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.

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 7 Wacom Bamboo paper

Bamboo paper is slightly deceptive. I seems like its a very bare bones app, and in some ways it is... no layers, no page zoom, just 3 preset tool widths, and two tools - a pen and a marker in the basic setup, but it does these things quite well, and as a note taking app, or for sketching a design it's quite handy. It also has a number of in app purcases, which equate to additional brushes and "paper" types.

The standard pen is a useful tool, but feels imprecise, and begs to be used with an active stylus.. and offers to connect- ostensibly to the wacom active stylus.

The colour transparency which creates a multiply effect with successive layers would probably work better with the watercolor brush.

Some tools I feel work better due to their simplicity, and I prefer my handy old Wacom bamboo digitiser  over my chunky Cintiq most of the time, but the bamboo brand doesn't mean anything here.

Today's sketch challenge was "water" so I've gone for the old cartoonist sterotype of the castaway.

#24HCD 2014 preparations

I was at out University of Brighton Grand Parade Campus today for a team meeting, and took the opportunity to nip into the Union shop.
Grand Parade has an arts focus, so the Union shop stocks artists supplies, including stacks of paper. I bought a dozen sheets of A2 Layout paper which looked the most promising "anti-bleed" paper if used with COPIC markers.
A quick test during our afternoon discussions proved that the super cheap 6p a sheet paper is up to the job, and I'll be using it for next weekend's #24HCD.

So the plan is to draw big, and fast on A2 in plain Black and White, photographing the results rather than scanning. I think if I'm brave enough I may ink direct, rather than laying out in pencil first too... I guess it depends on how complex the pics turn out to be.

More as it happens....