How to Make a Moodboard in Procreate

So-- let’s talk mood boards. Making a cool mood board is super important when you're doing anything artsy. It helps you see where you're headed visually and gives you a roadmap for your creative project. This is especially useful when venturing in a subject that you’re not all too familiar with. In this guide, we'll show you how to make a mood board with Procreate! Whether you're brainstorming for a project or trying to pinpoint a specific aesthetic for your work, Procreate's fun features makes it easy to turn your inspirations into something real. So, let's jump right in and learn how to make one!

For the purposes of this guide, I will be making a Dark Academia themed mood board, feel free to follow along with your own topic!

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Prepare Canvas

The first step in creating a mood board using Procreate is to prepare the workspace. This involves selecting the appropriate canvas size and orientation that suit your project's needs. Procreate gives us a lot of options that lets us personalize our work based on whatever we'd like to create. It is also important to choose a color palette that reflects the mood or theme you’re going for. This initial step is essential to help you build the groundwork for a visually pleasing mood board. Before anything else, keep in mind that settings decided during this stage will affect the overall aesthetic of your project, so it's better for you to take your time and make deliberate choices.

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Import Photos

Off to the most exciting part of creating a mood board on Procreate, gathering inspirations is where the magic begins. Knowing how to make a mood board involves exploring diverse sources like Pinterest and Instagram right from the Procreate canvas. Here, you can seamlessly collect and organize a variety of reference images that fits your project's theme. Procreate's user-friendly interface makes it a breeze to experiment with different ideas, ensuring that your mood board is a rich tapestry of inspiration. Procreate makes it super easy to import images for you to use. One way is to drag photos directly to your canvas, this works for Google images and your gallery!

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Tip : You can also import multiple photos by holding an image while tapping other images!

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The other way is to select import in the menu to a photo to add to your workspace!

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Design

This stage of making a mood board in Procreate is where we use Procreate's cool drawing tools to sketch out our initial ideas. First off, pick a color palette that matches your project theme and sets the vibe for your mood board. Now it's time to bring your vision to life on the canvas and figure out the basic structure and arrangement. Remember, the key to becoming a mood board pro is creating a strong base layer that captures the essence of your inspiration. So let your creativity run wild and shape the foundation of your digital mood board with bold strokes or subtle shading, whatever floats your boat!

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We can also explore the method of stacking elements to achieve a captivating and visually appealing outcome. Here are some tips on maximizing Procreate's layering features.

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• Diverse Elements: make sure to create different layers for the different parts of your mood board. For example, have one layer for images, another for sketches, and another one for text.
• Play around with the transparency: Tweak the opacity of each layer until you find that sweet spot, where some things are clearly visible, but it all still looks nice and put together.
• Experiment with Opacity: Adjust the opacity of individual layers to find the perfect balance, allowing certain elements to shine through while maintaining a cohesive look.
• No ruining your artwork: Use Procreate's cool editing feature to make changes to specific layers without messing up the whole picture.
• Rearrange Layers: Just move the layers around to see how things look and how they affect the overall vibe.

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If you’d like to add a lil text decor, we can take our digital mood board in Procreate to the next level by adding our personal touch. This is where we get to play around with text and little details to bring our vision to life. Procreate makes it super easy to import different fonts, sizes, and placements, so you can get the exact mood or theme you want. You can add motivational quotes, important project info, or even sneaky little captions to make your mood board even more awesome. Remember, the little things are what matter. Stay creative and don't be afraid to try out different text styles to see what works best for your vision. This is where you show off not only how your mood board looks, but also tell the story behind it, so people truly understand what you're trying to say.

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Now this is just the beginning, if you really want to take your mood board to the next level, check out this awesome way to make a collage:

Final Pass

At the end of our journey, your main aim is to polish and nail down the overall vibe to make a super cool presentation.

Check out your whole mood board and make sure everything looks good together and is visually appealing. Make sure the colors, sizes, and placement of the elements are balanced. Use Procreate's tools to make small but impactful changes. Play around with opacity and layer effects to get the right look. Zoom in and pay attention to the little details. Make sure each element fits well with the overall mood and theme of the board. If there's text, make sure the fonts, sizes, and placements match the theme and are easy to read. Take a step back and look at the entire mood board to see if there's anything else that needs to be fixed.

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It's as easy as that! It takes a bit of getting used to, but there are no mistakes when making a mood board, feel free to explore and do what works for you!