I am pretty sure folks around here are sick and tired of me opining about how Procreate already allows you to draw perspectives and straight lines without any fancy schmancy specialty tools... but it occurs to me that the Power of the Transform Side is not apparent.
So I thought it might be useful to put together a longish mutlilobed tutorial covering How I use these tools in basic linework... in hope that others will find it inspiring of their own workflows and methods.
Here then, is the challenge... I am going to lay out a perfect perspective layout and its only going to take a few minutes. To make it interesting, I am going to set it up with Vanishing Points Outside of the canvas.
Start with your Horizon Line
I won't bother explaining the fundamentals about perspective layout... like why horizon line determines whether a view is Superior or Inferior... this is just an example of my process and how Procreates tools apply to the task at hand.
In the brushes I have a bunch of custom brushes I made... shapes of various sizes... and straight line brushes of various weights.
I begin with my Fine Line brush and draw my horizon line- this brush lays down a very fine line ( depending on size slider setting ) But in a pattern... that is, not always where your finger first hits the screen. It takes a little playing with to get used to the fact that you sometimes have to hunt a little to figure out where the pattern is onscreen.
Then I duplicate this layer with the horizon line and use transform to fatten it up a lot. I want the fine line for when I start actually drawing on my perspective grid, but the Fat line is going to be necessary to the steps that follow.
[C1.jpg]
Lay In a Vanishing Point & Lower Left Lines
Now create a new layer.
Ironically, to get your horizontal receding lines you need to start with lines that are vertical. This is because key to making sure each line defines the same amount of depth is that each line cuts the bottom of the image plane at an equal distance from its fellows.
Luckily... the Straight line brushes do not just draw one line... but a pattern of equally spaced lines, with the weight of the line and spacing variable via the size slider.
So, picking the Bold Line brush, and turning my iPad on its side, I swipe my finger down the screen to test the line spacing... I want enough lines to give me a nice grid... but not so many that its hard to make them out... I can undo and adjust the size slider and try again until I see a spacing I like....
Then I undo the satisfactory swipe and Mow the Lawn; that is, draw across the entire screen surface with one long uninterrupted stroke. ( I usually draw the perimeter of the screen first, which shows me where each line will run, and concentrate my stroke on the areas where the line pattern is coming in.)
And, yes... for reasons that will become clear, you Want these lines nice and fat.
Once I have that layer, I duplicate it a few times, turning off the duplicates and activating the one I leave visible.
[C2.jpg]
Now Zoom way out... you will find that the grid on the background stays the same size and that you can zoom the canvas in relation to that grid. You want to adjust the canvas such that the distance between your horizon line and the bottom edge of the canvas is an even number of grids, with both horizon and bottom edge right on a grid line.
Light your Transform tool and make sure the Magnet is on. Hold your finger on the right top handle until it says "distort"... then smoothly drag the handle all the way over until it makes a point with the leftmost handle.
[C3.jpg]
Its very important to do all of this work in a single transform operation, because exiting transform and re-entering it will re-square the handles and change how the transform tool affects the lines...
Now that you have the lines converging to a point, with one finger drag your transform selection to place that point even with your horizon line and an even number of grid lines over to the left. In this case 4 squares over. This way, at a later time, you can always zoom out, line up your bottom edge and horizon at the spacing you originally set in the last step, and know the VP is an even 4 squares over from there.
Once you have set the VP, you can now zoom way out, so that you can drag the bottom center handle up to match the canvas' bottom edge... and then drag the lower right handle WAY over, to fill the ground plane with lines that accurately recede to your Left VP.
[C4.jpg]
Now for the lines on the Sky plane. Turn on and activate another copy of your vertical line layer.
Zoom back out and make sure your scale and position lines up to 6 even squares from bottom edge to horizon.
Light the Transform tool and drag the corner over to a point... then, again, position that point even with the horizon and 4 squares over to match the VP set when you did the ground plane lines.
Then zoom way out and drag the right corner way over.
This time, note where the background grid hits the bottom edge of the canvas. You can use this as a vertical ruler to eyeball where the ground plane lines cut the canvas edge.
Drag the sky plane lines right handle until you get the same alignment of lines to background grid.
Exit transform, and Merge the left VP Ground and Sky lines.... because the transform thins out the far lines pretty drastically ( which is why we started with such fat lines to begin with ) I like to duplicate this layer a few times and merge them... sometimes setting the top one to multiply... just to make sure the lines are dark and present.
[C5.jpg]
But Dang... those fat lines are kinda objectionable... what we really want is really fine precise lines.
So our next step is to duplicate our left VP lines layer... ( for clarity's sake, I then flipped the alpha lock and filled the layer with orange, just so you could see the next step easier... but this step is not necessary )
I then light the transform on this duplicate layer and tap at the left edge of the screen two times. This nudges the orange lines 2 pixels to the left.
Now open the layers menu and choose "Select layer contents". Turn off the duplicate layer and activate the original layer.
Do a three finger downward swipe to bring up the clipping menu and pick "Cut"
TaDa! Very nice, finely ruled lines receding perfectly to your left VP.
[C6.jpg]
If your perspective layout is symmetrical, then all you have to do is duplicate this layer, and use transform to flip it horizontally and you are done. Turn off the fat horizon line we relied on for visibility when zoomed out, to reveal your first, fine horizon line.
[C7.jpg]
Alas! What if My Composition Needs Asymmteric VPs?
Ah... then you simply do what you did for the left, on the right.... picking a different location for your VP...
[C8.jpg]
Here's what it looks like when the right VP is just barely on the canvas.
[C9.jpg]
But, That's Not Precise Enough! I Need to Be Able to Measure the Lines!
So I exited Procreate and opened InkPad.
I created a square canvas and drew on it a black square larger than the canvas.
I drew a white line across the center of the black square and tuned on a grid snap to draw 9 perfectly placed vertical lines of various sizes and weights.
I exported this to my Photos app.
The whole Inkpad process took me exactly 3 minutes.
I re-opened Procreate, and opened my brushes, duplicating one of my line brushes. I replaced the Grain source with the image I exported out of InkPad, and renamed the brush "ruler".
Now, I can draw a ruler at just about any scale, anywhere I want.
[C10.jpg]
I can draw a ruler on its own layer, and place it at screen bottom.
Now I can use this to make sure that my grid lines both left and right have the same spacing where they cut the bottom of the image area.
[C11.jpg]
All tolled, it took me about 10 minutes to layout this perspective grid- not including the few minutes I spent in Inkpad making a new Ruler brush.
I could have done it faster if I wasn't stopping so often to do a screen capture.
Stay tuned... more to come.
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