While Procreate App has a pretty cool Quick Shape function which helps you to create perfect lines, circles, squares, and triangles, there isn’t a Quick Shape for a teardrop or rain drop. In this post, I’ll show you how to create a teardrop in Procreate.
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What is The Procreate Quick Shape?
While Procreate App has a pretty cool Quick Shape Function which helps you to create perfect shapes including lines, circles, squares, and triangles, there isn’t a QuickShape for a teardrop or rain drop. In this post, I’ll show you how to create a teardrop in Procreate.
What is Quick Shape in Procreate?
QuickShape is a function in Procreate in which you can draw an object and then hold your pencil on the screen until that shape snaps into place as a perfect shape. The Quick Shape tool in Procreate can create:
- lines
- arcs
- polylines
- ellipses
- triangles
- quadrilaterals
You can also create a perfect square, circle, triangle and vertical or horizontal straight line in Procreate by holding your finger on the screen while using QuickShape.
This is so useful, especially if you’re not great at drawing a straight line.
But some shapes are left out. While you can create complex shapes like cogs, teardrops, stars and the like in programs like Illustrator, it isn’t as easy in Procreate.
In this post I’m going to show you how to create a teardrop in Procreate using Quick Shape, Symmetry and Drawing Assist. Sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.
You can follow along in this video I created for you:
How To Create a Teardrop Shape in Procreate
To make a teardrop shape I’m going to use a combination of Quick Shape and Symmetry. First, I’m going to draw a circle with the Monoline Brush. You’ll see that my circle isn’t perfect. When I hold my finger on the screen while keeping my pen on the screen after closing the circle, it will create a perfect circle.
Alternatively, I can just hold my pen on the screen and wait for it to snap into a circle-like shape and then select edit shape at the top of the screen and select circle.
Sometimes it doesn’t give you the option to select circle. If that happens, you may need to redraw your circle and make it a little more round 🙂
Turn on Symmetry with Drawing Guide
The next thing you’ll want to do is to turn on the drawing guide and make sure it is set to horizontal symmetry with assisted drawing.
Go to the wrench icon on the top left hand corner of your screen. Select canvas and then toggle on Drawing Guide.
Next, select Edit Drawing Guide.
Select the button Symmetry and then choose Options.
Make sure vertical is selected. You should see a line down the center of your canvas. If you don’t, you can adjust the color and thickness of that line so you can see it better. Select done.
The first thing you want to do is to go to your circle layer and align your circle to this line. Use the selection tool to move your circle so that the line goes through the center. I find the easiest way to do this is to align the little green dots with that line.
Now, create a new layer and click on the title on the layer menu. A menu will pop up. In that menu, select assisted drawing.
Hint: you want to create a new layer for this to make it easier to erase lines from your lines and your circle without having to worry about messing each other up.
Selecting drawing assist on the layer will make it so that what you draw on one side of the screen will also be drawn on the other side, kind of like a mirror.
To create your teardrop shape, draw a line from the side of the circle up to the line and, using the Quick Shape Function, hold your pencil on the screen until your line snaps into a perfectly straight line. I tend to start beyond my circle so I can adjust the line later.
While your Apple Pencil is still on the screen, adjust your lines to meet in a point.
Now you can select “Edit Shape Button” at the top of the screen to adjust your lines by moving the blue dots. Try to move your line in a way that it looks like a smooth transition between the circle and the line. It should not have any corners and should not show a thickening of the line where they meet.
This may take a few tries before you get it right. If you need to, you can hide your line layer and create a new layer with drawing assist and try again. (Ask me how I know haha).
Use The Eraser Tool
Next, use the eraser tool to erase the parts of the line and circle that you don’t need. Since they are on different layers, this is pretty easy to do.
Now you have a teardrop shape!
Merge Your Layers
To make your circle and lines into one shape, you can merge your layers. You can do this either by pinching the layers together or by selecting the top layer and clicking on the title and selecting merge down.
Once you merge your layers you have one shape that you can move around, change the size of and do whatever else you wish to do with it.
Adjusting Your Teardrop
If your teardrop didn’t end up the way you wanted to or if you want it to be a little off center, you can adjust your teardrop shape using either the selection tool or liquify.
Using the Selection Tool
First, duplicate your layer so that you can keep the original. Hide your original layer.
Next, select the layer you’re going to adjust and then press the selection tool (arrow on upper left side of the screen). At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a new menu pop up.
This menu has several options, including uniform, freeform, distort, and warp. All can be used to change your teardrop.
Uniform allows you to change the size of your teardrop while keeping it in proportion. This allows you to make it bigger or smaller while maintaining the same shape.
With freeform you can change the size or shape of your teardrop by touching and dragging the blue dots around it. For instance, if you pull out one of the blue dots on the side, you’ll make your teardrop fatter.
Distort allows you to distort your object, making it go sort of wonky and diagonal. It also allows you to put the teardrop on a plane so it looks like it is laying down.
The warp tool is the one you would use if you want to adjust it so that it goes a little off center. When you select warp you’ll see a little grid over your teardrop. You can use the cross sections of the grid to move different parts of your teardrop.
With the warp tool you can move the point in any way you’d like. You can also change the shape of the circle.
Using the Liquify Tool
Another way you can distort your shape is to use the liquify tool.
Go up to your magic wand and then select liquify.
You’ll see quite a few settings there. I recommend playing around with them. This is not going to be as precise as using the selection tool, but it might be a little more fun 🙂
To make your teardrop fatter, you might use the expand tool. You can then adjust the weight of your line with the edge tool.
Reset your teardrop to go back to the beginning. Try using the push tool to push your lines around to get them where you want them. You can adjust the size and pressure to make the effect stronger or weaker.
You can also use the twirl function to twirl your teardrop a bit.
The liquify tool is always a fun option for changing your design. If you use a brush that has pressure sensitivity to draw your lines, you can use the expand tool to try to expand your line to be more consistent. That’s what I did when I created my teardrop brush with a watercolor brush.
Reusing Your Teardrop
I hope you found this helpful! Since it is a bit tedious to make this teardrop, you may wish to keep your original somewhere that you can find it later. There are a few of ways you could do this.
Export as a PNG
First, you could save your original as a PNG and export it (with a transparent background) to a folder where you can find it later and then import it if you need it. If you’re a super organized person, this might be a great option!
The problem with this option is that you cannot increase the size of the teardrop when you import it into a project because it will become pixelated and blurry.
To combat this, you could make the teardrop larger than you think you’d ever need when making it and before exporting it.
Save It and Copy and Paste it Later
You could always save it in your canvas and then if you ever need it in the future, you could go back into your project and then do a copy paste of the layer (without the background) and move it over into a new project.
This has the same issues as exporting it as a PNG. You’ll want to be organized so you can find the project later and you’ll also need to pay attention to the size of your teardrop when you create it.
Make a Brush Stamp
If you think you’ll use the teardrop shape again and don’t want to go through the process of creating it, you could make it into a brush stamp! It’s super simple, especially if you already have a brush stamp in your collection that you could just duplicate.
To help you, I’ve created a brush stamp of my teardrop that you can download and use as is, or change to your own teardrop. You could even duplicate it several times and make different versions of brush stamps out of the distorted teardrops we made!
I created a bunch of different ones by doing exactly that. All you have to change it the shape and the title.
Sign up to get my Procreate teardrop brush stamps here!
If you have a brush stamp that you already like how it functions, you can select that brush stamp in your brush library and and swipe it to the left and duplicate it.
Then, go into the brush settings of your new brush by selecting it in your brush library, then tap it again to see the brush settings.
To change the brush into your teardrop shape, first select shape on the left hand menu.
Then, in the middle menu (in landscape mode) at the top you’ll see the word Shape Source and then Edit (a button next to the word Shape Source).
Select Edit.
On the new menu that appears, select import. Select Paste. Since we drew our teardrop in black on a white canvas, make sure that you two finger tap on your teardrop when it shows up on the screen so that it switches to be a white teardrop on a black canvas.
This is important for a brush stamp. If it already shows it on a black canvas, you can skip this step.
Select done in the upper right hand corner and then select done again. (If you want to change the name of your brush, select “About This Brush” and change the name at the top of the screen above the “made by” section. Then select done.
You now have your brush stamp! You can make this bigger or smaller just like you would any other brush. You can also change the color. (Learn how you can create your own color palette in Procreate with an image). Pretty fun.
If you want to learn how to create a brush stamp form scratch, check out my Skillshare course on organizing your Procreate brushes. In there I teach how to create brush stamp titles for your brush library and go through all of the necessary settings for creating a brush stamp.