How I Make My Digital Prints

A quick breakdown of how I’m creating these digital prints to mark places, events, and milestones.

The idea was inspired by a visit to the Communication Museum in Berlin, where they had this display of Werbeklischee Maschinenstempel, which were used for advertising purposes, and during the time of socialism, they also served as political slogans.

I liked how much meaning they could hold in such a small format, but I also loved the worn, imperfect look of the prints. It made me want to create my own version.

To make them, I’m using my iPad mini and the Procreate app. I usually start by sketching a few ideas for the graphic itself. Sometimes that might be a symbol of the city, for events something that reminds me of it, and others are more personal, like the cowboy hat tattoo I got while I was in Vegas with friends!

Once I have an idea for the graphic, I roughly place the date and city name and start trying out different layouts until I get something that feels balanced. For bigger milestones, like when I moved to Berlin in late 2025, I like to add my signature to make them feel a little more official.

I use a lot of layers in Procreate when I do the initial sketching. Keeping everything separate means I can freely move things around and try different layouts until I land on one I like.

The brushes

I mainly use this ink bleed brush that I found online. I also duplicated the original one and created a second brush after adjusting the jitter slightly. This gave me a version I could use wherever I wanted the ink to look more distressed.

Pressure is key to get that extra bleeding effect. In some areas, I draw slowly and pay close attention to how hard I’m pressing. This creates the feeling of too much ink seeping into the paper, which is how I drew the vertical suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I don’t want every part of the drawing to bleed in the same way. Sometimes I deliberately add more distress and mistakes. I might roughen up a corner or erase parts of the ink to make it look like the stamp didn’t press evenly against the paper.

Typography

I can’t write perfectly aligned characters, so I’m using a basic sans-serif font template and trace over it. The template gives me structure and alignment, but I deliberately avoid following it too closely. Some strokes I keep thinner while others I spill outside the edges. This keeps the typography closer to the imperfect feel of a real rubber stamp.

Fading it

At this point, the print looked good and had the bleeding-ink effect I wanted, but something was missing. The contrast felt too perfect, it looked too new.

So I took an eraser, selected Procreate’s default Molesworth brush, lowered its opacity, and lightly passed over parts of the drawing.

I run it over in some areas, especially where there’s a larger surface of “ink”. It immediately softened the contrast and took away the overly vibrant look of a digital stroke made from pixels.

A few other things that helped

• I use a Paperlike screen protector. It gives the pencil more grip and feels closer to drawing on real paper.
• I use the original Apple Pencil, but its standard tip feels too bulky when I’m drawing small details. I bought a cheap pack of thinner, pen-like tips from Amazon, and they make a huge difference when I’m working on the tiny details.

And that's all. Ty bye!