Playing with Sketchbook Pro

It's a busy week, so here are a few iPhone and iPad sketches, of a different sort than my usual portraits. I'm still learning how to use Sketchbook Pro for the iPad; it's almost identical to the iPhone version of Sketchbook, but the screen requires a slightly different kind of dexterity.  I've also figured out how to play with text on both formats. In the past, as some of my posted images show, I've had to improvise with my cursive and block print lettering. I'll post a few iPad portraits tomorrow.


"Heart" (iPad abstract drawing)

"West Village" (iPad abstract drawing)

"Sunday" (iPad abstract drawing, after Fred Bendheim's work)

"Irene" (iPad abstract drawing)

"This is not a blank page" (iPhone conceptual drawing)

"The colors of America" (iPhone conceptual drawing)

"Plato's Theory of Art Made Simple: Part 1": iPhone illustration (I thought of these as I was trying to visualize simple drawings to illustrate aesthetic concepts and theories)

"Plato's Theory of Art Made Simple: Part 2": iPhone illustration (another in this series)

"Kant's Theory of Art Made Simple (but not really)": iPhone illustration (another in this series--do you think Kant would be turning over in his grave at the people depicted?)

iPhone Drawings

In lieu of the many posts I've been meaning to write, here are some iPhone drawings I recently completed using the Brushes and Sketchbook apps. I'm still learning how to use both, but I decided to try both out as a way of not always defaulting to snapshots. One of the challenges is using my index finger or thumb instead of a narrower-tipped instrument, like a stylus or pen or pencil because the iPhone screen responds only to electricity. Another was figuring out how to erase, undo marks, and resize the screen to add details. I want to try darker backgrounds and more colors.

I know some artists have been using the Brushes app extensively; in addition to Jorge Colombo's much talked-about May 2009 New Yorker cover, David Hockney, one of my favorite artists, has begun to produce daily Brushes drawings that he mails out to friends and followers, and one of Jersey City the artists whose studio I visited last month during the big local open house festival had a worktable full of them. I don't know of anyone else who's using Sketchbook (perhaps a simple Google search would answer that question), but I find it a bit easier to use, and more powerful as well.

Here are five of mine (pretty crude, but they were fun to create):

Man on the subway (this was the very first one I tried)

Still life (Cup and book on coffee table)

C

Woman on the subway

Kitty cat