I’m a big fan of my iPad. I’m always looking for new ways to put it to use, and drawing on it seemed like a possibility.  From my early iPad days I purchased apps like Brushes and Sketchbook Pro. More recently I got Procreate.  Mostly, I would tinker around with them but I’d get frustrated before getting too far.

Last spring I took a four-hour class through Falls Church Arts from Bobbi Pratte.  Bobbi is a wonderful landscape artist and I’m going to take an afternoon painting class from her in May. I’m looking forward to learning a lot.

In the class we experimented with Zen Brush, Sketch Club and Brushes.  After we’d done some experimenting with each Bobbi gave us each a photo of a flower and we “painted” them using Sketch Club.  I got a good start but ran out of time and had to finish my painting after class. The most important thing I learned was to use lots of layers! Below is my iris.

I was pleased with the results and since then II have gone on to do several more iPad “paintings”. Some have been studies that I did in conjunction with actual paintings, but others I just did for fun.  I will save the studies to discuss with the associated paintings.

Mostly I use Procreate.  I’m more comfortable with that than Sketch Club. I have tried several types of stylus — my favorite for painting on the iPad is the Sensu Solo.

As you know, I’m a big fan of butterflies, so I needed to try that out. Here is my monarch on pink pansies.

After some time of not doing much iPad art I was worried I’d lose my knack, so I took on something pretty challenging.  I drew the post office building from Nimrod Hall.  (Nimrod Hall is an art retreat in Bath County VA.  We’ll talk about that in a future post)

Finally, what’s really fun is that most of the apps record your brush strokes (mistakes and all) and you can play them back as a movie.  Below is the movie showing the strokes involved in me drawing the butterfly.  It’s 3 minutes and 16 seconds long.