Iridescent and Holographic Effects in Procreate

Procreate has no iridescent brush, and it turns out you don't need one. The pearly, holographic shimmer you see on shells, soap bubbles and Y2K wallpapers comes from three built-in adjustments applied in a specific order: Noise, Liquify, then Chromatic Aberration.

Freya uses this recipe in three different lessons, from a five-minute wallpaper trick to fully painted seashells for repeating patterns. Here is the formula first, then how she turns it into an actual painted object.

The three-adjustment formula

This comes from her Create a Shiny Iridescent Background lesson in the Procreate Masterclass, and it works on a blank canvas.

1. Fill with a near-white base. Light grey with a hint of purple is her pick, but light blue or light pink work too. The color should be almost white, because iridescence lives at the pale end: think pearls, not rainbows.
2. Add Noise. Adjustments, Noise, then slide right to about 20 percent. She raises the Scale to around 79 percent and chooses the Ridges option specifically because it already looks shiny. Octaves around 28 percent and Turbulence around 83 percent finish the setting.
3. Stretch it with Liquify. Push mode, size about 90 percent, pressure at max, momentum around 50 percent. Then just drag: the noise pattern pulls into long silky streaks, like light moving across fabric.
4. Split the colors with Chromatic Aberration. This is the step that makes it iridescent. Adjustments, Chromatic Aberration, Displace option, then slide across the artwork. The edges of every streak split into a prism of color.

Her one caution sits on the last step: adjust it just a little. Push Displace too far and the pearl becomes a glitch. The Chromatic Aberration panel also offers Blur and Transparency sliders; she leaves both alone here, but they're worth knowing about for the object version below.

If the finished shimmer isn't the color you wanted, don't start over. A pass of Hue, Saturation, Brightness at the end shifts the whole sheet toward pink, blue or gold while keeping the prism edges intact. For a phone wallpaper, start from a vertical screen-size canvas; horizontal for a desktop.

"Remember, you can experiment with different colors, noise textures, and other Liquify options to create your unique iridescent background."

Freya, in lesson 043 (Create a Shiny Iridescent Background), Procreate Masterclass

Putting the shimmer on an object

A wallpaper is fun for an afternoon. The more useful version is applying the effect inside a shape, which is exactly what Freya does with the seashells in Pattern Mastery Vol. 2.

She traces the shell outline with the Freya Shaping Pen - Rough in a light blue-grey and fills it with ColorDrop. On top goes a new layer with Clipping Mask enabled and, importantly, Fill Layer selected from the layer menu, so the effects can be applied across the whole layer while only showing inside the shell.

Then the same formula runs with object-sized settings: Noise at 20 percent (Clouds this time, Scale 80, Octaves 40, Turbulence 40), Liquify Push at 50 percent size with 30 percent pressure, worked in circular motions so the streaks spiral like a real shell's whorls. Chromatic Aberration comes last, Displace again, this time with Blur set to 50 percent to soften the split.

Making it read as painted, not filtered

An effect layer alone looks like a filter. What sells the seashell is that Freya paints over it like any other base color:

• A paper texture layer (Freya Paper Textures 5, light grey) set to Linear Burn, so the shimmer sits on watercolor paper instead of a screen.
• A Shadow layer set to Multiply, shaded with the Freya Wet On Dry 6 brush. This brush's opacity follows hand pressure, so she works the ridges slowly, lighter toward the center where light hits the top of the shell.
• A white Light layer with Wet On Wet 4 along the spiral, dropped to 80 percent opacity when the white came out too strong, then a Highlight pass of short streaks and dots with the Tip Brush 5.
• Final dark outlines with the Colored Pencil 10 brush, small lines parallel to the shape, working from the outer curl inward.

The order matters more than the exact brushes. Shimmer at the bottom, real shading and highlights above it. That layering is the difference between a holographic sticker and a painted object that happens to be iridescent.

One shell, three colorways

Because everything lives in layers, recoloring is cheap, and Freya builds her pattern palette this way. Duplicate the shell group, flatten it, then Hue, Saturation, Brightness: dropping saturation to about 25 percent turns the blue shell into a pale pearl. For a warmer variant she adds a layer above the shadows, drags an orange onto it, sets the layer to Linear Light, and tunes it with HSB until it glows. Three shells from one painting, ready to repeat across a pattern.

If you want a scheme instead of guesswork, her Iridescent Cocktails module in the Style Discovery Masterclass picks glass colors with Procreate's color harmony mode: one glass complementary, one split complementary, one analogous. The same trick works for choosing which colorways your shimmer shifts between.

Where to take it

Run the wallpaper version first; it takes five minutes and teaches you all three adjustments. Then try trapping the effect inside a shape you've drawn, and shade over it.

The seashells are the starting element of Pattern Mastery for Procreate, where they end up arranged into full repeating patterns and prepared for print. If shimmering objects that tile forever sounds like your kind of art, that course is where this technique goes to work.