The Urban Sketching Handbook Drawing with a Tablet: Easy Techniques for Mastering Digital Drawing on Location (Urban Sketching Handbooks)

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In Drawing with a Tablet: Easy Techniques for Mastering Digital Drawing on Location, readers will learn step by step how to create amazing drawings while on the go.

In the sixth volume of the Urban Sketching Handbook series, popular artist and workshop instructor Uma Kelkar shows sketchers how to take their digital drawing to the next level. Whether you are new to sketching or wish to try the latest technology, this useful guide shares expert tips and techniques for drawing on a tablet.

With a focus on using the ProCreate tool, but with information that is relevant to other digital platforms, you will start with the basics, such as opening your file, choosing your resolution, determining your palette, and how to simplify your tools by creating a preferred set of brushes. The book also covers using layers and groups of layers, and shows you how to create a sketch from start to finish.

Whether you are drawing at home, en plein air, on the go, or even at night, learn how to enliven your digital drawings and enhance your skills. umakelkar.com/book is a work-along website with video links for many of the artworks included in the book as well as newer examples.

From the Publisher

The Urban Sketching Handbook: Drawing with a Tablet

Introduction

Interspersed throughout the book are my methods of drawing, my tricks as they have evolved, and my general philosophy—these appear alongside the software tools one uses to draw on a tablet. These personal anecdotes are for you to take as-is or to tailor to suit yourself. Each user can wield a tool the way they want to, in an effort to achieve their own personal goals; and accordingly, I wish this book to be another tool, a stepping stone, for you.

UMA KELKAR | Glow of Abundance | Procreate

Equipment Basics

If you have a new tablet and are keen to start drawing, don’t let this chapter stop you. Jump to the “Get Started with Digital Drawing” chapter right away! Come back to this chapter after you’ve played with the tablet for a few days.

DON LOW | Waiting for Her Ride | Procreate

With a tablet, night-time and other low-light conditions are now available for sketching. Please be mindful of your screen brightness when sharing the space with others.

Get Started with Digital Drawing

A new medium brings new ways to achieve creative satisfaction, new ways of breaking limitations—but it also brings new fear. This book addresses this new fear by showcasing achievable results while getting you accustomed to the tool set. Art is a balancing tool for me. On days when I have to run a tight ship with children, travel, day-job logistics, and unknown and ill-timed emergencies, often art pays the price. These are the exact days when one needs to engage in drawing and painting.

UMA KELKAR | Airbnb Sketching | Procreate

Layers are Everything

The ability to build artwork in independent or dependent layers is the key strength of digital media. What does it mean to have independent layers? We are familiar with layers in traditional media: If you make a collage with the printed words glued on underlying artwork, one would say that the artwork lies on one layer and the printed words on another. Likewise, if you use watercolors, you know that you put down a wash of color and when you paint on top of this wash, you have added another layer. When you create digitally, this first wash is equivalent to a layer. All digital media allow us to add layers without having to wait for pigments to dry.

HUGO COSTA | Calle Paz | Adobe Sketch

Going Deeper

We are at a point where we have basic technical know-how under our belt. There are two other tools that greatly affect the speed of drawing, and we will focus on those now.

Selection Tool

The Selection tool allows you to select an area of the canvas that remains active for drawing/blending/erasing. Typically, it is used to select delicate shapes that need to be colored finely without the color spilling outside this delicate shape. It is also used to move the selected shape to a different layer.

URMILA MENON | Alathur Market | Procreate

Leveraging Tools

You have now added digital media to your quiver of tools. It grows stronger as you practice and as applications develop. Can we do more than what is obvious with digital media? Stretching each tool to its maximum, to the point of absurdity is my obsession. It’s a philosophical choice really: to know the bounds of a medium, and then either I grow or the medium grows, or I dislike the results and I scale back.

HUMBERTO MARUM | Untitled | Procreate

“During the week, on my drives and walks, I do a series of thumbnails, five to ten minutes, all on the same page. When I have the chance, I pick one view and go back and do an elaborate version.”

Transparency Lock

A

The idea behind transparency lock is to lock the shapes you have blocked in so you can color over them without having to be careful.

B

This tool is named differently across applications. We will use Alpha Lock as that’s the terminology within Procreate.

C

In the Procreate app, with a two-finger swipe to the right on the layer of your choice, you can enter Alpha Lock mode. What this mode does is that it allows you to edit—paint, smudge, and erase only from what’s been drawn before.

D

Image A shows the layer that has all the tree shapes drawn in. Image B shows the background color on a lower layer. Image C shows when we Alpha Lock the layer in Image A and then use Soft Airbrush, it colors only the shapes that were originally drawn. Image D shows refinement of strokes using Alpha Lock.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B083ZL8RX9
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Quarry Books (February 11, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 11, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 23528 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 112 pages