Sketchbook on the iPad Pro Review

So I made a super quick review of Procreate for the iPad Pro and now I am going to do a super quick review of all the other art apps I own. Please comment your requests for whatever else you would like me to review, because if I don’t own it that is a great excuse to tell my parents.

So, Sketchbook on the iPad Pro. The free version is an extremely simple app, and if you pay three dollars (half the price of Procreate) you get all the “pro” tools. You know, stuff like the ability to make more than three layers.

This app has some cool features that Procreate doesn’t have.

1. Better selection tools (including a magic wand tool. Yay!)

2. Color and brush “pucks.” (These are two little circles you can move around to quickly change the opacity, size, color brightness, and color saturation. Super handy one you get used to them, especially if you want to work without any menus.)

3. Symmetry tool (if that is important to you.)

4. Text Tool (Yay!)

Now for some things it was lacking. (As far as I could tell.. please let me know if I am wrong.)

1. Layer opacity lock (This is pretty much essential to my workflow for making full colored illustrations, so I was pretty disappointed when I couldn’t find it here.)

2. Good paint and smudge brushes (They have paint brushes, but they are honestly terrible in my opinion.)

3. Two finger touch undo (Instead they have three finger swipe, which just isn’t as mindless. Since almost all of us are used to the gesture that Procreate uses, why can’t more art apps incorporate it?)

4. Tilt sensitivity for the Apple Pencil. (The greatest thing about Procreate is that it had no other app it was trying to copy, and so was able to make Procreate as perfect for the iPad as is possible. Because the desktop version of Sketchbook doesn’t have tilt sensitivity, the iPad version doesn’t either, which kind of stinks.)

Overall, this is not a bad app at all. But I can’t see myself making professional art with it all the time. That is fine, though; after all, it is a sketchbook. It’s more powerful than Paper by fifty three, but a little less iPad friendly. If they worked on it just a bit, I would even be happy to use it professionally. It is so close to being perfect, which is frustrating to me. Let me know in the comments what you think about Sketchbook for the iPad, and wether or not your experience was like mine.

Learning to draw through illustration gigs

I've always liked to draw, but it wasn't until recently that I realized I wanted to make a career of it.

The reason why is that I was always comparing myself to my older sister Mariah, who couldn't help being extremely talented. She was always the one that everybody wanted their portrait drawn by, not me. She was good at likenesses, and I was queen of doodling. I had accepted that I would never be as good as my sister at what I considered professional art (aka realistic portraits.)

When Mariah got busier with school, she handed down the title of family artist to me. She was tired of painting everybody's portrait.



With this new honor came new opportunities, and my sister, Susanna https://twitter.com/suzols , asked me to illustrate the children's book she had written for our niece who was yet to be born. Thrilled at this very first commission, I accepted immediately, before she regretted her decision choosing the doodler, rather than the fine artist. Not so immediate was the actual illustrating. See, by the time the baby was born I had somehow only drawn one picture. Let's just say I wasn't used to making full illustrations, especially ones of baby squirrels, which I had never drawn before in my life. Susanna was gracious enough to try to keep the anger out of her voice when she said, "Fine, but you absolutely must finish by her first birthday."



And so I did, with the help of some "inspiration" (aka watching one Korean drama for every illustration drawn.) But because I had almost no experience making full colored illustrations, almost every illustration looked like it came from a different story. Still, when the printed version finally came in the mail, I'd never been prouder of myself. I didn't consider myself a professional yet, but after that it became a more serious hobby, and I began to see the advantages of actually practicing with a purpose.

Here is where the iPad Pro comes in. I bought it after reaching the halfway point of saving up for a Cintiq Companion and giving up. I'm so glad I did. I took the iPad Pro with me everywhere; on car drives, to babysitting jobs... I am confident that it would have been a different picture had I gone with the five-pound, 6-hour-battery Cintiq Companion.

With that flexibility, I was able to make a few good pieces, which I randomly put on a website called 'Upwork' which I found via a list of ways teens could make money online. A few days later, to my flabbergastment, I got an email saying that somebody wanted to hire me after seeing my portfolio! (And price tag.) I took the job illustrating a thirty-two page children's book, which I would never have had the confidence to take had I not known that all I needed to do was find another Korean drama equivalent.

And yet, I hadn't taken into account the fact that my expectations would have to be so much higher. After all, I was getting paid. Artists in their natural state don't tend to like restrictions, and working for a client can seem binding at times. But making art under these circumstances proved to be twice as educational, and definitely crucial to my growth.

I had many ups and downs, and surprisingly enough it was during one of the downs that I wrote this blog post: 5 reasons why illustrating is the best job ever. Because even during the downs I knew that I was learning, and I knew that it was all going to be worth it in the end, when I was holding that physical copy of my hard work in my hands. I won't ever get over that feeling, which is why I won't ever stop illustrating.

I'm so thankful that I got to jumpstart my career in such a major way, and I think other kids can have just the same advantages if they get started right away. Because in the end, talent vs no talent is simply the difference between a seedling and a seed; they both have to be cared for in the same way to be able to grow. Wherever you lie on the spectrum, I guarantee that with enough effort, you can go as far as anybody else.

Sorry!

Hi everybody! I am really sorry that I didn't post last week; life has been so crazy recently. Anyway, I am working on another major article that sort of goes along with this one, and tells my artistic journey so far. I think I can get it out by Sunday. But here (How the iPad Pro has changed my illustrating career) is the article I wrote for Medium last week that has gotten 80k views so far and got put on Business Insider.

The reason why life has been so crazy is mainly because of two things:

1. The reactions to my article have been enormous and overwhelming, and I was living in a blur the first couple of days. Also I was interviewed (here) and I've been getting some new work offers that I am trying to sort through. It is all a lot or a fifteen year old to take! 😬

2. We suddenly took possession of a dog.

So please forgive my absence. I will be back on Sunday! (The reason it is taking longer to make this one is that it will also be illustrated, as the one on Medium is.)