Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
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.
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.
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?
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.