Digital Collage with Procreate: Create Beautiful Mixed Media Art on Your iPad

By Nicki Fitz-Gerald

Digital Collage with Procreate is the ultimate guide to every step of creating beautiful, one-of-a-kind mixed media artwork. 

Using the versatile and intuitive iPad drawing and design app Procreate, author and artist Nicki Fitz-Gerald composes a series of fun and easy projects that will build confidence by giving all the necessary tools to create gorgeous compositions from scratch.

Featuring:

-Detailed information on finding materials for collages including how to collect, organize, and store images 

-Procreate basics and best practices including using textures, masking, blending, layering, coloring, as well as the best brushes and accessories to use 

-Artist profiles of other notable digital collage artists who share their tips and techniques

-Step-by-step projects that showcase a range of creative approaches to collage-making, including a variety of techniques, styles, and themes to try

And much, much more! Whether you want to tell a story with collage or kickstart your creativity, this book will guide you through using digital mixed-media as an expressive medium that will help develop your unique style. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rocky Nook
• Release date: Aug 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781681989792

Nicki Fitz-Gerald

Nicki Fitz-Gerald began her career as an illustrator in London after graduating from Chelsea School of Art in 1990. Her illustration work has been widely published in mainstream and business publications, and has been used on book covers for The Women’s Press.  Since 2002, Nicki has been employed as a graphic designer. The purchase of an iPhone 3G caused her to become a “hopelessly addicted iPhoneographer,” as it provided an outlet for creative expression outside the constraints of her day job. Her iPhone photos have since been highlighted in a number of online and gallery exhibitions. Several of her images have been featured on Life in LoFi’s weekly gallery “FavedonFlickr,” and her image Flamin’ Amy, shown on the cover of this book, won 4th place in Life in LoFi’s Faved of the Year 2011. Five of Nicki’s images won awards at the 2013 Mobile Photo Awards, including  the top prize in the Appstract Digital Painting category. All five were displayed at the Soho Digital Art gallery in New York City. In April 2011, after finding no central online resource for learning the art of iPhoneography, Nicki created iPhoneographyCentral.com. The website provides a place for both beginners and experts to share tips, techniques, and ideas via step-by-step tutorials.  Nicki now divides her time between her day job, family, the iPC website and iPhoneography. Her online gallery can be seen on iPhoneArt.com at: iphoneart.com/users/420/galleries.

Book preview

Introduction

The excitement of collage started for me with sticker books and fuzzy felt. The joy I felt as a child, unfolding the printed card background scene of a wild landscape and peeling the little zebras and rhinos from their backing, and sticking them on the scene in a location of my choosing was a wonderful way of immersing myself in my own little world. The limitations of these sticker sets compelled me to add my own creatures and plant life with crayon, pen, and pencil drawings, and so my foray into mixed-media began.

Fast forward from fuzzy felt and sticker books to five years of blissful life at art college studying Graphics and illustration at Chelsea School of Art in London. Here, I threw myself into experimentation, discovering a love of drawing, painting, printmaking, and collage leaving with a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design and a portfolio of mixed-media work, much of it abstract. Uncertain of its fit in the commercial illustration world, I noticed publishers tended to use more abstract works, particularly on book covers so I headed full-steam into the publishing and editorial world gradually acquiring a number of jobs illustrating magazine articles and book covers.

These paid jobs boosted my confidence and allowed my collage style, mixing vibrant inks with color and edgy photocopy lines, to flourish. I also learned to adapt my abstract work into representative shapes for commercial appeal. During this pre-internet era, public libraries became my treasure troves for suitable imagery. Hours were spent photocopying drawings, photographs, and textures from library books onto different types of paper. Once home, I painted the copies with luminous colored inks, cut them up, and arranged them into compositions for clients. I also began to pick up graphic design work.

I loved designing page layouts which resonated with my passion for creating collages and arranging elements on a page. I taught myself Adobe’s design and illustration applications and eventually transitioned from freelancing to a salaried position in a London advertising agency.

After several years in graphic design, I moved with my partner and son to the south coast of England. At this time, my work felt stale, and my creativity hit an all-time low until, one evening my partner, Bob, gave me an iPhone—not to make calls (of course), but to explore the artistic apps. This gift sparked a new creative adventure as I experimented with the apps, processing photos through filters, cutting them up, and creating little collages on the tiny screen wherever I went. My love for collage and experimentation was reignited, and I quickly moved on to the larger iPad screen and Procreate.

Joyfully, my digital collage world opened up again, and I haven’t stopped since. The beauty of creating collages on mobile devices is the freedom to use any photograph as material. It’s not limited to physical materials that one can pick up. Moreover, digital collages are inexpensive, with the convenience of the undo button, making creative endeavors mess-free and accessible anywhere you find yourself with your iPad or iPhone.

In writing this book, I tried to write the book I would have liked to have read at the beginning of my digital collage journey with Procreate and my iPad, trying to learn the digital equivalents of the tools, techniques, and joys of traditional collage making. In Procreate on the iPad, I found it all!

To get the most from these pages and for a more personally rewarding creative experience, I encourage you to use materials from your immediate environment. For inspiration, check out the interview pages of some of my favorite collage artists and the diversity of their collage approaches.

Best of all, in this book I want to share with you the joy of seeing the world with fresh eyes, of greeting each day with excitement as you allow your gaze to fall upon subjects that make your heart skip, and on returning home experiencing a second wave of excitement and discovery. For me, the biggest joy of all in the digital workflow is during the reviewing process as I rummage through my camera roll and decide which images to work with and bring to life in Procreate through editing. This is when the meaning is made and a new journey begins. I wish you luck on your journeys and can’t wait to see your adventures in the Facebook group which you can visit here: facebook.com/iphoneographyc

Nicki Fitz-Gerald

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Throughout the book, you will find exercises and projects that will help you collage anything in Procreate as well as encourage you to explore your own creativity using materials from your unique environment. Use the practice exercises throughout the book to learn a particular skill like cutting, coloring, or using masks or dive into one of the step-by-step projects in Chapter 5 to fine tune your skills, learn new techniques and create finished collages. Beginner digital collage artists, I suggest you work through the exercises in Chapter 1 to start collecting collage materials straight away and Chapter 2, Procreate Essentials to help you warm up and get to know the key tools for creating digital collage. This chapter is also a useful reference guide as you work through the step-by-step projects in Chapter 5. Finally, make sure you have fun experimenting working through the exercises in the Explore chapter which are designed to help you loosen up and take big steps in your Digital Procreate Adventure.

To follow the tutorials, set up your iPad using the following settings. Your settings may need adjusting if using only your finger.

Set up your iPad

Open Procreate, then Tap Actions (top-left), then Prefs and tap Gesture controls to open the settings panel. Adjust your settings as shown pages vi and vii. Please note that these settings work best for me using an Apple Pencil. If you are just using your finger you may have to adjust them.

Tools and Accessories

Capture: I use my iPhone to capture most of the collage materials seen in the images in this book. I also use a scanner for materials that need flattening. You can find out more about photographing and scanning materials in Chapter 1.

Create: I use an Apple Pencil and wear a drawing glove to do all of my iPad work. I work either on my lap with a cushion under the iPad or on my desk with the iPad either flat on the desk or supported by my glasses case. Microfiber cloths are great for keeping the screen clean.

Downloads and Resources

Throughout the book, I refer to the Downloadable Resources where you’ll find all of resources like color palettes, brush sets, and original photos used for the main projects in Chapter 5 together with resource file templates for many of the practice exercises. The Downloads and Resources page can be found at https://rockynook.com/collage/. To access the files, follow the instructions to log in and access the files and bonus projects.

On your iPad, click on the relevant resource you want. Follow the prompts to download the file and either import it directly into Procreate or download to your photos.

To import brushes and palettes tap the file you want to import, then select Procreate as the app.

Sharing and Support

I’d love to see your work in my Facebook group which you can find here: facebook.com/groups/iPhoneographyCentral. Share your work (in progress or completed) and get feedback from me and the other group members. Also, I know things can get tricky with the tech sometimes so please feel free to share any issues you’re having with your device or the app and I’ll be on hand to help. I also regularly post my process videos and tips in the group. I look forward to meeting you there.

Most of my collages are created from digital photos of everyday life, but I also like to mix it up with my analog collection of vintage materials, textures, and hand-painted papers.

CHAPTER 1

Forage for Collage

Collecting Materials and Inspiration

SEEING BEAUTY IN THE EVERYDAY: LEARNING TO LOOK

…there is a lot of pleasure to be had from looking more closely.

—DAVID HOCKNEY

One of my favorite parts of the creative process is gathering materials. It is as much fun and equally stimulating as creating the final collages.

I collect most of the materials for my digital collages through the lens of my iPhone, which means everything I take a photo of is potential collage material! I see the world as a big collage source library, abundant with texture, shape, color, line, and pattern—all full of creative promise. After taking one of my collage courses, a student excitedly exclaimed that she would never look at the drain in her road the same way again after discovering the creative possibilities that she could extract from the pattern on it. Before that, she had never really noticed it. There really is inspiration everywhere! You just need to look. Becoming a modern-day hunter-gatherer is an ongoing artistic skill that will help you develop your creative self as you start to make connections between your choices of imagery. You’ll begin to develop an eye for subjects that you can use not only for current collage projects but for collages you haven’t even imagined yet!

I think the artist has to be something like a whale, swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs. When he finds that, he can start to make limitations. And then he really begins to grow.

—ROMARE BEARDEN

Unless you have a very specific idea of what you want to collect, start collecting materials with an open mind and a view to narrowing your choices later on as you develop an interest in a particular subject or material. Once you start looking around you, you’ll start to notice creative possibilities on every surface your eye falls upon. It’ll be hard to get down the street without pulling your phone or camera out and snapping the peeling paint on an old door, the beautiful colors on a fallen leaf, the geometric patterns in everyday objects, the shape of the stranger silhouetted in the cafe, or the ornate lettering on an old sign. Whether you use your photographs as cutouts in a collage, texture overlays, or simply inspiration to kickstart a new artwork, it’s all good food for collage and mixed-media work. What’s more, it’s completely free!

The idea at this stage is to not think too much about what you choose to collect. Go with your gut, and trust your eyes to do the work of leading you towards undiscovered visual treasures. The more you hunt and gather images, the more attuned you will become to your surroundings, intuitively seeking out the images that you know have potential. Trust your eyes to find the gems in any environment.

When I leave my house, I always have my phone in my hand or my pocket ready for collage collection opportunities. Depending on the subject matter, for example, you might want to capture a close-up of the detail in a texture or the silhouette of birds on a wire, it’s helpful to master a few phone photography basics, which I’ll guide you through later in this chapter.

An exciting part of the collage making process is getting home and reviewing the captures. Looking at the images will stimulate your imagination as you explore the different shapes, colors, and textures in your photos. Often, I have found that a few of my images have inspired me to go out hunting again and set off a thought pattern that leads to a creative burst and sometimes a whole new series of artworks, like the Urban People Series below.

Sometimes your chosen materials, like an old handwritten letter or a photo of a misty day at the beach, might set the tone of the collage. By the end of the finished piece, however, they might become unrecognizable after serving their purpose of kickstarting your creativity.

Nicki editing with iPad.

NICKI FITZ-GERALD: URBAN PEOPLE SERIES

Looking through my photographs for inspiration one day, I realized I had taken lots of photos of people waiting outside shops, often with their dogs. I was drawn to these wonderful, everyday relaxed moments and began to experiment with them, redrawing the figures, removing the backgrounds, and adding new textures to enhance the mood yet still suggest the environment they inhabited.

Capturing collage material with an iPhone.

I created this collage from various photographs shot on my iPhone, including the figure, lettering from a sign, textures, patterns, buildings, and street furniture (the lamp post). The dog shape was torn out of the paper diary on my desk, then I scanned and added it as a final element in the scene.

I predominantly take photos of my environment for collage art, but it’s also fun to explore new connections with images from magazines, patterned papers, and books by cutting them up and reassembling them. Natasha Chomko and Julie Liger-Belair turn this into a beautiful art form in their rich colorful works. You can find out more about these artists work on pages 45 and 254.

Desert Mirage by Natasha Chomko

Russian Doll by Julie Liger-Belair

WHERE TO FIND MATERIALS

You can find collage materials and inspiration everywhere, but I encourage you to focus on photographing or scanning objects from your immediate environment. Drawing inspiration from everyday things around you will help develop your own unique style and make your art more personal and meaningful. Here are a couple of warm-up exercises to try that will help you look more closely at the collage material you already have right next to you!

EXERCISE 1.1

Train Your Eye to See

Wherever you are right now, take a moment to look around you. Is there anything that catches your eye? Perhaps the table you’re sitting at has a beautiful wood grain or mottled surface, or maybe there’s an old book or a scribbled note with some interesting lettering or marks. Perhaps the shirt or dress you’re wearing today has a gorgeous pattern or the light coming through the window is casting an interesting shadow on the wall. Spend a minute observing the things that you are drawn to and try to figure out what it is you like about what you see. Take three to six photos and try to capture a variety of shapes, colors, patterns, and textures.

EXERCISE 1.2

Practice Capturing Subjects

Pick one of the categories on the next two pages (Home, Street, and so on), and take at least six photographs in your chosen category–more is great, too. I’ve made a few subject suggestions in each category to help you get started. For example, you might find it easier to stick to a single subject theme, taking photos of just people, textures, or a particular color. Alternatively, you could mix it up a bit by capturing everything that catches your eye and resonates with you in some way, perhaps painted road markings, birds silhouetted on a rooftop, or a patch of light on the ground.

Don’t worry too much about taking the perfect picture (though you could dip into the next section if you need a few tips). The goal is to get you looking more closely and for longer at the wonderful rich image resource you already have around you, and noticing the beauty in everyday things and to begin your journey of developing your unique artistic view on the world.

Home

Collage starts at home. Your home is a great place to start foraging for collage materials, especially if you’re new to photographing collage subjects with your phone or need some practice with your camera. If you are not used to taking lots of photographs, you’ll feel more comfortable practicing in a familiar environment before you step out into the street. (If you need some photography tips, take a look at page 11.) Look around for things with interesting patterns: photographs, newspapers, magazines, postcards, letters, shopping lists, old wallpaper, calendars, carpets, textured curtains, old tiles, peeling paint, tissue paper, shoeboxes.

Street

Take a walk on the street. Look up and down to find some real treasures.

Parks and Open Spaces

Whether you have a park nearby or live out in the country, take a closer look at green spaces or brown spaces or the interplay between.

Thrift Stores

Thrift stores (or charity shops as we call them here in the UK) are full of treasures: old books, maps, magazines, retro patterns on clothes, crockery decoration, tea towels, and more. I guarantee you will leave the store with a head full of inspiration.

Handmade Materials

Handmade materials look wonderful in digital collages. I have a small desk in my studio where I do all my wet work, dripping inks on paper, making small paper collages, and generally having fun experimenting with ink, paint, pastels, and paper. I often photograph the results with my iPhone and store the photo in my artworks photo library for a future collage. If you don’t have the space or time to do this, you could photograph handmade papers and fabrics bought from paper and craft stores or download images from sites like Pixabay.com or Unsplash.com.

Purchased Materials

I believe that taking your own photos and using materials that mean something to you to create your art is the best approach for developing a more personal style resulting in greater creative satisfaction. For example, I always save patterned wrapping paper and bags. If you don’t have a ready supply of colored and patterned papers, you can, of course, find a huge variety of wonderful decorative and patterned papers in craft, art, and stationery supply shops locally and online.

EXERCISE 1.3

Create an Everyday Life Collage

Below are some everyday life collages I made using photographs of objects lying around my house and garden. I imported each of the photos into Procreate, cut them out using the Selection tools, then moved each element around until all the colors and shapes looked balanced. I added some scribbles and marks here and there too.

Give it a try! If you’re eager to make your first digital collage, creating an everyday life collage is a great place to start. You should already have some photos if you’ve been working through the exercises in this chapter. (If you need help with importing, cutting, and moving photos, see Chapter 2.)

CAPTURING MATERIAL FOR DIGITAL ART

In this section you’ll learn some photography basics about camera settings and lighting. I’ll also share my approach for photographing different subjects, particularly outdoors where I capture most of my collage material. Plus, we’ll also take a closer look at some photographs and consider their potential uses for collage material.