30 drawing apps in 30 days day 6 - Brushes (Redux)

As mentioned previously the first drawing app I bought on my old iPod touch was Brushes. There was quite a lot of hoohah at the time that such fantastic drawing could be accomplished on your phone, but I found it almost completely useless,even with a pogo stylus . The pogo stylus was at that time the ONLY stylus available, and it was a horrid little stick with a lump of crackly foam on the end.

Despite the hype I dont think many peopl actally produced anything with Brushes.

Anyway, as I'm working through the apps I have I gave it a second look, but this time, on an iPad air, with it's far larger retina screen... and you know what it's not that bad.

It does exactly whatit says in the name, and allows you to create brushes, and as long as you bear that in mind, and use it to paint, with a brush and don't try and draw its fine.

The brush settings are very comprehensive, and it all works quite nicely, there is a bit a gesture sensitivity if you try to do small close strokes, which it interprets as wanting to use the colour picker (the opposite of the problem with Autodesk mobile sketchbook X)

It has multiple layer support,can import and export to a folder ondropbox as jpg, png, native brushes format OR psd, which is useful.

It automatically records the drawing process and turns it into a video clip.

Anyway, today's challenge theme was 'moon' which can't be right... that's no moon...

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 5 - Mobile Sketchbook X from Autodesk

My first iOS device was an early iPod touch and I seem to remember downloading 'brushes' and failing to do anything of any precision on it due to the limitations of the device, the earlier iteration of iOS and my big fat fingers. I haven't bothered even trying to draw anything on a phone sized device since. So today I thought I'd try the mobile version of sketchbook,(and blog the results in the phone blogger app) it works predictably within the limitations of the tiny screen. 

It has 3 layers, which is nice, and the same puck to control brush size and opacity as it's iPad cousin.

The only slight fiddle is the need to relaunch the pick menu after each selection, so pick a brush, open it again to pick a colour or change size.

That said there is a really useful quick colour pick tool, a long press opens a crosshair and means you can switch back and forth quite nimbly. 

As with all touch devices sometimes the gesture recognition fails and instead of the crosshair you draw a line, and then have to open the picker to undo.

It would be worth trying this app with a stylus to get a bit of precision in the lines, but I think you'd have to be quite dedicated to not just use a real notepad and pen... Which of course you could photograph and bring into the app as a layer to be worked up into something fancier. 

The other big downside is that using the app does seem to hammer the battery of he phone, so it wouldn't do for a long day of sketching... I guess it might work better on one of the fatter bigger iPhone 6s? 

So why would you use a drawing app on your phone? 

How about if you were on the train to Yorkshire to see your dear old mum? (You'd use your iPad if you had any sense)

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 4 - Sketchbook pro from Autodesk

Back when I used to draw a weekly webcomic with my boys I briefly dallied with Autodesk Sketchbook (desktop), but reverted to my favourite lightweight (and cheap) Photoshop Elements.
What's interesting is that for some tasks I find it far better to have a limited set of tools. I can do almost everything I need from a desktop drawing app in Photoshop elements before my Creative Cloud version of full fat photoshop has even loaded.
Conversely on the iPad many of the drawing apps seem to offer just too little functionality to be used in any form of serious workflow. An exception to this is Autodesk Sketchbook pro, which has been a solid performer right from the start, and in a way that doesn't force me to substantially change the way I work.
It offers layers - 18 layers if you can restrict your image to 1024x768, but can even handle 3 layers at 8 mega pixels- that's 2830x2830.

The puck that controls brush properties gives a really speedy way to change brush size, by selecting and sliding left for smaller, right for larger, and down (and up) to change the opacity.
There's even a built in virtual palm rest that tracks whatever touches it, so you can steady your hand.

Undo is a simple back arrow button, there's a time lapse record function so you can show your working, and there's even a "Duo Sketch" function if you want to sketch a long with someone (I never have)
...and best of all there's a really simple flood fill function... a bucket and a bunch of COPIC marker colours to pick from.

Finished items can be exported to the photo gallery, and also emailed as a .psd.


...and just for fun it looks like this version has been deprecated... I can't find it in the appstore at all.
There is a cut down Sketchbook Express for iPad, but it looks like all the effort is being put into a new version: Autodesk Sketchbook... which I'll take a look at sometime in the coming month... but on first glance it offers a very basic set of tools for free, a few more tools for "essentials" when you sign up, and some pro tools for a subscription.
This does highlight an issue for those planning to use a tool for serious work, the update cycle of iOS devices seems to force a swift iteration on app versions. Good for getting new features... terrible for messing up workflows.

Oh, nearly forgot.. the sketch a day challenge for today was to draw a pencil... which is apt as that's the new logo for Autodesk sketchbook.

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 3 - Tayasui Sketches

Weird named app Tayasui Sketches was my favourite drawing app on the iPad for a while chiefly because it has a ROTRING pen, and in the real world I used to use rotring isograph pens... before I switched allegiance to Pigma Micron pens.

As with many apps it's evolved, and I'm not entirely sure I like the new version as much.
This pic was drawn with the free version of the app, but using the layers feature as a free 1hr trial, which is a neat way to test a tool before coughing up for it.
(In fact after digging around in the settings I found I had bought the extras some time ago, and was able to restore them.)
In the pro version it's also possible to swap the undo function from a two finger left swipe to a button... far easier, as with all drawing apps sometimes the gesture registers as a line which means you have another thing to undo...

Today's #ltasketchaday challenge was draw ... blubber

so I sketched a whale

It shows one of the neat features of 'sketches' which is the letratone style fill. The fill feature as with many iPad drawing apps is a bit of a bodge... it requires an closed area to be  to be drawn which will be filled, this requires a bit of forward thinking... instead of drawing a boundary then filling it, one has to draw an outline for the fill.

The share functions are iOS defaults, but usefully for LTA type folk it includes the option to send to Nearpod.

A load of reviewers compare sketches with the Paper app, soley on the basis that both organise sketches into little pretend book- Albums in this case.

The app also offers support for a wide range of active styli... none of which I have at the minute... (The Adonit, the Pencil (from Paper makers 53), the Wacom stylus2, the Adobe ink, the pogo active and the Sensu brush) but it works ok with "finger painting" even with my fat fingers as long as you are happy zooming in and out to get strokes to match up. 

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 2 - Pro create

Procreate
For the challenge I'm going to work through the drawing apps I already have on my iPad first, and then start digging for new ones.
I've had  Pro Create for a while now, but never really done much with it...
Unlike Paper it does have a fill function- "colour drop" which requires a bit of getting used to.

Layers work well and allow some washes or air brush toning to be applied and tidied with an eraser, and there's also a neat record function which creates a neat HD time lapse video.
I've uploaded to our Relay server:

Anyway, here's the pic for today... a sausage...

30 drawing apps in 30 days day 1 - Paper by 53

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:

Urban grit

Late lunch over at Circus Street getting a numb bum from sitting on crumbly concrete and sketching the decay as part of the Drawing Research Interest Group project.