Procreate comes with a variety of standard brushes that you can use to create digital art. Here are some of the most commonly used Procreate brushes and how to use them.

1. HB Pencil and 6B Pencil: HB and 6B are both free pencils choices from Procreate. What’s the difference? The two pencil brushes vary in hardness as in real life. H stands for Hard and B for Black. So HB already tells you that is a Hard Black pencil. The B as we said stands for black, lucking an H in-front of its code, B6 implies it’s not a hard pencil. It is most commonly used for sketching and up to this day is my favourite pencil sketching brush: another add to the quick menu. But if you make more detailed technical drawings I am sure you will fall in love with HB. After you create your first sketch you may want to ink it. That’s brings us to Ink Brushes.
2. Studio Pen: This brush is perfect for creating smooth, flowing lines. It’s great for calligraphy and lettering, but not only, you can use it to draw outlines and is my favourite ink brush in doing so. So favourite indeed that I have stored it to the quick menu. Ink Bleed and Dry ink are also great choices but fit better with chalk lettering or grudge type of line art due to their rough edges. I would recommend them for black board where they can serve as chalk type brushes and with a great success. The Syrup brush follows more the calligraphy principles as it strokes becomes heavier as you press the brush, but testing it with lettering I was not pleased. Perhaps it can do better with line art if you wish for variety at the strokes.
3. Ready to spill some color? Ok…apart from the common practice where you can drag and drop color on your canvas, there is also the option to paint it. And here we go to the Painting Category. Now this category is very interesting but its also a bit more progressed. Why? Because most of the brushes here have a watercolour effect. What does that mean? That when overlapping the areas they create are darker from the areas which are not overlapped. Wet acrylic is a nice option if you don’t wish for overlapping effects, also Nico Pull for solid backgrounds.
4. The Drawing Category is easier: Few of the brushes you will love adding color with are the Blackburn (nice solid brush), Freycinet, and Gloaming. In this category transparency is not so much of a matter as the texture is. So you can study a bit these if you are interested in painting your designs.
5. Shadows: Soft Airbrush is the King here. This brush is great for creating soft, smooth gradients. It’s perfect for adding depth and dimension to your artwork.
6. Smudge: another favourite Soft blend will do it every time.

If you are new in Procreate these brushes are going to cover you for a long time. And even later you may come to them again and again. I must admit that the Procreate team did a great job here doing brushes that will remain classic.

You can search our freebie section for our 70 procreate brushes made by me to help with your creative projects. They are totally free.