The Wonderful World of Colour

 

Drawing done in Procreate

When it comes to drawing I've always been a little intimidated by colour. Okay maybe a lot intimidated. There's plenty going on in a colour image and many things to consider. I'd only read enough colour theory to get that it's pretty complicated stuff and I best avoid messing around with it.

 

This drawing of a cello head was one of the first finished ones that I did in Procreate on the iPad Air. The cello sits in my living room and is lit by sunlight coming from the living room windows and back lit slightly by an incandescent lamp from the kitchen giving it both the bluish and yellow highlights. I decided to work on a neutral brown background because I thought it would be easier allowing me to focus on the highlights and shadows. Like a lot of stuff that I do this was primarily done as an experiment to learn how to deal with light on these surfaces. 

 

I am reluctant to call these "digital paintings" because the technique that I use doesn't feel like painting at all. I set my stylus point size to 7.0% (I'm not really sure what Procreate means by these percentages but that's what it is) which, with a canvas size of 3000x4096 pixels, as in this drawing, it's a very fine line. I work in a cross-hatch scribbling motion that is more like the way you would draw with pencil crayons or pastels.

 

 

A detail of the cello head.

 I set the pressure sensitive opacity to about 60% so the harder I press the more opaque the stroke. If I understand this correctly I think that means at the lightest pressure that will register I get about a 60% opacity stroke. This makes blending a joy and feels very natural, like the light touch of a pastel. I don't use any specific blending tools. I really dislike the smeary look that creates. The only other tool I use is the eraser which I will set to various sizes and almost always at least 50% opacity or less. I work zoomed in. Quite often very zoomed in. It is one of the greatest advantages of drawing on an iPad or computer. Well, that and "undo!" 

Detail of a peg.

 

Another obvious advantage is the ability to work in layers. I mostly stick to just a base layer, in this case the brown background, and a single layer that I draw on. I will occasionally add a layer so I can experiment with an idea that I will either merge with the drawing layer or discard when I realize what a bad idea it was. When working from a photo reference I like to place the photo on the topmost layer allowing me to quickly flip to see how I'm getting on. The iPad Pro can also do split screen view so I can view the image to the side which can be very helpful if you want to see the whole image while working zoomed in on a detail. Admittedly the pallet of this drawing is not the widest range but I learned a lot from the process—I learn something new with almost every drawing—and it did go on for 20 hours or so.                  

A portrait done in Procreate

 

Of course there are draw backs to digital art. No physical thing to hold in your hand for one; unless you pay an arm and a leg to get a high end giclee print. The technology is not cheap either but in the long run it may actually be comparable to traditional media. Obviously that's just a very short list but the biggest drawback to my mind is the resistance you face when those who have no idea what goes into a digital drawing or painting (often any drawing or painting) seem to think you have somehow gotten away with something. The truth is that in a way you may have. Digital drawing for many reasons is faster and cleaner and by it's very nature much more forgiving. Being able to take back a stroke or two or three, save multiple versions of the file you're working on for later experimentation, working in layers you can turn off and on or merge or shuffle about, and carry your entire studio around in a shoulder bag that you can pull out and play with at almost any moment. 

 

For me it completely removed the "fear of the blank page" I know held me back so often. I still love the feel, smell, look and sundry trappings of real physical drawing on paper. But I like this tool and will continue to try to get as much out of it as I can. As far as colour goes, even if you poo poo the world of digital art you would be remiss to ignore it as a valuable learning tool. The RGB gamut is massive and you're painting with light, you know, just like the real world does right before your eyes. More so than paint on a canvas.

 

Vector Drawings - How I began digitally drawing.

When I first began digital drawing in early November of 2014 I started out with the idea that I wanted to create drawings that looked like pen and ink. In my political cartooning days I had drawn cross-hatched, editorial style cartoons with nib-pen, brush and ink and it was the drawing style that I was most comfortable with. My first attempts at drawing on the iPad were weak to say the least. I didn't like the way the stylus' that were available to me felt. Mostly the nibs were large and spongey and dragged as they crossed the glass surface of the iPad. There was no sense that this felt at all like drawing. I was used to a Wacom tablet that I use exclusively in Illustrator and Photoshop for my job as a graphic artist so the missing pressure sensitivity of the cheap iPad stylus' bothered me. I pretty well gave up thinking that it wasn't going to work for me. I was trying a variety of apps as well and none of them felt natural with interfaces that just got in the way. 

 

A vector drawing done in Adobe Draw

I wasn't looking too deeply into this sort of thing so I was surprised one day while in a techie store to see for sale a blue-tooth, pressure sensitive stylus that actually had programable buttons and a tip that was comparatively small and hard. This was the Adonit Jot Touch. After the sticker shock wore off I decided to give it a try. I told myself that I could return it immediately if I didn't like it and if I did the price was worth it. Because I use illustrator at work everyday and was used to the way vector lines responded I first thought that drawing something that looked like pen and ink would work better in a vector program so I opted to begin the experiment in Adobe Draw.

 

This Portait of a girl holding her head in her hands was one of the first finished drawings that I did using the Adonit stylus in Adobe Draw. I first did some drawings on a white background but found them to be lacking in depth. I also noticed that as I added lines to the image—being a vector app—the file size and strain on the limited resources of the iPad grew exponetionally. Vector files work differently than raster files and the redraw was causing annoying lags as I got deeper into each image. Drawing on a black background allowed me to get to the same darkness using half of the strokes. Even so these files were very large (when transferred to my desktop as Illustrator files they were nearly 100 Megs).    

   

A vector drawing done in Adobe Draw

I was invigorated by the process and quite thrilled to be able to draw anywhere and anytime with out all of the palaver of having to get all of the traditional bits of brushes, pens, ink, pot of water, etc. I found myself drawing on coffee breaks at work, the bus, in pubs and while watching tv. Traditional media couldn't compete with that advantage. Since I hadn't done any drawing in years it was this tiny advantage that allowed me to keep at it. 

 

I soon came to see there was a problem with the Adonit stylus. Although I loved the feel and ease with which it worked, it had a steel, non-replaceable tip that was wearing and scratching the surface of my iPad. So I went looking and found my next stylus which was a Wacom. I was very comfortable with the feel and balance of the Wacom stylus that I used at work on the desktop and Wacom was smart enough to design the iPad version almost exactly the same. Plus it had a plastic replaceable tip. It also seemed to have slightly better pressure sensitivity and a longer lasting battery.

 

 

Vector drawing of a parrot done in Adobe Draw

I continued to do around 20 or so finished drawings using the Wacom stylus and the Draw app but the problem of lag from re-draw with these vector files was really beginning to annoy me. I went searching for a good raster drawing app. I think at this point I have pretty well downloaded and tried them all but in the end it really wasn't even a toss up. Procreate is in my opinion the single best digital drawing/painting app available for the iPad. That may change but not if the people at Procreate listen to their user base and stay ahead of the game (please add something to let me know my zoom percentage!) 

 

I had been anxiously following Apple news for some time with regards to the iPad Pro. A larger drawing surface, more memory and a faster cpu—all very welcome upgrades. It got better however; the Apple Pencil. When my new iPad Pro arrived I immediately could see it was as good as promised and what this would mean for my digital drawings. The bad news is my go-to app Procreate got a great upgrade for the Pro that unfortunately no longer was supporting the Wacom stylus. In fact the only one they would support was the Apple Pencil—which I had on back-order. Grrrr.....

 

Next: The wonderful world of colour. . .