Textured Motifs - Adobe Illustrator vs. Procreate & Adobe Fresco

Feb 10

I’ve just published a new Skillshare class that’s all about textured motifs and patterns. This topic was a wish from many of my lovely students and I’m so happy to be able to share this with you. In this class you’ll learn 3 different techniques of how to create textured motifs and patterns. We’ll use Adobe Illustrator and for those of you who have an iPad I’ll teach you how to draw textured motifs in both Procreate and Adobe Fresco and vectorise them in Illustrator to build your pattern. As I’ve worked with all three techniques to create this class, I though that I would share my thoughts on this and which of the techniques I prefer.

Here’s a short pro and con list of the 3 techniques.

Draw motifs & add texture in Adobe Illustrator

+ You can draw your own handmade textures and vectorise them, which can give you a unique look and feel to your artwork.

- When you add textures to your motifs in Adobe Illustrator there’s a chance that you’ll get a “rough” look, rather then a smooth texturised look.

Draw motifs & add texture in Procreate

+Procreate is really intuitive and it’s such a versatile app as you can add any kind of Procreate brushes to your library, that really suits your style and need.

-The learning curve to learn how to use Procreate can be steep, as it’s an advanced drawing app with a bunch of features to explore.

Draw motifs & add texture in Adobe Fresco

+If you’re used to the Adobe Suit, Fresco will feel very familiar. And Fresco offers both pixel and vector drawing features. When I draw with texture in Adobe Fresco, I use the pixel brushes.

-The pixel brushes you can use in Fresco are limited. I can’t get the same look and feel as I do when I draw textures in Procreate.

Conclusion

If you don’t have an iPad, Adobe Illustrator works just fine to add texture to your motifs. But if you do have an iPad, my opinion is that Procreate is a clear winner when it comes to these 3 different techniques to add texture to your drawings.

Procreate is so intuitive and your options feel limitless, as you can buy any type of Procreate brushes that suits your need - or you can even create your own brushes.

When I vectorised the motifs in this new class of mine, I found that my motif from Procreate looked so much better vectorised than my motif from Adobe Fresco.

THE WINNER: Procreate!