So this thread gave me the urge to get an iPad Pro and start trying to be creative again as a hobby.
I picked up the Pro along with a Pencil and I've been trying to find time to sit down and practice.
To be honest, it feels really alien and quite odd to be using a stylus and drawing on glass. The last time I did any real drawing was in high school art class about 15 years ago.
I've completely forgotten the basics and it feels weird. Anything original I've tried so far has been absolutely awful and it's been really tough to find inspiration.
Trying to learn all these new art apps recommended is quite intimidating too, there's so many brushes, so many pens, millions of colours are now available from a colour picker instead of the 20 pencils that come in a pack, pinching and zooming to change the scale takes a bit of time to wrap your head around when your used to a fixed size piece of paper...there's quite a lot to take in and and try to get comfortable with as a newbie.
I am however also trying to teach myself Adobe Illustrator on the PC (I currently only have very basic Photoshop knowledge), I've been working my way through Deke McClelland's 16 hour
Illustrator CC Fundamentals course on Lynda.com
I'm about 70% through it after an hour or so a day and really enjoyed the cartoon style drawing when he get's around to teach the blob brush.
Then I learned about the '
Astropad' app where you can use the full blown Illustrator desktop software on the iPad Pro by streaming it to the screen over USB (or wifi).
This has been a revelation where by I can use both my Macbook Pro and the iPad Pro together to use the powerful full blown illustrator.
There was one exercise where you draw this cartoon character, it took me probably over half an hour to an hour to do it with very carefully with a mouse, following the tutorial. But re-doing the black line inking and coloring in took me less than 5 minutes using the stylus on the iPad pro connected to the computer, it felt really good and I can really see the potential.
Astropad is not perfect though, it's got quite a few shortcomings whereby any part of the screen in motion (for example if using the quick selection tool in photoshop that has a moving outline) looks very pixelated which makes it hard to work on the screen accurately. For sketching and smooth strokes though, it's amazing.
Pinching to zoom and panning is okay on the iPad glass, but works even better if you just use your off hand on the Macbook trackpad to do that instead, which is super smooth.
I think I'm just going to have to spend some more time learning the apps like Procreate, Pixelmator, Paper etc. Some seem really good for certain things, but lacking in other areas. It's going to take some practice! Going to give it a few weeks, little and often and hope it clicks.
For now here's the trace from template in the Lynda tutorial I remade using a combination of Astropad and the Macbook, the only good thing I've got to share so far even if it's not original!
