Drawing on iPad

I just got an iPad as a Christmas gift from my boss. Not because I'm special, but because he's a kick-ass boss, and he gave them to everyone in the company. If you follow my blog, you may know that I have an iPhone, too. I bought a program called Brushes for the iPhone last year, and had a bit of fun with it, but never liked drawing on such a small screen.

The iPad has removed that barrier. It sports a larger work area, bigger tools and more memory (32 Gb) to work with. I was able to move my Brushes app over to the iPad, but haven't worked in it on my iPad yet. I did, however, buy an application by Autodesk called Sketchbook Pro for the iPad, which is put out by the same folks that make Sketchbook Pro for my Mac. Two different animals, but that was to be expected.



I found that using my finger is limiting when it comes to control, brush accuracy and work-flow, i.e.; my hand's drawing posture is different when pointing than when holding a pencil. I bought a POGO stylus, which works fairly well, but isn't as precise as my Wacom Cintiq/Intuos Pen Stylus. The POGO is like drawing with a small pen with a 1/4 inch disc of sponge felt on the tip. It takes a bit of training, but you get used to it.



After downloading the application, I got into my first drawing. Me, on the couch with my graduation fez and a puzzled look. One layer, one color, one pencil setting. Fun.

I did a couple of life drawings of my wife and daughter, but it wasn't until this afternoon that I got into the layers and brush variations. Sketchbook Pro supports 4 layers with limited styles (normal, multiply, overlay...) and the ability to change the opacity. The brushes are limited (not exactly Photoshop CS5), but able to accept adjustments... fine for sketching and color studies.

I sat down after wolfing down my lunch of rice and crackers to draw a three layered piece I call "The Vengeful God of Illegal Ivory". The final output is merely 720 x 540 pixels at 72dpi, but Sketchbook Pro allows you to save it as a PSD with the layers intact at 1024 x 768 pixels, which you can email to yourself or upload to Facebook, Flicker, etc... nice feature.

Digging the new toy - Hope I can bring it into my bag of tricks in a significant way. Click the images to enlarge them.