Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Last Sunday morning we had a gentle summer shower, a rare event so far this month, and I spotted a garden snail emerging from the edge of a riverside path: a determined-looking snail.
But when I stopped to photograph it in its dynamic (for a snail) pose, it immediately adopted this startled, slightly withdraw pose.
Drawn in Procreate on my iPad 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:
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.
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.
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.
I have to admit that I’ve cheated, these iPad drawings are both of my left hand but I flipped the hand holding the pen horizontally in Photoshop.
Drawn with an Apple Pencil in Clip Studio Paint using the ‘Textured pen’ and ‘Watery ink’ brush. I had the iPad fixed on my Sketchboard Pro drawing board.
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.
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.
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’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.
More experiments drawing on the iPad in Adobe Fresco (above) and Clip Studio Paint.
Still learning various techniques in the first two frames of my Bilberry Wood comic, drawn, designed and coloured in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro. I like the slightly resistant surface of the Paperlike screen protector when I’m drawing with my Apple Pencil.
After thinking it over for several years, I’ve finally got around to adding a Paperlike screen protector to my iPad Pro.
As you can see from my before and after photographs, the matt finish film hasn’t made my Clip Studio Paint app any less clear but I find the surface more sympathetic for drawing with my Apple Pencil on than the glass screen of the iPad.
Here’s my first Procreate sketch, drawn with one of Paperlike’s free brushes for Procreate from a collection designed by Filip Zywica.
After drawing so many cartoons, I wanted to draw from life for a change, so I picked up a few dry leaves which had blown into the corner by the front door.
It’s our British summer and people are wrapped up against the wind and the rain in Ossett. I used a man in blue from my sketches as the walking character in my Clip Studio Paint animation, drawn on my iPad Pro.
It’s a very basic animation and I can see plenty of bits that I need to improve on but it’s a way to get familiar with the process so that I can go on to something a bit more expressive.