When did you last spring clean your digital artwork?

Sunday and Monday morning last week were been spent cleaning up my Procreate, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher and Canva files. When was the last time you had a good spring clean of your artwork?

I was browsing Instagram and saw a post about saving files in a way that made sense to my brain. Sometimes we need to see an idea several times before we think, “OK, that could work for my artwork or my business.”

Somewhere in that browsing, I came across another question: once you’ve finished a piece of art or a collection, does it still need to stay on your iPad?

That made me look at what I was keeping.

How many files are called Untitled Artwork?

If you opened your Procreate gallery now, how many designs would be called Untitled Artwork? You might recognise them from the little preview, but what happens when you’re looking for something you made months ago?

Giving a file a useful name is a good place to begin. The name of the collection might help, along with what the file actually contains. You could add a date too.

Back in my legal days, we put the year first, followed by the month and then the day. It’s backwards to how we usually write dates here in Australia, but it gives you a consistent way to name files. For example, 17 October 2026 would become 20261017.

Something like “20261017_Wonky-Flowers_Cards” tells me a lot more than “Untitled Artwork”.

I saved my photos like that for years. Then you forget, or upload everything from your phone without naming it, and things get messy again. You don’t necessarily notice until you need to find something.

The rock wallaby photos I couldn’t find

When I was looking for our photos from Granite Gorge in Far North Queensland, I wanted the ones of us feeding the rock wallabies. I searched for “wallaby”. I tried “Cairns”. Would you think I could find them? No.

I had to work through folders from around the time of our trip to find the photographs I wanted. I knew we had them, but knowing something exists and being able to find it are apparently two different things.

It’s the same with artwork. You remember drawing a flower that would be perfect for the collection you’re working on, but where did you put it? Is it sitting in a stack with an unrelated name, or buried in a file you’ve forgotten about?

A useful name won’t do the organising for us, but it gives us a much better chance of finding what we need.

Does finished artwork need to stay on your iPad?

If you’re still working on a collection, of course it makes sense to keep those files within reach. But if it’s finished, listed and out in the world, does every working file need to stay inside the app?

Depending on your iPad, you only have so much storage. Paying for cloud storage gives you somewhere else to keep files, but that needs organising too.

After this clean-up, my iPad storage was down from around 160 GB to around 94 GB. That’s still a lot when you include photos and everything else I keep on there.

Procreate alone was still using 19.64 GB. Affinity Designer was down to 5.85 GB after I’d tidied it. It’s surprising how quickly the files inside individual apps add up.

I’ve also had Affinity close while I’m working, sometimes losing the last few minutes of changes. It happens less since I upgraded to an iPad Air, although it still happens occasionally. I can’t say a clean-up will stop that, but it’s another reminder that I don’t want my only copy of something sitting inside an app.

Archive it before you remove it

I know some people will be thinking, “Oh my God, I couldn’t possibly take my artwork off my iPad!”

The important part is making sure you’ve saved it somewhere you can find it again. If you might want to change the artwork later, keep the editable file as well as any finished images or PDFs. Before removing the app copy, check that the saved file opens and contains what you expect.

Cloud storage and a backup aren’t always the same thing. I want to know I have a separate copy of my work, rather than assume it’s safe because I pay for storage.

Think about what would happen if something happened to your iPad. Could you get your artwork back? Would you know where to look?

You don’t have to tackle every file in every app today. Have a look in Procreate and start with one finished collection. Give the files useful names, check where they’re saved and decide whether they still need to live on your iPad.

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself while I’ve been cleaning up. I’d rather spend my creative time drawing than searching through folders for a rock wallaby I know is in there somewhere.

If you enjoy the stories behind my artwork and the things I discover along the way, you can join Stories from the Dotty Side.