How to use Procreate with Illustrator: convert your digital drawings to vector

Are you wondering how you can use the power of Adobe Illustrator with the artistic creativity of Procreate?

If you’re a die-hard vector fan (like me) that loves Adobe Illustrator, you might be wondering how you could use Procreates’ raster digital drawings in your workflow, and still maintain the vector-based flexibility. The great news is, you can!

Procreate is one of the best drawing apps out there, but it has limitations when it comes to enlarging artwork.

If you sell on platforms like Society 6 or Redbubble you’ll know that large format artwork is king when if comes to quality and printing onto items like shower curtains and wall art. Illustrator allows for infinite scaling and is often much easier to edit, recolour and adjust artwork, making it a go-to app many artists prefer.

But what if you really love the hand drawn look in your work and all the amazing arty brushes that Procreate offers?

Since discovering how to successfully integrate Procreate into my vector work which helps me retain a hand drawn look, it has become an essential tool that saves me hours. Not only can Procreate add a new dimension to your work, it’s proven to be a great partner to Illustrator resulting in an authentic hand-drawn quality in less time.

This is my second Skillshare course which now available on my teaching platform Learn with Lisa for those who don’t have a Skillshare membership!

In this class I’ll take you through a step-by-step workflow I use to create my vector drawings. You’ll learn time-saving tips and techniques that you can integrate into your creative process, and use Procreate more effectively in your work that’s 100% vector.

Here’s what you’ll learn in the class:

  • How Procreate can add texture and dimension to your vector work
  • A simple workflow you can adapt to fit your style and work
  • Why there’s no need to buy additional Procreate brushes for great results
  • The best texture settings for Image Trace in Illustrator
  • Techniques you can apply to any vector project!

Hope to see you in class!


PS. If you’ve been thinking about getting a Skillshare membership you can sign up using my Teachers link and get 2 months absolutely free! Whoohoo!


6 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Hi Lisa, Do you have any tips for taking hand lettering pieces from Procreate to Illustrator? Would we follow similar steps as shown in this class?

    Reply
    • Avatar

      Hi Claudia,

      Yes you can definitely use the same steps. The main points to remember is the size of the Procreate doc needs to be fairly large at 300dpi to get the best trace results in Adobe Illustrator. Also, the brush/texture in Procreate used has a role in the final trance results. This takes a bit of experimenting and finding the right brush and settings for your work. Hope that helps!

      Reply
      • Avatar

        Yes, this definitely helps, thanks Lisa!

        Reply
  2. Avatar

    Hi Lisa,

    I’ve bookmarked this course but I’m wondering if I can follow the same instruction from you while using Affinity Designer? Or if you have any suggestions for those of us using AD instead of AI? I understand if not, just thought I’d ask.

    Reply
    • Avatar

      Hi Emily, Thank you so much for your interest in my course! Unfortunately Affinity doesn’t have the ability to trace an image (as far as I know), and then convert it to vector. The course is mainly based on using your raster/pixel-based images and then image tracing them to convert to vector. With Adobe Illustrator the settings for the image trace allow you to pick up all the grungy hand drawn imperfections which retains that hand drawn look. I’m not aware of another app that does the auto-trace and vector conversion so in short, unfortunately you would need Adobe Illustrator to auto-trace the images imported from Procreate. Hope that answers your question. If you have any other questions at all, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

      Reply
  3. Avatar

    thanks for sharing, since I don’t have a ipad so i can’t use procreate.
    I use photoshop and illustrator on my winodows laptop.
    It’s easier to do drafts and sketch in photoshop and then bring into illustrator to make a vector art of it.
    I use a XP-Pen ( https://www.xp-pen.com ) drawing tablet for everything (don’t have a mouse)…but I am in the vast minority.

    Reply

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