Gold, Glitter, & Gouache on Your iPad in Procreate + FREE Metallics and Gouache Brushes

Liz Kohler Brown's class is less a painting course than a technique demo built around one core trick: paint a flat placeholder shape, select it, and drop a downloaded metallic texture into that exact selection. Everything else in the 55 minutes, from gold lettering to a full floral wreath, is a variation on that move.

The opening lessons are setup. After a short intro, the second lesson walks through downloading the included gold, glitter, and gouache brush files from outside the Skillshare app, saving them into a dedicated photo album, and importing the brushes into a named Procreate brush set. It is mechanical but necessary, and the instructor is specific about pitfalls, like needing to leave the Skillshare app to access the download link and organizing files into an album so they are findable months later.

The core techniques

The third lesson is the most useful stretch in the class. Working on branch and berry shapes, the instructor demonstrates six ways to combine a painted layer with a metallic layer underneath it: erasing through paint to reveal glitter, repositioning the glitter layer to catch a brighter patch, painting white highlights on top of gold berries, and swapping which element (branch or berries) carries the metallic color. None of these are individually complex, but seeing them stacked back to back gives a genuine toolkit rather than a single party trick.

Lettering gets its own lesson. Since Procreate does not support live text, the workaround is to type in the Pages app, screenshot it, and pull the letters into Procreate with the automatic selection tool, tuning a threshold value so no white halo remains around the black letters. Gold is applied by cutting a piece of downloaded metallic texture and shaping it to sit exactly behind the selected letters, then a blurred, slightly offset black layer is placed beneath the gold to make it pop off the background. It is a clever, low-tech solution to a real Procreate limitation.

The wreath and quote pieces

The back half builds two full projects: a floral wreath with gold leaves and berries around centered text, and a botanical quote piece with painted ferns, flowers, and glitter accents. The painting instruction here is genuinely thin. Vines, leaves, and petals are described in terms of brush choice and layer order more than composition or color theory, with guidance amounting to "keep curves varied" and "don't make it too symmetrical." Anyone without prior gouache or floral painting experience will produce a passable wreath by copying the steps, but will not walk away understanding why the shapes work.

Where the class earns its keep is in the layer management around gold placement, especially the tip to reinsert a fresh copy of a texture image rather than duplicate a layer, since duplication degrades image quality in Procreate over repeated generations. That kind of practical, tool-specific knowledge is hard to find elsewhere and justifies the runtime for anyone who already paints in Procreate and wants metallics folded into their existing workflow. As a florals or gouache painting course, it falls short. As a metallic-texture technique primer, it delivers exactly what it promises.

What you will learn

• ·Import and organize downloadable gold, glitter, and gouache brush files into Procreate albums and brush sets
• ·Reveal metallic textures under a painted layer using alpha lock and the eraser tool instead of painting gold directly
• ·Convert a typed font into a selectable, editable text layer via screenshot and automatic selection with threshold control
• ·Add a Gaussian-blurred black offset behind gold or glitter text to make the metallic texture read clearly
• ·Build a layered floral wreath from vines, leaves, and flowers with gouache brush texture and alpha-locked highlights
• ·Select painted gold or glitter placeholder shapes and duplicate metallic paper onto them precisely