I can't draw. Not an artistic bone in my body. I scraped an Art O-Level, but only because I took the Graphic Design variant and have a reasonable eye for the impact of the image.
But I can produce something that's vaguely pleasing on the iPad. It's taken a while for really good drawing apps to appear - the iPad, with its capacitive screen, isn't an ideal device for accurate rendering of a brush stroke - but there are now more than a few that do an amazing job. Critically, Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro allows you to zoom in to pixel level for fine detail - a capability that many other drawing apps lack.
And its Sketchbook Pro that I've been playing around with in the last couple of days, when I've been able to wrest the iPad from Abby, who's also fallen in love with it. A serious tool, with much the same capability as its desktop equivalent, but tuned for multi-touch gestures. Infinitely-editable pens, variable-opacity, blendable layers and a phenomenally customisable interface... it's quite extraordinary. And the full version costs... £2.99.
But I can produce something that's vaguely pleasing on the iPad. It's taken a while for really good drawing apps to appear - the iPad, with its capacitive screen, isn't an ideal device for accurate rendering of a brush stroke - but there are now more than a few that do an amazing job. Critically, Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro allows you to zoom in to pixel level for fine detail - a capability that many other drawing apps lack.
And its Sketchbook Pro that I've been playing around with in the last couple of days, when I've been able to wrest the iPad from Abby, who's also fallen in love with it. A serious tool, with much the same capability as its desktop equivalent, but tuned for multi-touch gestures. Infinitely-editable pens, variable-opacity, blendable layers and a phenomenally customisable interface... it's quite extraordinary. And the full version costs... £2.99.
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If you've never tried a drawing app, there are others that are more immediately accessible - I like Paper for quick doodling about, because it has beautiful watercolour brushes. Doodle Buddy has always been a favourite with the girls and, for vector-drawing, I favour Inkpad. But Sketchbook blows away all the other 'proper' drawings apps for me - if you have a shred of artistic talent, you just have to try it. In artists' hands it can produce quite stunning results.
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