Category: Computer

Junction Box

junction box

I drew this trackside junction box from a photograph in Adobe Illustrator. There’s a lot more planning involved in the process and mapping out shapes with the pen tool seems more like cutting shapes for a collage than drawing.

cruet

So far manipulating anchor points on the outlines of shapes seems rather random to me. I find it easy to inadvertently delete an anchor point and lose a section of the shape. Converting between an anchor that results in a straight line and one that results in a curve seems equally obscure.

The only way that I’ll learn is to keep practising.

Fontself

drawing a typeface

The Fontself font creation program enables you to draw and scan a font or to draw each letter on the iPad as a vector image.

my first fontself font

What I’d like to do is draw the font on paper and then convert it to a vector font, as bitmap fonts are rather limited compared to regular fonts.

bitmap font creation

So far, I either end up with a bitmap font or an error message informing me that my particular version of vector image isn’t acceptable to Fontself.

vectorised image
Vectorised photograph, reduced to 26 colours in Adobe Illustrator for iPad

I’m sure that I’ll work it out and in the process I’m learning a bit about Adobe Illustrator, such as how to vectorise an image using ‘vectorize’ on the iPad version or ‘Image Trace’ on the Mac.

Link

Fontself

Adobe Illustrator

Figures

figures

I’m practising using the 3D drawing figure in Clip Studio Paint – a kind of virtual lay figure – keeping to the standard body shape but developing the character through its actions and costume. I’m going for a limited range of tones because it’s the form of the character that I’m interested in, but I look forward to adding colour, which I can do later on another layer, over the tonal layer but beneath the line drawing.

Gothick Colour

Clip Studio Paint/ Photoshop coloured comic frame

I’ve gone for Gothick with this Clip Studio Paint iPad drawing. 3D-drawing figure posed in Clip Studio (I’m getting the hang of how the joints work). I added flat tones in Clip Studio then used the Magic Wand tool, Fill and a gradient for the background.

Man and Dog

man and dog
Okay, I’ll admit it, the perspective is way out: eye level must be approximately that of the top of the sign post in the background, so this man is about 10 feet tall!

I used an line/tone conversion on a photograph I’d taken at Newmillerdam for the background for these characters drawn for a Clip Studio Paint Tutorial.

pointsettia

I’ve tried to get a screen print effect with the colour on my sketch of the pointsettia.

perspective
Trying the perspective ruler in Clip Studio Paint, in this case for a 2-point perspective.

Sketchboard Pro

sketchboard pro

This Sketchboard Pro, which arrived this afternoon, is a big improvement on the drawing board propped up on an offcut of decking that I’ve been using.

sheep cartppn

To test it out, I drew one of the frames for my Bilberry Wood comic. It holds the drawing board at just the angle I like and it’s so robust that it doesn’t slip around slightly, like my previous makeshift arrangement.

Ruskin

I’m enjoying adding the colour, and I think the flat colours are going to work. The Ruskin panel will be just 7 cm (2.75 inches) across, so, as I said yesterday, it shouldn’t be too fussy.

Darwin cartoon

Darwin’s fossiliferous strata in this panel remind me of when I worked on Yorkshire Rock, and make me think about tackling something in similar style.

Text and Pencils

Clip Studio Paint on iPad Pro
Drawing in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro.

I’ve been wanting to write one of my Dalesman Wild Yorkshire nature diaries about Bilberry Wood for a while. I’ve taken plenty of photographs of the trees, mosses, ferns and wild flowers and read up about the history of woodland in the Dales but I’ve struggled not to make my regular style of article sound like a botanical survey. Which it is, I guess.

Pencil rough drawn in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro
Pencil rough drawn in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro.

As an experiment, I’m trying a comic format, putting myself into the picture instead to get over a sense of how much fun it is to yomp through a sometimes rather boggy Dales wood, instead of going for the detached all seeing, all knowing narrator that I’d normally aim to pass myself off as in a magazine article.

rough of page
Starting inking and dividing the page into frames.

Digitally Drawn

Sketches Pro

As for once I hadn’t taken my sketchbook with me, I literally drew with a digit yesterday, using a finger on my iPhone screen in Tayasui Sketches Pro (left) as we sat with a mint and lime drink in the shaded courtyard of Horbury’s Flamingo Teapot Cafe but after all the large-scale pen and watercolour work that I’ve done for my Redbox Gallery show, I felt that it was about time I tried drawing with my Apple Pencil on my iPad Pro again.

The man in the hat and the sumac were drawn in Adobe Fresco, using its virtual ‘Blake’ pen for the drawing.

Paperlike

Would I find it easier if I used a matt screen protector, like Paperlike, on my iPad, to give it a more natural feel? Or a rubberised tip for the Apple Pencil, to give it a hint of resistance as it moves over the glass screen?

Adobe Fresco sketch

Drawing on the iPad is never going to be as familiar to me as pen on paper but I’m keen to have the best possible image so I’d have to avoid any matt screen protector because it adds a very slight amount of colour fringing to the image.

Summertime Walk

pony

British summertime starts today and we’re making a start exploring our local patch. Rather than sketch or take photographs I’m drawing my comic strip from remembered details.

To try some unfamiliar features of Clip Studio Paint, I’ve followed a tutorial for drawing a black and white comic strip, adding tone, patterns and a sunburst effect to the frames. I drew using a graphics pad and desktop iMac, so my lines are wobbling about all over the place but I should now be able to do a final version on my iPad Pro.