ipad sketchbook

I’ve been trying out my iPad as a sketchbook, taking it with me on walks or sitting outside when the weather clears; it works pretty well, the screen is clear and visible in a variety of lights, glare was only a problem on extremely sunny days and only at certain angles. 

 The apps I’ve settled on, after test driving a half dozen or so, are Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro and ArtStudio from Lucky Clan. This drawing was done with ArtStudio, the brush designer is very PhotoShop like, with a Pencil, a Brush, a Wet Brush, and an Airbrush, with settings for size, opacity, jitter et… you can fill in large areas, but with randomness in a number of ways, making interesting textures very quickly. Like PS, it comes with a bunch of filters. Sketchbook Pro, used for the drawing below, has been around for a while but recently adapted to the iPad. Like most AutoDesk products, this is a solid piece of software with lots of variables and options; I found it much more touch sensitive than ArtStudio and suited for making interesting organic marks. The interface is a bit confusing and to call up the controls you wrap with three fingers on the screen, which kind of breaks the flow of drawing. My main complaint for both apps is no eyedropper tool, essential for painting rapidly. You have to be constantly re-setting the color sliders because you can’t sample from the document.

As I write this I’m browsing through the app store and stunned to see how many new drawing tools have sprung up just since I did my original tests, about four months ago, and with all kinds of niche twists and specialized functionality. 

It’s not a huge insight to predict that something called “touch-screen technology” was likely to have a major impact on the act and idea of drawing, but couple that with the huge development community that has already emerged and the portability and sensitivity of the device itself, I just see this torrent, this cascade, this torrential cascading explosion of drawings, as with photographs, gorging the server farms and flying around in cyberspace. Democratized or merely attenuated, the sheer volume will be something to behold and will certainly alter the way we create and think about drawings.