Quickly Master Blending in Procreate

Quickly master blending in Procreate. Let's dive right into it. Let me show you four ways of blending in Procreate. The first method is using the smudge tool. You can find the smudge tool up here. It's the little finger and when you tap it you can see that you can use all the brushes that are in Procreate to use as a smudge tool. My favorite brush to use as a smudge tool for blending is the standard blender and you can actually find it in the treasure chest brush pack. It's totally free and you can get it through freefromflow.com. So I'll select the standard blender and just like with other brushes you can set the size here of your blending brush. Let me set it to 40 percent. You can also change the opacity slider but when you use the smudge tool this is not the opacity but it's the strength of the smudge and in this case I will set it to 50 percent. Now when you use the smudge tool and you want to use it to blend colors in Procreate you need to make sure that those colors are on the same layer. So right now all of these colors of the ball are on one layer and only then you can smudge them. If you want to make sure that you won't be smudging the outer edges of your artwork then set your layer to alpha lock. To learn more about alpha lock make sure to watch quickly master alpha lock in Procreate. I will link it for you. So alpha lock is turned on we have our smudge tool set to the standard blender and now you can go over the areas that you want to blend and follow that line. Follow the shape of that circle here and blend it and I'm using very light pressure. I'm just going over this area and when you use the smudge tool it's like dragging the paint around. You're pushing it, you're pulling it, gently blending the area and depending on the brush you use you can get nice textures using the smudge tool and if you make your brush bigger like let's say 85% you can smudge bigger areas, make it even softer, make rounded motions in this case and if you want to smudge areas that are smaller then make sure to make your brush smaller as well like 20% to be more precise otherwise over here that light area would also get smudged in the shadow area here. Just follow that shape, follow that rounded shape and that way you can blend these colors nicely into each other by just following that curve. It's still a little bit like painting so just following the curve and pushing and pulling the paint here until you don't see any of those crisp edges anymore and you might need to make your brush a little bit bigger in the end like 40% to make some areas even softer and don't worry blending like this it takes some practice but in the end you will get used to it and this is a great way of blending in Procreate. Always make sure to do this blending before you start adding any details to this painting like in this case some highlights. Another method you can use for blending in Procreate is the Gaussian blur. In this case again we want the edges to stay crisp we don't want to blur the entire image we just want to blur and blend these lines so make sure to turn on alpha lock on the layer so the edges stay crisp and then you can go to Gaussian blur here under the little magic wand and to Gaussian blur and just slide to the right on your screen until you get a nice blend and these transitions become softer you can do the same for the top area go to Gaussian blur slide to the right to blend that area now if you only want to blend certain areas if you want to be more precise then there is a method for that let's go to our shadow layer over here alpha lock is not turned on on this one because we wanted to blend with the background we don't want to keep this crisp edge now let's go to Gaussian blur again but this time we'll use this little drop down arrow and set it to pencil using Gaussian blur set to pencil will give you a lot of control let's use a soft brush in this case under airbrushing it's a nice soft edge brush which will give you nice soft transitions the opacity in this case is set at 60% and let's set the size to 25% and now we can go over the shadow area and we can blur it like this and every time you go over it it'll blur more and we want this area to be more blurred than this area over here where it's close to our cylinder because the closer the object is to the floor the crisper the shadow will be and it'll fade and become blurrier as it moves further away from the object and now once you have this blur you can use your finger on the screen to change it and let's set it to 55% and now you can see that over here it's more blurred than in this area you can get even more control by using the eraser as well you can set that to the soft brush as well and then you can erase the blur if you need to and then again with your finger you can play around changing the amount of blur the third method is using a brush that has some blending capabilities for instance in procreate you can find one under painting the oil paint brush it has a nice smeary effect so when you paint with it the colors will blend together now in this case for this pair make sure that you have alpha lock turned on on your shape because you don't want the edges to blur a pair is not a cloud it doesn't have fluffy edges you only want to blur and blend the inside and for this oil painting brush i would suggest turning down the opacity i have it set to 50 i have the size set to 40 and now you can just pick a local color by tapping your finger on the screen and then you can go over this area and blend the colors like this it gives a nice painterly effect and then you can pick another color and just go over these areas to blend the colors now on to the final technique it is a little bit similar we will be using a regular brush you can pick whatever you like i'm going to use the basic flow brush which is part of the treasure chest brush pack so remember you can get it for free through free from flow and you need a bit of a transparent brush for this now the basic flow brush is already a bit transparent but if you are using a different brush you might need to lower the opacity by using this slider i have the opacity at 100 and the size at well let's set it to 50 now for this technique we are going to blend by hand and a way to do that is by picking a color one of the colors you want to blend for instance this orange one just hold your finger on the screen to pick it and then go over the area that you want to blend like this it's a little bit transparent and then pick up that color that you got from going over there and then go over that area again that you want to blend and then pick up that color so it's a manual way of blending by just picking up the colors as you go and this can give a nice painterly effect and it enables you to blend as you go to blend while you are painting just make sure that your colors aren't too different from each other it's nice if you have an area that you want to blend if the colors are already a little bit close to each other and to make this even softer you could use a soft brush from the airbrushing brushes again make sure that you use a low opacity let's set it to 30% and again you can pick middle color go over the area every time pick a color with your finger and then go over to blend it a soft brush will give a very soft blend if you want something more painterly then you can grab another brush of course these were four ways to blend in procreate now you don't have to stick with one i would definitely suggest combining these techniques because with all of these powers combined you will have the perfect blend i hope you have enjoyed watching this video if you want to learn more about blending in procreate if you want to do some exercises then come and join patreon where i have more than 100 procreate tutorials and this special workbook about blending so you will be a blending pro in no time i would like to thank you for watching and i will see you next time for the next tutorial