30 drawing apps in 30 days day 1 paper

I was talking to one of the lecturers in the School of Art about digital drawing apps, and remembered that five long years ago I looked at 30 different drawing apps for iphone and ipad: http://www.strangebiros.co.uk/2015/06/30-drawing-apps-in-30-days-day-1-paper.html

Today as I start working from home I thought it might be useful to revisit the apps, see if they have survived, improved or if there are even better options.

Back then I had an ipad air and probably a foam tipped stylus.. to be honest I can't remember.
Today I've got a nice ipad pro and an apple pencil.

After the investigations into ipad apps last time I switched to using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro as my main drawing application, as I found it was very well matched to my drawing style. Maybe I'll find another app to replace it?

So Back in June of 2015 I started my 30 apps with 'paper' by '53'.
It's now Called 'Paper' by 'We Transfer', the app looks familiar even though I've not used it in 5 years. I offers a collection of sketchbooks which you can flick through and add pages. There's a free version, and an £8.99 pro version that unlocks special features, no idea what they are though... The comments seem mostly positive except for the moaning about it being a subscription service.

It's actively maintained though, and the last update was 3 weeks ago. The app works well with my ipad and pencil, and the brushes and pens have a pleasant arty feel.

The palette is intuitive and the pen tracks accurately. There's no glitching, and the non standard zoom feature which used to be a magnifying glass according to my last review has been replaced with pinch and zoom. Apparently the old version used to have some weird finger twist to undo too, but that's all been changed and is now a very obvious undo arrow.

It's nice, I like the ability to add images to the covers of the virtual notebooks, and I can see it becoming a well used virtual journal style app if you like that sort of thing...  definitely worth taking for a test drive.

Inktober 2015

This year to make a change from the mad dash of doing 24HCD I thought I might try to join in #Inktober.
31 inked drawings in 31 days.

Inktober was instigated by Jake Parker in 2009  as a challenge to improve his already very refined inking skills.

The rules as with 24HCD are simple:

1. Draw something and ink it up.

2. Post it online. (I'll be posting here and on twitter)

3. Apply the hashtag  #inktober

4. Do this everyday throughout October.

I also have a vague notion that I might try and develop a story with the pictures... the joy of doing Inktober as against 24HCD is I can plan a story beforehand without breaking the rules.
This is a good thing, as the stories in my previous 24HCD efforts have been a little flimsy at times...

WychWolf part 1

I've posted the first page of the wychwolf story over on www.wychwolf.com

The Comic Press scripts should make it go live first thing on Monday morning.

This page was actually not the first I drew for the story, but came out of a desire to introduce the characters a little before we rolled into the main story.

For those who are interested, I drew the pencils with a cheap plastic retractable, on some DELETER comic book paper, and then inked using a DELETER Saji dip pen, and Number 4 ink.

Scanned into photoshop elements, as a 600dpi black and white image, coloured, and fiddled around with, before dropping back to 72dpi for the web.

Art supplies from http://www.dinkybox.co.uk/

The pages that follow have been inked and penciled using a variety of different paper and ink, and pen.

I'll try and record what was done with what, so I can pick out the ones that I like best... which at the minute seems to be a Staedtler pigment liner ink fibre tip.

Giant Killer Robots

Dom has been doing some drawing, and Nagging Adam to write some story, this devolved into the usual arguments about ... well almost anything.

Adam seems to have spent a little time writing a bit of the story involving evil nazi scientists, and Mad Jack Fuller's tomb in Brightlingsea...

I myself have forgotten all about story, and have been drawing giant killer robots.

Previous Draw off

The week before all this Kuta business started, Dom and I had a Jim DarkMagic Draw off...
Here's mine:


and here's Doms:


We've decided to try and do a drawing a day, and post them to our respective blogs..
Dom has set up a blogger account here:
http://insectsrulethesky.blogspot.com/ but he only gets an hour of mac/online time a day (I am a mean parent), so it might take a while to get it populated.
He created a header for the site this evening using Fireworks on the old PC.

Kuta in the family

So Dom saw the Kuta drawings and wanted me to draw with him... I had a bash at doing a grey Kuta, doing Single Whip from the first movement of Yang style Long Form Tai Chi.
Dom had a go at drawing Kuta as a damaged robot.