Review: Drawing on iPad

I’ve had my iPad Pro for about a year now, so I’d thought I would share my experience of drawing on it with the Procreate app and the Apple Pencil (2nd generation). First off, I didn’t necessarily upgrade my iPad in order to begin drawing on it. My iPad was about 8 years old and it was getting pretty slow to use for credit card transactions and bookkeeping. Many of my illustrator friends use iPad Pro and Procreate for sketching, so I thought I would go for the pro model and bundle it with my need for business transactions along with digital sketching.

The Apple Pencil and the iPad Pro deliver a very authentic drawing experience. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the experience was better than I anticipated. Stroking the tip of the pencil across the screen has a natural feel to it with no lag or offset. It responds well to the amount of pressure used, although pressing too hard will cause temporary screen distortion. Overall, I think most users will find the experience of drawing tactile and satisfying. In fact, I often find myself with a craving to get the iPad out and draw.

Procreate is a fine drawing app. It can be quite powerful if you are willing to put the time into learning all the tools and processes the app offers. For me, I keep it simple, using just a few brushes to draw with, the cut and paste feature and resizing tool. My work does not really require much else, but it is nice to know the tools are available if needed. Those tools may become more necessary in the future, when I find myself traveling and away from the full-power of my desktop.

The app itself is laid out well. Quick adjustments like brush size, opacity, color and undo are available on the main screen. While fine tuning individual brushes can be made deeper inside the main brush menu. This helps you get the stroke just right for your particular style of drawing. Procreate offers a wide variety of brushes out of the box, while also offering the ability to build custom brushes. My needs have been met with just a couple tweaks to the standard brush settings.

My biggest complaint with Procreate comes immediately after changing brushes. Frequently, the brush fails to work right after a switch. You set the tip on the screen and begin to draw or erase but it will not respond. You have to lift the tip off the screen and place it back down to get it working again. This glitch has been there since the beginning and has continued through the app updates. I have searched for solutions online, but have not found any yet. It does not do this every single time you switch brushes, but it does it more often than not, which interrupts the flow of drawing.

The sketches you see in this blog post were all created in Procreate. It can be difficult to see the difference between a traditional pencil sketch that was scanned into the computer versus a Procreate sketch. When I complete a sketch in Procreate, I will use the share feature to airdrop the image to my iMac where I will continue working on it in Corel Painter. This process is obviously much faster than scanning a pencil sketch and cleaning it up to prep it for digital paint.

So far I have not taken anything to final art within Procreate, but I am working on developing that process. It will be useful when I’m traveling. For now, it is faster to finish my sketches on my Cintiq using Corel Painter and personal custom brushes. On a final note, Procreate will record your drawings which you can export and edit within any video editing software. The videos look great and are a fun way to share your work.

Caricature Workshop

I left my signed copy of Tom Richmond's caricature book, "The Mad Art of Caricature" in a hotel room back in October of 2017. Sadly, no one was unable to locate the book after exchanging a number of phone calls and emails with the Hilton staff. My suspicion is the maid had a secret desire to learn caricature and kept it for herself. Fortunately, Tom was teaching a caricature workshop in nearby LA come January and he was generous enough to include a signed copy of his book with the tuition. So I signed up and made the drive from Phoenix to attend his three-day workshop. 

I will make it known that I have little experience in caricature. This art form naturally appeals to my whimsical nature, but drawing faces has always been a struggle for me. My goal in attending this workshop was to develop a process for approaching anyone's face and being able to caricature it, which I achieved.

The workshop takes place over three days, starting Friday after lunch and ending Sunday afternoon. During that time, we did lots and lots of caricatures in 5-10 minute increments, taking references from a book of citizen photos that Tom provided or searching celebrities online. Since Tom's background is in live caricature, making confident and decisive lines on the paper is what he emphasizes. These short drills help build your decision-making skills and stop you from overworking a face.

While we worked, Tom shared stories from his days as a live caricature artist at the amusement parks and also went into depth on some of his projects for Mad magazine. It was insightful to hear about his process and the amount of time he spends on an illustration, which is far less than us mere mortal illustrators might think, especially considering the amount of details he puts in each drawing. Tom also did a live caricature demo of one of the students while the rest of us observed. 

He also walked around the room, giving individual attention to each student throughout the workshop. This gave the students a chance to have their work critiqued and ask questions. Early on, Tom had us focus on the fundamental aspect of creating a t-shape to form the eyes and nose. With enough practice, this becomes muscle memory and it really helped me create stronger roadmaps for my caricatures.

Some say that Tom's book on caricature is the best ever been written on the subject. I would agree and his book is a great companion to follow up with after the class. It allows you to dig into more detail from the workshop's lessons. I feel the combination of his class and his book are really all one needs to develop real caricature skills, besides plenty of practice. 

One of the first things I mentioned to my wife prior to signing up for the class was how much value I thought Tom was offering between the class, the book, signed artwork, etc, making it a no brainer to attend. But, I think all of us in the class were most blown-away by the illustration of the entire class in caricature. (See below) Tom gave each of us a signed, full-color poster which makes for an awesome keepsake. Although caricature is only something I enjoy doing for friends and family at this time, I think this class would behoove anyone pursuing caricature for financial gain. Link to his workshop schedule. 

In a final note, I also took Jason Seiler's caricature class online at Schoolism.com prior to this workshop. I took the version where Jason gives video critiques of class assignments. That was also a great learning experience. However, I had zero caricature experience when I took that class. If I could to it over again, I would recommend Tom's class first, especially if you are new to caricature. It gives you the tools to begin developing your caricature process, something I was lacking when I took Jason's class.