PETE SONGI - TESTING THE WATERS

A common question when I meet new cartoonists at events these days is “so, do you ever use Procreate?”

I used to approach these conversations with a bit of trepidation, from a fear of imagined scorn or of being labelled some sort of cartooning outcast. 

“Procreate you say? Pah! Be gone with you!”

Nowadays however it seems everybody’s doing it; out and proud and without fear of repercussions. I first started on this digital addiction at the start of the pandemic. At a loose end and with white paper seeming increasingly blank I was in need of a reboot. Along came Martin Rowson’s Twitter ‘Draw’ challenges, and suddenly there was a reason to commit what was in mind to the page. But hang on! All that scanning, rubbing out, wasting ink...surely there was another way? That’s when, as per usual on these occasions, Mrs Songi stepped in with a suggested solution.  “Have you thought of an iPad?” An interview with the great Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid fame) had stuck in her mind.  Jeff had never looked back it seemed.

So I decided what’s good for Jeff is good for me and off I went online, bank card in hand. A bit of research quickly led me to the Procreate App and before I knew it I was staring, not at blank piece of paper but a blank computer screen. And I thought it was going to be easy. #LOL

I started life with crayons, progressed to felt tips, had a brief pencil and paint period and then found myself settled in rather expensive pigment black ink pens and pantone markers. The beauty of Procreate is that  it has all of these and more, so your initial period is not drawing but instead testing  out its myriad functions, which can feel slightly overwhelming. But what are the real positives and negatives to digital v mucky hands?

PROS

With Procreate you have no need for a rubber, you have a choice of pretty much every known brush or tip with the choice of any colour in the rainbow, and you can zoom right in, create specific palettes, work in layers and export instantly to email and social media, or Air Drop to devices. This means your speed of finishing a project is given a considerable boost. You also have access to extras like instant video capture of what you”ve just drawn and the ability to create simple animations . As it’s digital you have a very similar range of tools available to that of Photoshop  to enhance your image, and I personally loving using a bit of ‘smudge’ to create some nice shadow effects.

Costswise the app will currrently set you back £12.99 as a one-off payment, which is very cheap considering what you have access to and obviously there is no need to hit Cass Art or Graphic Centres for endless refills or paper grabs. Finally, there is the beauty of freedom, as you are not tied to a desk. I might start something in my studio space, continue it on the sofa and maybe finish it down the pub (with good wifi obviously!). So if it’s this good, why are we still cutting down all those trees?

CONS

Do you EVER shake off that “dirty’ feeling of “I haven’t produced a one-off masterpiece and I I’ll never have those artistically mucky hands”?  I’m not sure. Legitimacy and the ability to sell an ‘original’ can be non-negotiable for some.

You don’t have to charge a paint brush! I find if I’m doing a big piece the iPad will probably slip 45% and the iPencil likewise, so it’s always best to keep up to around 90% at all times to effectively charge when you are not using it.

You can be caught out.   On one of my brief moments on The Guardian approaching the deadline, everything went blank. I had to work for the remaining time plugged in, which is not ideal.  

There’s  also that nagging feeling of ‘what if the iPad breaks?’   A  bit like a wedding ring in ht lead-up to the ceremony, you have to treat it like your life depends on it. Therefore the  cost and outlay of the iPad also needs to be taken into consideration.  An affordable app, yes! But £300 at least for the hardware.

EXPERIMENT

So we like the shiny iPad with its fancy app and we also like the warm fuzzy feeling of producing cartoons the traditional way, but which is better?

There’s only one way to find out... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFIGHT!

Or I could just do an experiment using one cartoon and come to some sort of informed conclusion and avoid a TV Burp face off.

Below is our old PM Rishi in a toon that’s hopefully self-explanatory, and inlcudes some common themes such as a familiar character, water, skin, clothing and light.  I’ve created it on an iPad, painted it on Oxford paper, and finally I’ve painted it on board.

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... THE EXPERIMENT

PROCREATE

This image took 25 minutes to produce.

After sketching out the image using a digital watercolour pencil. I created three layers; the first for the black outline, below that the character colour and below that the background.

You can view the whole process on the time-lapse video

Opposite, another handy feature of procreate!