If you’re anything like me, you LOOOVVEEE using Procreate to lay out your calligraphy pieces before penning with ink. However, as I quickly found out that just hitting “print” directly in Procreate does not produce the right size document to trace. Keep reading to learn how to print from procreate the easy way!
Why use Procreate at all for calligraphy?
When I first began doing calligraphy, I exclusively used brush pens, and ultimately pointed pen and ink. For several months I struggled with laying out my compositions. Unfortunately, my perfectionist inner voice reared its ugly head and cause me to spend hours erasing pencil sketched and rewriting; only to ultimately erase again and again. This got old very quickly…
I was talking about this with another sweet lettering friend one day, and she said, “Well, why don’t you consider getting an iPad and using Procreate?” I knew less than nothing about it, but I figured if it would help, then I would try! I got my iPad for Christmas that year, and haven’t looked back!
So What’s The Problem?
Procreate has been such fun! I originally used it to lay out my compositions, but have fallen in love with digital watercolor as well! However, this learning process has not come without challenges– one of the main being how to actually get the piece from Procreate to print!
Like I mentioned in the intro, unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as choosing print and having a piece that is workable. Exporting artwork as a JPG, PNG or PDF and printing directly from the iPad yields a piece that is the incorrect size for tracing. For example, a 5×7-sized canvas will print much larger than a 5×7 size on paper- therefore, making it impractical for tracing.
As you can see from the photos above, the 5×7 sized canvas has printed so large, making it impossible to trace.
How to Print From Procreate in a Way That Works!!
Thankfully, there’s a quick and easy solution to this! All we need to do is export our canvas as a PDF, and then transfer this to a computer to print. I have a mac, so I’m able to airdrop the files between my two devices, which is very handy. But, you should be able to accomplish this with any OS.
As you can see, the PDF printed directly from the iPad (the paper on the top) did not print to scale; however, the PDF printed from the computer did. The sheet of paper on top is the size of the completed commission, so we can see that this is workable for our project!
As you can see, with a few quick tweaks, we are easily able to print a file that can be traced with pen and ink to create a beautiful finished product!
Rather Watch Than Read?
Check out the full video tutorial on YouTube!
I’ve also included a free traceable if you would like to follow along! Download yours here.
Thank you so much for reading and watching. Did you give this a try? If so, let me know in the comments! Please feel free to drop me a note with any questions or suggestions for future posts & videos!
If you’re looking for more pointed pen tutorials, check out this section of the blog. Thanks again for reading and I hope to see you soon!
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