How to Do the TikTok Color Palette Challenge in Procreate
Master the viral TikTok color picking challenge in Procreate by blending random hues, blind-sampling a mystery palette, and illustrating a piece with your results.
- Read the tools, materials, safety notes, and steps below for free.
- Tap Start Camera Coach when you want hands-free voice help.
- Allow camera and microphone. Point your phone at the work; the coach watches your progress and tells you the next step.
🧰 Required Tools & Equipment
- ✓ Apple iPad
- ✓ Apple Pencil (or compatible stylus)
- ✓ Procreate App
📦 Materials & Supplies
- ✓ Square digital canvas (2048 x 2048 px)
- ✓ Pre-installed Procreate brush set
⚠️ Safety Checkpoints & Warnings
- • Adjust iPad display brightness to match room lighting to prevent optical fatigue.
- • Maintain a neutral wrist angle while holding the stylus to avoid repetitive strain injury.
- • Take brief visual rest breaks using the 20-20-20 rule during prolonged digital drawing.
📋 Step-by-Step Guide (6 Steps)
Create Base Color Swatches on a Fresh Layer
Create a new square canvas at 2048 x 2048 pixels and ensure you are on Layer 1. Select the Monoline brush (found in the Calligraphy set) and pick 5 to 7 high-contrast, saturated colors. Draw thick, overlapping wavy stripes or random color patches covering the entire screen.
- • Entire canvas is filled with distinct, bright patches of solid color with minimal white space remaining.
- • Using pastel or low-saturation colors which result in muddy, indistinguishable gray mixes.
Smear and Blur into an Abstract Gradient
Open the Adjustments menu (magic wand icon) and tap Gaussian Blur, choosing Layer. Slide your stylus to the right until the blur reaches 40% to 60%, creating smooth transitions. Open Adjustments again, select Liquify, and use Push or Twirl modes with max size and pressure to distort the colors into organic gradients.
- • Hard brush lines disappear completely, leaving a smooth, swirling multi-color marble effect.
- • Over-blurring past 80%, which turns the canvas into a single uniform brownish tone instead of distinct color pockets.
Set Up Swatch Placeholders
Tap the Layers panel, create a new layer (Layer 2), and name it 'Palette Swatches'. Using the Monoline brush, draw 4 to 5 small empty circles along the top or side border of your canvas. Hold the pencil down at the end of drawing each circle to trigger QuickShape, snapping them into clean, perfect circles.
- • A row of 4 or 5 clean, hollow circular outlines sits neatly along the canvas edge on a separate layer.
- • Drawing swatches on the blurred color layer instead of a separate top layer, making layer isolation impossible later.
Blind-Sample Colors Using the Eyedropper Loupe
Pinch out dramatically to zoom into a microscopic, abstract section of your blurred canvas so you cannot see where you are. Tap and hold one finger on the screen (or use your Apple Pencil depending on gesture settings) until the circular Eyedropper ring appears. Move your finger slightly to lock onto an unexpected color, release, and drag the top-right color circle directly into your first swatch bubble.
- • The first swatch circle is filled completely with the randomly sampled shade.
- • ColorDropping with too high a threshold, which accidentally fills the whole canvas instead of just the circle.
Fill the Complete Mystery Palette
Pan blindly across the canvas with two fingers while keeping the screen tightly zoomed in. Repeat the tap-and-hold Eyedropper gesture to sample a new hue and ColorDrop it into the next empty swatch circle. Continue this process until all 4 or 5 swatches are filled, then pinch-zoom out to reveal your official challenge palette.
- • All swatch bubbles contain distinct, randomized colors and the canvas is zoomed back out to full view.
- • Peeking or zooming out early, which defeats the random blind-draw element of the TikTok challenge.
Illustrate Using Only the Extracted Palette
Hide the blurred base layer in the Layers panel and set your background to a solid neutral shade. Create a new drawing layer underneath your swatch layer. Tap and hold each swatch bubble with your stylus to pick that color, and paint your artwork (like a character, animal, or fruit) exclusively using those sampled tones.
- • Finished illustration uses strictly the colors contained in the top swatch bubbles.
- • Accidentally selecting colors from the default Procreate disc instead of strictly sampling from the challenge swatches.
Credit: inspired by an original tutorial by Art with Flo — watch the original on YouTube.
Don’t have everything?
- No Apple Pencil? Capacitive stylus or index finger with touch shortcuts enabled
- No Monoline brush? Studio Pen (Inking set) or Hard Airbrush (Airbrushing set)