iPad Sketchbook Apple, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
BATTLE OF THE APPLES 7
Sketchbook App on the iPad
Autodesk Sketchbook is a professional drawing and painting app that comes in a rather bewildering variety of versions.
There are Sketchbook Mobile apps for both iPad and Galaxy Tab as well as the desktop heavy-lifters.
For iPad you have SketchBook Pro, specially made for the tablet, together with SketchBook Mobile, originally for iPhone or iPad Touch. There’s also SketchBook Mobile Express, which is free and a good way of trying the app out.
For Android the free version is also called SketchBook Mobile Express. The paid (but not very much) variety for Android is labelled Sketchbook Mobile.
Add Oprah Winfrey’s SketchBook O (I think that’s just for iPad) and that’s plenty to be going on with.
Each version has a different number of brushes, layers and tools, but even the most basic offers quite a few ways to fine tune them. Updates adding more functions are frequent and free.
The apple here was painted on my iPad in plain old Sketchbook Mobile 1.4. (Since then version 1.5 has appeared with even more bells and whistles.)
Even in my sub-Pro iPad version, I had many brushes to choose from, all adaptable for minimum and maximum transparency and width (useful for fading or tapering strokes). Choose your spacing (for a dotted line) and whether your finish is soft, solid or hard.
I find it useful to be able to fine tune the eraser here as well, just like the brushes.
There’s nothing like a smear tool for giving a fruity look to fruit. Sketchbook has one.
On the minus side, I still find the way this app arranges tool icons in a seemingly random fashion, in a what I suppose is meant to be a quick-access circle, merely confusing.
Save your work often. In most versions of Sketchbook there are a limited number of Undos.
Speed can be an issue too, but if Sketchbook – or for that matter any painting or drawing app – slows down, close and reopen the app, or even power off your machine to clear memory. That should speed things up again.
Tags: apple, art, drawing tablet, iPad & iPhone Painting, ipod touch, painting, purple owl, sketching, valerie beeby
iPad ArtRage Apple, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
BATTLE OF THE APPLES 6
Art Rage App on the iPad
Art Rage allows you to fine tune your finger painting tools with more precision than any other app on the iPad.
Sharpen your pencils, adjust the amount of water or oil in your brush, change the reactivity of pigments and paper and generally tweak your tools to your heart’s content. Art Rage can take it.
…Well, Art Rage can almost take it. Truth to tell, this app, so versatile on the desktop, is a little too powerful for the iPad’s rather limited RAM memory, and tends to respond a bit slowly.
Yes, it sometimes slows down. All the same, Art Rage has a fine range of facilities to start with and lacks no more than a few found in the desktop version.
Selection and ‘Stickies’ are missing in the iPad version, but that’s about it.
Art Rage layers offer a Photoshop-like list of blend modes.
Tracing or working from a reference image is made simple.
There’s an appealing range of papers.
The apple here was made with the Art Rage watercolour brushes, with a few fancy settings on the palette knives to build up the texture.
Tags: app, apple, art, digital artist, digital painting, drawing tablet, ipad, painting, purple owl, valerie beeby
Android Apple Painted in Canvas App, originally uploaded by purple0wl.
BATTLE OF THE APPLES 5
Canvas App on the Samsung Galaxy Tab
Once you get the feel of it, Android finger painting app Canvas is convenient and versatile . At first I missed a Smear tool, but by loading my brushes with plenty of blur and transparency, I managed to build up a fair amount of polish and glow for this Android apple.
Canvas even offers a Selection tool. This is your magic Lasso that summons up an army of marching ants, patrolling a selected area for manipulation. Selection doesn’t run to intricate outlines here, but you can, for instance, transfer an area from one layer to another, say to put one object behind another. Few mobile apps offer a Selection facility.
More. Canvas offers pressure sensitivity. That would be remarkable if it worked. Alas on my Galaxy Tab, it didn’t…
Still, Canvas has a host of useful tools. It’s well organised, simply laid out and well explained. You can even make your own brushes.
Tags: apple, art, digital artist, digital painting, drawing tablet, fruit, mobile digital art, tablet
Yesterday I had a nice surprise. Seeing Things has won a Golden Retrevo award.
Many thanks to Retrevo – and to everyone who voted for me!
Adobe Ideas is certainly simple and easy to use. Many illustrators like Ideas because it makes vector drawings that can feed straight into Illustrator on the desktop.
True, vector drawings can be shown at any size and still look sharp, but in Ideas this slick performance can’t be turned off. Sign your name in Adobe Ideas and it comes out shaved and smoothed to within an inch of its life. President Obama recently wrote his name on an iPad in Ideas. I wonder if his autograph, with so much individuality removed, was really all that authentic.
Adobe Ideas is free with two layers, one layer (raster) for an imported image, one (vector) for your drawing. You can pay – but ridiculously little in Adobe terms – for extra layers.
You adjust your brush width and transparency here with a convenient slider at the side of the drawing area.
If you don’t like the look of a filled shape, a handy trick is to tailor it with the eraser.
If you like to work with a pared down palette, Adobe Ideas allows you to pick and save a five-colour swatch from any image. The resulting collection of colour schemes can come in useful.
Tags: "vector drawing", antialias, apple, art, autograph, digital artist, digital painting, drawing, drawing tablet, ipad, iPad & iPhone Painting, obama, sketching, tips, valerie beeby
COME ALONG NOW, PUT YOUR WORST FACE FORWARD!
PAINTER 12 BRUSHES