Tag: iPad Pro

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.

Pony Phobia

pony comic
pony

Three weeks ago the hawthorn had burst into fresh green leaf and our local ponies were tucking into it. My comic strip is based on actual events: we were following two ponies along the lane, one of which whinnied and backed along a track when surprised by a blackbird bursting out of the hedge.

I was asking the rider of the other pony why hers, which was unruffled by the blackbird incident, kept so close to the hedge:

“It’s the hawthorn, he likes anything he can get his mouth around!”

As we stood back to let the ponies go by, a couple of the people who live by the stables were standing nearby drinking their morning coffee.

“Some of the ponies around here could do to see a psychologist!” I suggested.

“Not just the ponies,” the man agreed, “Some of the people too!”

iPad and pen on paper sketches

I’ve struggled with this comic strip. I started drawing on my iPad in Clip Studio Paint, then decided that I’d be better drawing with pen on paper and finally, for the last two panels, I went back to my iPad. As you can see from my rough, I thought about including the blackbird incident and the hawthorn nibbling as panels but then I decided that, rather like a situation comedy, this strip should focus on the relationship between the two ponies on their home turf.

On balance, I probably prefer the extra action in my original rough, but it’s time to leave this strip and go on to a fresh one, and I have got plans to take the characters further afield.

rough for comic

Drawing on the New iPad Pro

iPad Pro sketch

We were at Meadowhall today, so I couldn’t resist calling in the Apple Store to try drawing on the new iPad Pro with the new Apple Pencil (the old Apple Pencil isn’t compatible with the new iPad).

It feels as if there’s no delay between the movement of the pencil and the line appearing: apparently they’ve got it down to just a few milliseconds. And they’ve also added a little bit of resistance, presumably to the tip of the pencil, to try to reduce the feeling that you’re drawing on glass.

In the very basic drawing program in Apple Notes, the colour I selected felt like using a large chisel-ended marker pen, but I think the sketches of passing shoppers that I made with the program’s virtual felt-tip pen produced results that would be difficult to distinguish from my efforts the real version of the pen.

Look forward to trying it out with Clip Studio Paint.