Taking the Wheel

 

iPad Ship Wheel

I did this Nautical wheel using Procreate on an iPad. Painting and drawing on the iPad has the advantae of being able to continually rework the image without it appearing to be overworked. 

That said, I find it so difficult to get the lines to go where I want them to, that I end up getting frustrated. I can usually get a pencil lead to go where I intend it to even if the mark ends up being in the wrong place. With the iPad and a blue-tooth, pressure-sensitive stylus (yes, I am trying just about anything I can to get it to work for me), I can’t usually get the mark to even go where I intend.

I think the iPad requires a different style of drawing. It is more like painting with a long-handled brush. You can move the paint around, but precision is a little more difficult.

Or maybe not. I WAS able to figure out how to get more precise marks: zooming in. The pinch to zoom stroke really helps out and may someday give me a comfortable enough method for drawing that I can do more on the iPad. By zooming in on my subject, I can get lines pretty much where I want them, but then I lose my sense of the overall composition. I can’t see where I am, so proportion becomes more difficult.

I keep thinking there must be some good tricks for painting/drawing with an iPad. I have seen some great art come from iPads. (I did most of the art for the first book of Two Young Captains with just iPad art.)

It’s going to take me some more practice before I’m going to be comfortable drawing from scratch on the iPad.