Help & Contact
Note: Studio Members can find help on The Studio help page
where do i start?
Welcome, I’m so glad you’re here! If you’re brand new to the iPad, start with Procreate Foundations, which is free and covers the basics. If you already draw and want to move into patterns, Affinity Designer 101 is the better starting point. On my blog, I share a lot of beginner-friendly topics, and my YouTube iPad Art Break series can get you started with drawing on your iPad.
It is absolutely not too late. I hear this worry a lot, and I promise the artists who are doing well right now are the ones who simply kept going. It does take time to build up your style and your portfolio, but that’s true for everyone at every stage. If you’d like a bit of encouragement, here’s my own story, including all the slow years.
Yes, and you’d be in good company! Plenty of artists in our community paint, draw, or work with clay and then bring that work into a digital format to license or sell. The business and marketing classes work no matter what medium you use, and there are classes specifically about turning traditional artwork into digital files.
These posts on traditional art might be interesting to you!
That’s such a common place to be stuck, and it’s a good sign that you’re thinking about it. There are a few main paths, including print on demand, licensing, and running your own shop. I laid them all out here: 5 Paths to Surface Design. The Share Your Stuff Guide can also help you find the path that fits how you actually like to work.
I do, lots of them! My blog has years of free tutorials on pattern design, lettering, selling your work, and more. There are also free videos on my YouTube channel. Please take your time and explore before you decide anything.
Most artists start seeing their own style emerge after they’ve made a lot of work, not before. The best thing you can do is make a lot of patterns and share them, because that’s how you find out what people respond to.
Following along with my iPad Art Break series is a great way to get started so that you’re inspired to do some drawing projects a few times a month. Following along with my iPad Art Break series is a great way to get started so that you’re inspired to do some drawing projects a few times a month.
free guides and downloads
I have several, and they’re all completely free! The Share Your Stuff Guide helps you find the right marketing path for your art. The Sell Your Stuff Field Guide covers 100+ ways to sell your work. Calendar Bootcamp walks you through designing and selling a calendar, and The Self Published Artist Starter Pack is for anyone thinking about making a book. There are also two free courses, Procreate Foundations and Affinity Designer 101.
These two do sound similar! Share Your Stuff is about marketing, meaning how you get your art in front of people in a way that suits your personality. Sell Your Stuff is about the selling itself, with 100+ different places and ways to sell your work. Lots of artists grab both, and you’re very welcome to.
Sorry about that! The first thing to check is your spam or promotions folder, since that’s where it lands most often. If it’s not there, might suggest using a different email, as sometimes it’s a problem with the email box or a spam filter. If that doesn’t help, just email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com with the email address you used and we’ll send it straight over.
This is usually a browser issue. So switching to a different web browser is usually the fastest fix. We also put together a few troubleshooting steps here: download troubleshooting tips. If none of those do the trick, email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com and we’ll get it to you another way!
Nope, you don’t need Dropbox at all! We store some files in Dropbox on our end so we can share them by email, but you don’t need an account to receive them. When you click the link in the email it should download straight to your device. If you’re being asked to sign in, it should be an optional sign-in box that you can just close out.
Thank you so much for picking up the book! The bonus files are delivered through the link printed inside. If that link isn’t working for you, email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com and mention which book you have, and we’ll send your files right over.
Both free courses are delivered through The Studio library, so you’ll log in there to watch them. Check your email for the confirmation we sent when you signed up, since it has your access details. If you can’t find it, email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com and we’ll get you sorted.
how do I get started?
Good question! No, you don’t absolutely need an iPad to take my classes, but most of the people who take my classes do have an iPad, and many of the processes I show are demonstrated on the iPad. However, we have a lot of classes related to marketing and selling your artwork, which will work for artists who work with any medium.
Yes, you can! Affinity Designer works on desktop and laptop computers as well as the iPad, so you can follow along with those classes on whatever you have. The tools are all in the same places, they just look a little different. Procreate is iPad only, so for those classes you would be watching rather than following along step by step. If you’re not sure which app to start with, I compare them in this post: Procreate vs Affinity Designer vs Illustrator.
You can use a Windows or Surface device for the Affinity Designer classes, since Affinity has a desktop version that runs on Windows. Procreate is only available on iPad, so that part won’t transfer. Plenty of artists in our community work on Windows and do beautifully, so please don’t let that stop you from jumping in.
An Apple Pencil definitely makes things easier and more comfortable, especially for sketching and lettering. That said, you may be able to get similar results with another stylus depending on which one you have. If you’re on the fence, I’d say start with what you already own and see how you feel before investing in anything new.
Almost any current iPad will handle Procreate and Affinity Designer well. What matters most is storage and processing power, since large pattern files can get heavy. If you’re buying new, I’d suggest going up a storage tier rather than up a model, because running out of space is the thing most artists bump into first.
Sorry to hear that! Devices with lower processing power can struggle with Affinity, especially on large canvases. A few things that usually help: close other apps before you start, work at a smaller canvas size and scale up at export, and reduce the number of layers where you can.
It depends on how large! If you’re working in vectors in Affinity Designer, you can build at a smaller size and scale up with no loss of quality, which opens up a lot of possibilities. For very large raster artwork, the iPad does have limits. Working in vector is usually the answer when you need to go big.
getting the apps
Yes! Affinity Designer is now free, which is wonderful news for artists. You’ll find Affinity Designer 2 in the App Store on your iPad, or you can download the desktop version from the Affinity website. If you’re new to the app, my free Affinity Designer 101 course will walk you through the basics.
This trips up a lot of people, so you’re not alone! Affinity is now owned by Canva, so you may be prompted to sign in with a Canva account when you open the app. You can create a free Canva account and use Affinity without paying anything. If you’re already signed in to Canva and hitting a wall, try creating a separate account, which has solved it for several artists who wrote in.
Procreate is a one time purchase in the App Store rather than a subscription, which is one of the things artists love about it. There’s no monthly fee and no ongoing cost after you buy it.
It really depends on what you want to make. Procreate is wonderful for drawing, painting, and anything that feels handmade. Affinity Designer is where I build repeat patterns, because it lets you preview your pattern live as you work and export at any size. A lot of artists (me included) use both together. I broke down the differences here: What is the best iPad app for making repeat patterns?.
I don’t have any classes on Adobe Illustrator. My goal has always been to show artists how to create sellable art on their iPads without a subscription, so I teach Procreate and Affinity Designer instead. If you already know Illustrator, most of the design principles in my classes will still translate.
Not at all. Everything I teach can be done without an Adobe subscription. That’s very much on purpose, because I want the tools to be affordable for artists who are just getting started.
about the studio
The Studio is my online membership for artists who want to create, grow, and sell their work. It includes hundreds of classes, Procreate brushes, design assets, downloadable resources, and a really supportive community. You can read all about it here.
The Studio Classes are organized by level, so you can start wherever feels comfortable and work your way up. A lot of our members joined having never opened Procreate before, and there are beginner classes waiting for you the moment you join.
Not at all. While many classes are taught on the iPad, there’s a whole side of The Studio about finding your style, following trends, selling your artwork, and building a creative business. None of that is tied to a specific device or app.
The Studio Collective is the annual membership. It includes everything in the monthly membership plus quarterly live business strategy calls with me, live hotseat coaching, quarterly State of the Market Reports, a private Collective community, and a Growth Accelerator bonus. Collective members also pay less per month, so if you know you want to be here for a while it’s the better value.
At the moment the trend reports are only available inside the membership. A lot of members actually join specifically for those, so you certainly aren’t alone in wanting them!
You can join for just one month and watch all the available reports if you want to! You can join for one month and watch all the available reports if you want to!
For anything to do with your account, billing, or classes, the best place to start is The Studio help page, or you can email help@thestudiomembership.com and someone from our team will take care of you.
free pattern tools
These are two free tools I built to speed up the fiddly parts of pattern design. The Vectorizer turns a raster image into a vector, and the Recolorer lets you try out new color palettes on a pattern in seconds. You can read about them and get access here. I don’t believe in gating creative tools, so they’re free for everyone.
Once you have access, you can use the Shortcuts app to create widget buttons on your home screen or icon bar, which makes them much faster to reach. I walk through the whole process in the video on this post.
The most common cause is the file type, so first make sure you’re uploading an SVG for the Recolorer and a standard black and white image file for the Vectorizer.
There is a video tutorial linked on the page for each widget, so you can follow along with me exactly and follow my steps, and that usually helps most people!
If it’s still not working, email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com with a screenshot and we’ll take a look.
emails and the blog
I’d love to have you! You can sign up here and you’ll get monthly iPad art and design resources, trends, and tips that I only share with my list.
There’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email I send, and one click will take you off the list. If it’s giving you any trouble, email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com and we’ll remove you right away.
That’s usually a spam or promotions folder situation, so that’s the first place to look. Adding hello@lizkohlerbrown.com to your contacts often fixes it going forward. Alternatively, you could use a different email address, as that can sometimes help if a spam blocker has prevented you from getting our emails. If you still aren’t seeing anything, send us a note and we’ll check that you’re on the list.
You can browse everything on the blog, and there’s a search box at the top of the page if you know roughly what you’re after. If you can’t track it down, email us at help@lizkohlerbrown.com with whatever you remember about it and we’ll find it for you.
