r/ProCreate: The Hub for iPad Artists Worldwide

r/ProCreate is the internet's largest dedicated community for users of Procreate, the wildly popular iPad drawing and painting application that has transformed mobile digital art. With over 700,000 members, the subreddit serves as a central hub for sharing Procreate artwork, exchanging custom brushes, discussing techniques, troubleshooting issues, and celebrating the creative possibilities of iPad-based art creation.

Procreate has democratized digital art by putting a professional-quality painting application on a device that millions of people already own. The r/ProCreate community reflects this democratization—members range from professional illustrators who use Procreate as their primary creative tool to complete beginners who downloaded the app on a whim and discovered a passion for digital art.

What Makes This Community Valuable

Brush Sharing

One of the community's most popular activities is sharing custom Procreate brushes. Members create and distribute free brush sets that replicate traditional media, create unique digital effects, or optimize workflows for specific illustration styles. These community-created brushes significantly expand Procreate's already impressive brush library.

Technique Discovery

Members regularly share process breakdowns, technique tips, and workflow optimizations that help other Procreate users work more efficiently and achieve better results. Tips on layer management, blend modes, selection techniques, and the app's less-obvious features provide practical value that the official documentation doesn't always cover.

Inspiration Feed

The high volume of daily artwork posts creates a continuous stream of creative inspiration spanning every conceivable style and subject. Seeing what other artists achieve with the same tool you use is both inspiring and educational—revealing possibilities and techniques you might never discover on your own.

App Updates and News

When Procreate releases updates, the community provides immediate, detailed analysis of new features, performance changes, and workflow implications. This crowd-sourced evaluation is often more useful than official release notes because it reflects how real artists experience the changes in their actual creative practice.

The Custom Brush Economy

The brush-sharing culture on r/ProCreate has created an informal economy of free creative resources that dramatically extends the app's capabilities. Community members create brush sets that simulate specific traditional media—oil paint, watercolor, charcoal, colored pencil, ink wash—with a fidelity that often surpasses Procreate's default brush library. Specialized brush sets for lettering, comic inking, texture creation, foliage painting, hair rendering, and dozens of other specific applications are shared freely, giving every community member access to tools that would cost significant money from commercial brush creators.

The quality of community-created brushes is often exceptional. Talented brush creators develop sophisticated pressure curves, texture patterns, and blend behaviors that produce genuinely professional results. Popular brush sets are tested by hundreds of artists and refined based on community feedback, creating a collaborative development process that produces tools optimized for real-world creative use.

iPad Art Workflow Optimization

r/ProCreate serves as the internet's most comprehensive resource for iPad art workflow optimization. Members share detailed explanations of Procreate's gesture controls, layer management strategies, canvas size and DPI recommendations for different output needs, color management approaches, and the file export settings that produce the best results for different purposes (print, web, social media, animation).

Advanced workflow discussions cover animation capabilities, 3D model painting, time-lapse export settings, reference image management, and integration with other iPad apps like Affinity Photo and Vectornator. These practical workflow tips help artists extract maximum creative capability from their iPad setups.

Hardware Discussions

The community frequently discusses iPad hardware decisions relevant to Procreate users: which iPad models offer the best performance-to-value ratio for digital art, whether the iPad Pro's larger screen justifies the price premium over iPad Air, how different Apple Pencil generations compare for drawing feel, and which screen protectors provide the best paper-like drawing texture without sacrificing display quality.

These hardware discussions are particularly valuable for artists considering their first iPad purchase for creative work. The community's collective experience with different hardware configurations provides more reliable guidance than marketing materials or general tech reviews that don't evaluate devices specifically for creative use.

Beginner Support

r/ProCreate is notably welcoming to beginners who are discovering digital art for the first time through Procreate. The app's accessibility makes it many people's first digital art tool, and the community recognizes this by maintaining a supportive culture where basic questions receive patient, detailed answers. Beginner artwork is encouraged and celebrated, creating an environment where new digital artists feel comfortable sharing their first experiments without fear of harsh criticism.

Regular "how did they do that?" threads, where members ask about techniques visible in posted artwork, create educational conversations that benefit beginners and intermediate users alike. These threads reveal the specific Procreate features, brush settings, and techniques behind impressive artwork, demystifying the creative process and making professional-looking results feel achievable.

The Bottom Line

r/ProCreate is essential for anyone who uses Procreate. Its combination of artwork sharing, free custom brush resources, workflow optimization tips, hardware guidance, beginner support, and active community discussion makes the iPad art experience richer, more productive, and more connected than working in isolation. Whether you're a professional illustrator optimizing your iPad workflow or a complete beginner exploring digital art for the first time, r/ProCreate provides the resources and community support that enhance every aspect of the Procreate experience.