back down.
As for the other side, you could pick a clean, slick brush like the Studio Pen and use Intense Blending to make it stand out and create some interesting designs and patterns.
Remember that glazes and blends will only come into effect if you use the brush at low opacity. Using the brush at low opacity and turning down the layer opacity will not get you the desired result; you will need to lower the brush’s opacity from the bottom slider on the left-hand side panel.
Apart from that, just experiment, experience, and create! Over time, as you gain more knowledge and understand the medium better, you’ll only get better at utilizing these options to their extent.
Note: Lately, multiple users have faced problems importing the PSD files in Procreate. So sometimes Users ask if they can import PSD files into Procreate; yes, here is How.
For a better understanding, check the following guide to learn how to Liquify in Procreate.