Digital Sketch / Painting and New Toys

In the past I have played a bit with digital sketching and painting.  What I used was photoshop elements to create those pieces and a wacom tablet/pen.  Although I have enjoyed digital art, for me it was a little cumbersome working on the attached wacom tablet and not directly on a screen surface where the drawing is actually showing or being produced.

Last week I purchased the Ipad Pro along with the Apple Pencil.  I am blown away with how nice it is working directly on a screen and with an electronic pencil (stylus) as precise as the apple pencil is proving to be.  I love the feel and balance to the apple pencil and where that tip hits the screen, the line marks are right where they should be.  Unlike using Adonit Stylus I found lagged and was off from where the tip hit the screen.

And although I have several art apps on my Ipad (Air before the Pro), I seldom played with them.  For some reason when I got the Ipad Pro, I chose to start playing with Procreate.  Maybe because of all the videos I've seen out there showing tips and tricks and example artwork being created.  Not really sure why but that's the app I decided to start practicing with.

Here are examples of what I've been doing the past several days.  There's a lot to learn with Procreate.  Lots of brush choices and techniques to work through.  My favorite so far are the graphite brushes to include a few I've learned to make myself.  It's nice having an app and electronic brush choices that look like true graphite............and what's nice.......no smearing as I work..........LOL.  I don't have to spray these to keep the graphite from smudging or smearing nor do I end up wearing graphite all over hand and fingers.

And so far there are two pen brush choices I like.......both pressure sensitive giving me thin and thick lines depending on how much pressure I apply or the tilt of the apple pencil.

First sketch just getting a feel for a few of the pen brush choices in Procreate.

Stress relief sketch illustrating how I feel setting up new gadgets.  This was done while trying to finish setting up the Ipad Pro since I set it up as new rather than using the Ipad Air backup to mirror what I had on it.  I had to do a lot of manual copying of photos and certain data on the Ipad Air as I didn't want all the same stuff on the new Ipad.  Hubby got the Ipad Air once I made sure I had what I needed off of it and before he reset back to factory settings.

Next quick sketch getting a feel for the pressure sensitivity of the apple pencil and brush choices

Playing with a new graphite brush I actually learned to create myself.

Some serious sketching using the graphite brushes

Next is trying my hand at understanding color application........trying to mimic watercolor.  Color is a whole different ballgame and a lot to learn and practice to achieve likeness of particular mediums.  You work in layers for blending and textures of various color so I'm not sure just how much time I'll dedicate to working through that.  I primarily wanted to do more pen and ink and graphite sketching digitally but will be nice to have some knowledge if I want to add a bit of color for added umph to the sketch.