Illustrator Nuomi is renowned for his street scenes that brim with life – they form the basis of his brand of digital art that brings art and viewers closer than ever. Here, he shares four of his favourite Procreate tips to help you take your first steps in your creative journey.

Before you draw your first line, it’s useful to establish a few personalised shortcuts to your favourite Procreate functions.

Select any brush and use Brush Studio > Colour Dynamics to set hue, saturation and brightness values that determine how much your brush colour will vary based on your pen pressure.

Assigning elements to different layers keeps them from interfering with each other and simplifies lighting treatment.

On the Layers Panel, tap the letter next to a layer to open a menu of Blend Mode options, which you can group into three categories for easy reference:

Shadows: use Multiply – the darker the colour, the deeper the shadow.

Lighting: use Lighten, Add or Screen – white adds brightness.

Special lighting: use Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light – these work best for localised colouring such as neon signs.

So many everyday objects are symmetrical in some way, and Procreate makes recreating them in your artwork a breeze.

The magic of symmetries means you don’t have to line up corresponding locations when you’re working on patterned totems. Just select a symmetry mode and start work on one localised area – the symmetric regions will fill in automatically, so you won’t have to stress over the alignment.