2008.09.03 iDraw: Let the Finger Painting Begin!
4 years ago - my first real attempts at portraits on my iPod Touch. These reviews are my original reviews of the limited apps from 4 years ago and really should only be of interest to geeks who have been at it since then to remember how far we've come (more than 3 line types in Brushes now) - or haven't (Brushes still makes you go to the gallery to get a clean piece of paper)
iPod Touch
Brushes App
From imagination
Original Post
I wasn't planning on starting this series until tomorrow, but my fingers got ahead of me. As I'm both an exhibiting artist and a professional geek, it gives me great pleasure to be able to have a large selection from my portfolio and an unending sketchpad in my pocket, both as part of my iPod Touch. I've been fooling around with the different drawing programs for the iPod Touch since they started to become available about 6 weeks ago, but now it's my plan to really see what can be done by creating all my portraits for the next week and a half to two weeks on the Touch.
This was done with Brushes, a relatively recent release which is currently my favorite. The interface is simple and clear, it has an excellent color picker and eyedropper, seemingly infinite undo and redos, three different line types (I'm looking forward to more in a future upgrade!), zoom in for detail and sliders for line size and opacity. It does not have shapes or clip art, which I don't need. The other features I would most like to see are line size slider in same dialog as color and opacity; higher resolution image; larger 'piece of paper', an implementation of cursor offset, don't need to go back to gallery to get new piece of paper, and change background color without erasing drawing.
This isn't the first portrait I've done drawing with my finger on the touchscreen of the iPod touch. I did this one using No. 2, and then printed it on watercolor paper and painted on it. I also did two silly ones, this one using Wooly Willy and this one using Squiggles. So far, the programs I have include:
Brushes
ColorTilt
iDoodle2
No. 2
PhotoTwist
Scribble
Sketches
Squiggles
Wooly Willy
I'll be reporting on the various programs' pros and cons as I work with them in the next couple weeks. Developers and users - let me know if there are other applications that you think I should look into (add comments to any of these blog entries to let me know).
Today's Post
Well there I was right at the beginning with an early review of Brushes! Of course Brushes has many more features now including layers, lots of brush types, etc, etc.
It's also interesting to see that I was working color on black then much as I do now in most of my Typedrawing pieces and the recent Scribblify 'stained glass' pieces as well. Mom was very disdainful of my childhood best friend's father's 'paintings on black velvet' but I've always liked how bright color looks against black, and like to build up light over dark this way (as opposed to dark over light on white paper).
These were almost exactly half-way through the three years of my Daily Portrait Project, in which I made a non-photographic image of myself every day from 3/15/07 to 3/15/10. Soon they'll all be loaded on flickr, you can find them in this set: www.flickr.com/photos/juliakay/sets/72157619599543783/
The first year of the project is now available as a book: www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2418516
Volumes II and III coming soon...
2008.09.03 iDraw: Let the Finger Painting Begin!
4 years ago - my first real attempts at portraits on my iPod Touch. These reviews are my original reviews of the limited apps from 4 years ago and really should only be of interest to geeks who have been at it since then to remember how far we've come (more than 3 line types in Brushes now) - or haven't (Brushes still makes you go to the gallery to get a clean piece of paper)
iPod Touch
Brushes App
From imagination
Original Post
I wasn't planning on starting this series until tomorrow, but my fingers got ahead of me. As I'm both an exhibiting artist and a professional geek, it gives me great pleasure to be able to have a large selection from my portfolio and an unending sketchpad in my pocket, both as part of my iPod Touch. I've been fooling around with the different drawing programs for the iPod Touch since they started to become available about 6 weeks ago, but now it's my plan to really see what can be done by creating all my portraits for the next week and a half to two weeks on the Touch.
This was done with Brushes, a relatively recent release which is currently my favorite. The interface is simple and clear, it has an excellent color picker and eyedropper, seemingly infinite undo and redos, three different line types (I'm looking forward to more in a future upgrade!), zoom in for detail and sliders for line size and opacity. It does not have shapes or clip art, which I don't need. The other features I would most like to see are line size slider in same dialog as color and opacity; higher resolution image; larger 'piece of paper', an implementation of cursor offset, don't need to go back to gallery to get new piece of paper, and change background color without erasing drawing.
This isn't the first portrait I've done drawing with my finger on the touchscreen of the iPod touch. I did this one using No. 2, and then printed it on watercolor paper and painted on it. I also did two silly ones, this one using Wooly Willy and this one using Squiggles. So far, the programs I have include:
Brushes
ColorTilt
iDoodle2
No. 2
PhotoTwist
Scribble
Sketches
Squiggles
Wooly Willy
I'll be reporting on the various programs' pros and cons as I work with them in the next couple weeks. Developers and users - let me know if there are other applications that you think I should look into (add comments to any of these blog entries to let me know).
Today's Post
Well there I was right at the beginning with an early review of Brushes! Of course Brushes has many more features now including layers, lots of brush types, etc, etc.
It's also interesting to see that I was working color on black then much as I do now in most of my Typedrawing pieces and the recent Scribblify 'stained glass' pieces as well. Mom was very disdainful of my childhood best friend's father's 'paintings on black velvet' but I've always liked how bright color looks against black, and like to build up light over dark this way (as opposed to dark over light on white paper).
These were almost exactly half-way through the three years of my Daily Portrait Project, in which I made a non-photographic image of myself every day from 3/15/07 to 3/15/10. Soon they'll all be loaded on flickr, you can find them in this set: www.flickr.com/photos/juliakay/sets/72157619599543783/
The first year of the project is now available as a book: www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2418516
Volumes II and III coming soon...