October 22, 2011
I'm growing more comfortable these days with doodling on my iPad. It's a bit different than the cushy Cintiq + Photoshop tools I'm used to, though many of the skills are transferable. The lack of actual pressure-sensitivity means that line width variation is entirely fake -- you can choose a line width along with taper variation in advance, but on the fly the only way to achieve a thick-and-thin line is by trickery -- either draw fat and peel it back with an eraser or build up the line gradually. Alternatively to using the eraser, you can eye-drop a BG tone to feather into the line, but that means losing all the lovely layers you might want to change later. It's much nicer having the BG separate from the drawing layer(s) so you can move them around later as I've done here, or change the BG tone.One key to making field sketches easier, digital or traditional, is to learn to draw faster.. I find it hard not to overwork my drawings when there are so many tools available. I'm hoping to do many, many more pages of doodles and get looser with my digital drawings.