At yesterday's team call
Katie was enthusing about Chris Riddell, local illustrator, who has been
encouraging everyone to draw.
We decided as a team to set up a sketch a day challenge, so I found a bunch of random words, and scheduled 30 tweets in tweetdeck to deliver a random theme suggestion each day at about 7.45 am when folk are on the way in to work, maybe bored on the train.
Once I'd set it up I realised it might be a useful way of researching the wealth of drawing apps, and styli available now, and produce some results that would be of interest to my colleagues at City Campus. So this is the first post in a daily series, where I'm going to try out a different drawing app each day, and share the results.
First effort was in
Paper, by 53 .
Paper is really a journalling app, and as such organises sketches neatly into little fake moleskine notebooks, which is quite handy. The ability to share individual pictures is useful - especially when used to share content to social media. I've also used the "presentation mode" before- which was a refreshing alternative to powerpoint.
The original version came with some basic tools, and additional brushes and pens were available by in app purchase, though their business model seems to have changed slightly and they recently made a number of these feature freely available. The Watercolour brush is rather pleasant, and the pen gives a good fluid line, and is reasonably easy to control.
The undo function is a bit odd, in that it is a sort of rewind which involves twisting two fingers in a circle.
As with many drawing apps I can't find a fill function- this must be a pain to code as it needs closed shapes - which aren't easiest to create when "finger painting", in fact the whole area is a subject of study up at the
Computing school here at Brighton Uni.
The other weird control is the zoom, which gives an old fashioned magnifying glass over the selection... and is maybe not as good as the ability to zoom the entire page, although it does mean you don't lose context.
The challenge topic for day 1 was draw a cat... so here it is:
