Learn Procreate to finished iPad illustrations in three months
Three months at about 40 minutes a day — roughly 60 hours — gets a beginner from a blank Procreate canvas to finished, shareable illustrations. You will not be a working concept artist. You will know the brushes, layers and gestures cold, take a sketch through line, flats and rendering, and finish pieces instead of abandoning them. Be honest with yourself first: the app is cheap, but the hardware is not.
3 months · ~60 hours · finish a sketchbook of daily studies plus six rendered illustrations
1.Procreate — plus an iPad and Apple Pencil
Procreate itself is a one-time $12.99 purchase on the App Store — no subscription, ever. That's the cheap part. The honest barrier is the hardware: Procreate runs only on iPad, and you need an Apple Pencil to draw seriously. A current entry-level iPad plus a compatible Pencil runs roughly $450–550 new; an older or refurbished iPad from the last few years runs Procreate fine and can bring that under $350. If you don't already own an iPad, factor that in before anything else — it's the real price of this path, not the $13 app.
$12.99 one-time (iPad only); iPad + Apple Pencil ~$450+ new if you don't have them
Procreate →2.The official Handbook plus Art with Flo or Brad Colbow
Learn the app properly before chasing style. Procreate's official Handbook is the free, authoritative manual — interface, gestures, brushes, layers, masks, drawing guides — and it's worth reading the core sections in your first week. For watching someone actually draw, Art with Flo's free YouTube tutorials are the best beginner course: clear, project-based, and aimed exactly at people opening Procreate for the first time. If you also want honest gear and workflow guidance for the iPad, Brad Colbow's free channel is the canonical reviewer-teacher. Pick Flo for drawing, Colbow for workflow.
Free (Handbook, Art with Flo, and Brad Colbow all free)
Procreate Handbook →3.Draw daily and finish pieces
The tool is easy; the habit is everything. Draw every day, even for twenty minutes — a small study, a hand, an object, a face from reference. Then once a week, take one of those sketches all the way to a finished, rendered piece and post it somewhere public. Daily volume builds your hand and your brush vocabulary; the weekly finish forces you past the flat-colour stage where most beginners stall. Six finished illustrations and a sketchbook of dailies in three months is the target. Art with Flo posts a fresh free tutorial every week to draw along with.
Free (uses the app and gear above)
Art with Flo tutorials →If this doesn't fit you
If the iPad cost is the dealbreaker — and for many people it genuinely is — don't buy hardware just for Procreate. Install Krita (free, professional) on a Windows or Mac laptop with a Wacom Intuos tablet (~$80), and you'll learn the same digital-illustration fundamentals for a fraction of the price. Or, if you only have a phone, Procreate Pocket is $5.99 for iPhone — cramped, but real. The skills transfer; the $450 iPad is a convenience, not a requirement.
Why this path
Procreate beginners overspend on courses and underspend on volume — and some overspend on hardware they didn't need to. The honest sequence is cheap software, free instruction, and a relentless daily habit. The official Handbook and Flo's free videos teach everything a $200 course does; the real investment is the iPad and the hours. The universal mistake is collecting brushes and tutorials while never finishing a piece, so the weekly-finish rule is the most important line on this page. If your underlying drawing is weak, do faculté's drawing path alongside this one.