Introduction
The iPad has been part of my own workflow since 2014 . A key consideration in my workflow is a need to manage RSI and consequent constraints on how long I can spend at my pc with professional digital software like Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Painter. This review aimed to provide a focus for upgrading my iPad skills, looking in detail at recent developments and widening my range of software and styles, placing what I had earlier achieved in Procreate in a wider context.
The iPad has a number of advantages for painting and sketching:
- the ability to combine many different media on one image without needing to carry a lot of equipment.
- can sketch in airports and people think you are just reading on your iPad.
- possibility to work on very fine detail through zooming in and out of the image. fine control over transparency and ability to get very fine gradations of colour.
- delicate edge effects can be produced with transparency lock.
- ability to quickly explore many alternative styles, colours and compositions through manipulating layers.
Some textural effects of watercolour and gouache cannot be reproduced solely on the iPad itself. But using natural media and the iPad can produce very distinctive art that is impossible just using natural media.
Using photographs enables very different perspectives, vantage points and weather conditions to be captured – providing the photographs themselves are well thought through with potential final images in mind. It is also possible to exploit the effects of light on printed images to create atmospheric effects.
Procreate is the programme I have used most. throughout this course. Its key features include:
- fully customisable brushes with pressure and tilt sensitivity, including possibility to completely create one’s own brushes. Procreate 4 has added blend modes to the brushes
- good selection and masking tools
- alpha-lock and fill features
- effects and blend modes to enable rapid experimentation with different colours and versions of an image
- perspective grid and perspective assist – though I find this a bit difficult to use
It is not though so easy and intuitive to use for basic sketching as the colour palette is not as accessible
The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010. The drawing experience significantly improved particularly with the introduction of the iPad Pro, first released in November 2015 and Second Generation 2017, together with the Apple Pencil and improved camera. A further significant advance was made in autumn 2017 with introduction of iOS11 when iPad software made a corresponding leap in terms of both image quality and range of styles that can be produced. The iPad is now widely used by artists and illustrators to produce high end art like that of David Hockney and/or as part of an image design and development workflow. iPad portability and flexibility make it a very good tool for drafting and exploring alternative designs and ideas and travelling – potentially replacing both sketchbooks and pc digital work.
Most early Aps focused on varying brush size and transparency to produce Acrylic, airbrush, gouache and oil-type styles. David Hockney produced many small early sketches using the Brushes Ap on his iPhone – delighting in the speed with which he could record the colours and shapes of his surroundings just using his finger. He also used further software to produce very large gallery pieces as part of the ‘Bigger Picture’ exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2012. These resemble very large colourful gouache and oil paintings. Large pieces can also be tiled like his oil paintings to produce much bigger works. There are now a number of artists using the iPad to produce very large resolution paintings (eg Andy Maitland who paints using a tripod in the landscape) and hyperrealistic portraits (eg Kyle Lambert).
Images can be endlessly worked on in natural media, photographed, printed and worked on again.
Procreate Inspiration
Procreate is one of the more versatile Aps commonly used for professional work by digital painters like James Julier and illustrators like Stefan de Groot, Danny Glasgow and Austin Batchelor. The most beautiful and distinctive work I have found so far is by Ilya Tyljakov is a Russian concept artist who uses Procreate to create beautiful atmospheric work. He creates and sells his own ‘Pro Brushes’ on the ProCreate Community to produce very distinctive marks with a degree of randomness that make them very distinctive as a style.
Some artists and illustrators produce textured collage work. See for example: Michelle Brown: http://oldcellsstudio.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/iPad
But a lot of iPad painting found on sites like DeviantArt, Filckr, Tumblr and other social and illustration marketing networks has a very similar style – smooth blend, soft focus landscape and fantasy style. From my own preliminary explorations it is clear that there is much more potential to be explored to take my own illustration and artistic expression further.
More posts
Procreate Tutorials 2016
Resources
Wikipedia iPad gives a history of evolution of the specifications of the device. Specifically for the iPad Pro see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#iPad_Pro_series
Ipad Artroom: http://www.ipadartroom.com
Cathy Hunt: iPad Art: Lessons, Apps and Ideas for the iPad in Visual Art : ebook on using iPad for classroom art education for Apple download