Category: Computer

Procreate Butterfly

Procreate drawing

Saving half the work while drawing a butterfly; my latest Procreate drawing tutorial using symmetry in drawing assist. I’ve faded out the photograph of the peacock butterfly that I’m basing my drawing on so I’ve put in a reference image, floating in the top left hand corner, so that I can see the colours.

While I wouldn’t use symmetry drawing assist if I was out drawing with the iPad I am going to use it for a logo I’m designing which has to be strictly symmetric.

butterfly drawn in Procreate

Procreate also includes ‘Animation Assist’, which turns layers into frames and gives you a timeline and onion skinning (showing a faint impression of your previous frames).

Not sure what happened to the unfortunate butterfly’s dislocated left wing, but you get the idea.

Colour Drop Procreate

Procreate drawing

In Procreate ‘Colour Drop’ is the equivalent of the paint bucket tool in Photoshop. It’s a ‘hidden’ tool activated by a drag and drop from the current colour swatch, which is always there in the top right-hand corner of the Procreate drawing screen.

Compared to pen on paper, I’m struggling to control my line when drawing on an iPad, even with a Paperlike screen protector (although after three or four months that has worn fairly smooth). For the lettering I tried Procreate’s method where you pause at the end of a line, curve or ellipse. Procreate works out what you were trying to draw and turns it into a smooth, editable vector version.

geometric sketches
Drawing isometric shapes isn’t going to be my strong point.

My unaided line is too wobbly, the vector version to smooth but I’m sure I’ll hit on a ‘Goldilocks Zone’ version which will be just right!

The Hidden side of Procreate

Procreate

No, this isn’t a goose watching its favourite anserine TV soap . . .

I’ve learnt a lot from the online course Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate but some of the ‘hidden’ features of the program are a bit difficult to grasp when the course is in Spanish and you’re trying to take in both subtitles and – to me – unfamiliar names on the Spanish version of the various tools and menus, so today I booked a free ‘Introduction to Procreate’ session at the Apple Store in Trinity Light in Leeds and I was able to delve into the mysteries of Alpha lock, importing a reference image and the various options for blending.

Sidecar, Screen Mirroring

sidecar screen mirroring
Screen mirroring in Photoshop: iMac Retina, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Sketchboard Pro.

I’ve been struggling to use the mouse as a brush or an eraser in Photoshop on my iMac Retina with any accuracy but I’d forgotten how to set up Sidecar – the facility that enables you to use an iPad as a second screen for your Mac.

For screen mirroring, this is how it works:

  • In Systems Preferences on the iMac go to ‘Displays’
  • Click ‘Add Display’
  • Select ‘iPad’ and ‘Mirror and extend’

At this stage the screen on my iMac transforms itself to fit the narrower proportions of the iPad and the whole set up works as I’d expect it to: I can use the Mac’s mouse pretty much as normal and I can use the Apple Pencil on the iPad for the brush or eraser in Photoshop.

Note: Mac and iPad are connected to the same wifi network. In the settings the iPad ‘Handoff’ is enabled.

Unfortunately working in Sidecar doesn’t improve my drawing skills!

Onions

Drawing some of our onions with the new Manga vector mapping pen in Adobe Fresco, using an Apple Pencil, iPad Pro and a sketchboard pro drawing board.

onions

Growing through a dry summer and a heatwave, this year’s onions were smaller than the previous year’s – when we had a wetter summer – but they’ve kept better. One hazard last year was that the local foxes liked to pull up a few of the almost tennis ball-sized onions and stash them under the hedge. Thanks to damage by foxes and a wet spell before we lifted them, many of the onions went soft.

drawing onions
Drawing on the iPad Pro on the Sketchboard Pro drawing board
onions

Fontself

A rainy afternoon and I had an update from Fontself, so decided to give it another try. New features include an easy way to fill in outlines and to draw perfect vector shapes. I’ve gone for my usual wobbly style, although I did try out the method for drawing smooth shapes on the ‘C’.

Fontself alphabet

On previous occasions I’d used Fontself to make fonts from alphabets I’d drawn on paper or in Adobe Illustrator. It’s a whole lot simpler drawing in the Fontself app on the iPad.

Look forward to experimenting with it a bit more, now that I’ve got into the way it works.

Dell Studio xps

Dell Studio xps

Until a few months ago I was falling back on my old PC, a Dell studio xps, to print some of my booklets but it finally failed to start and since then I’ve steadily reformatted my publications onto InDesign on my iMac.

Around Old Horbury

Around Old Horbury

When I first published Around Old Horbury in 1998 to launch at part of an exhibition at Horbury Library I borrowed a laser printer to print the pages in black and white but went for a colour cover using my own ink jet printer. I got the cover laminated and included a flip out town trail map.

title page, 1998

That first edition would have been designed in Microsoft Publisher. That’s given me some problems as I was never able to get Publisher working on my iMac, even if I ran a virtual version of Windows 10 on the Mac using the Parallels program.

Title page 2022

So I’m now revamping the booklet as an Adobe InDesign publication on the iMac. It’s an opportunity to simplify the typography, so I’m using just one typeface, Dolly Pro, for all the text and headings. The colour cover will stay the same, as I’ve had that printed and laminated professionally.