Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Sketching in Art Rage on the iPad

I'm putting together a tutorial for drawing and painting on the iPad, and I spent a few minutes tonight saving off the progress of a quick sketch, focusing on the use of layers in the Art Rage app on the iPad. "Layers" is a fairly common feature in the better drawing and painting apps on any platform/OS--from Photoshop, Painter, Sketchbook Pro, to Art Rage, and a batch of others.

Think of a layer as a sheet of tracing paper you can put down over your drawing to use the underlying line work to guide you--but with a lot more power, including blending modes, which I won't get into.

From left to right: a quick sketch to get down the figure in motion and not much else.  Adding a second layer, I reduce the transparency of the first and draw--or redraw--the figure with more definition, bringing out folds in the cloth and giving the face some guidelines. Creating a third layer, reducing the transparency on the second, I now use the work in first two layers to redraw the figure with even greater detail.  

Click the image for the full view:

Here's what the Art Rage UI looks like on the iPad--with the layering menu up at the bottom right.

Storyboarding

Here's a quick sketch from the book I'm working on, showing a 90-meter supply ship with that cool x-bow shape all the new OSVs (Offshore Supply Vessels) are sporting.  This is the opening scene, afternoon sun highlighting the waves, just before everything falls apart.  Speed painting in Art Rage Studio Pro. I'm contemplating storyboarding the whole thing out, create the graphic version of the same story as I'm writing the prose version.

Managed to get some drawing done

We had thanksgiving with just the four of us, and I managed to squeeze in some drawing today, a good start on the top panels for for page 239 of Saltwater Witch.  I did both of these in Sketchbook Pro on the iPad.  Plus a little bit of Art Rage. Got myself an AYL stylus a few weeks ago from Amazon.  I haven't always been a stylus fan, but this one's kicking ass so far.

http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com

Saltwater Witch update - pages 234 through 238

Okay, I've posted them--www.SaltwaterWitch.com! For the foreseeable future I'm going to draw panels on my iPad (color when I can) and letter in Photoshop, hoping to get this down as a system that won't take all of my time. I have the rest of this chapter and a bunch of the next--roughly twelve pages--planned out, storyboarded but really sloppy. I drew eleven panels yesterday in Art Rage and Sketchbook Pro, which is a lot for me, and the quality is pretty good.  I'm doing a lot more with gestures and facial expressions.  Disgust is a really tough one to capture. I like the way all of these pages came out, enough to post them.  Haven't colored the last four, but I'm going to keep moving.

Firsts: first time drawing a toilet.

Questions?  Comments? I'd love to hear what you think! 

See chapters  1 - 12 here:

http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com

SWitch page 215 top panel WIP

Here's what I'm working on at the moment--and have been working on for the last couple hours.  This is the top panel for page 215.

I've done all of this in Art Rage and Sketchbook Pro on the iPad.

Check out Saltwater Witch here: http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com

Saltwater Witch page 214 is up

I'm back at Saltwater Witch for the time being, working on the next two pages, 214 and 215.  I "finished" and posted 214 last night, expect 215 tonight. I say "finished" because I don't have time to really finish these pages, but I'm posting them anyway because you're asking for them nicely.  Actually it's more along the lines of where the hell are the rest of the Saltwater Witch pages?

Anyway, here's what "Finished" looks like.  I drew the panels and did the coloring, layout balloons and lettering all in Art Rage.  It's a bit sloppy, but at least I can produce something reasonably viewable in a couple hours from my chapter 12 storyboarding.

And the story can continue...

 

 

Seaborn Battle

I spent another four or five hours last night finishing up this one.  I'm still doing a bit of detail work, but this is pretty much done.

Click on the pic for the full view!

What I'm working on...

Here's a painting I'm working on, a really big complex thing with a bunch of figures--seaborn and orcas--engaged in underwater combat.  Still a ways to go, but here's a detail and a much reduced version of where things stand at the moment. So far about twenty hours of work, mostly in Sketchbook Pro and Art Rage, but I've also incorporated sketches from Brushes and Sketchbook on my iPad.  I'm about halfway done.  So much detail in this one.

Detail:

Readercon sketching

A few samples of some of the stuff I drew in the Art Rage app on the iPad while taking in some of the panels at Readercon over the weekend. I'm working--as much as I can--on redrawing all of chapter 2 of Saltwater Witch (http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch).

Here are the beginnings of three of the replacement panels.

Moonlight fight

...and some creepy guy's shadow--he's waiting to see how things go with the combat.

Click this one for the full view:

Here's my original line art: