Beaminster — Jan 6th 2015

This week was an arty occasion pitched primarily at our iPad users.

Michael set off by showing the basics of a free app, Tayasui Sketches. This has a selection of painting and drawing tools, a pattern swatch and a colour swatch. And of course an eraser tool The latter can have custom colours too. He also showed how it is possible to fill selected areas with various patterns, to create background or shadow, and the ability, rather limited in the free version, to paint with a line of varying width. There were aspects of the app left unexplored, since this presentation was designed to get people interested and hopefully started. But it is easy to see what extras may be had by splashing out almost £3.00 for the Pro version – layers, controlled variation of brush widths and opacity, and the ability to blend colours. Finally he demonstrated that it is possible to import a photo – in this case one of part of the audience – and paint or draw over it.

John took over and gave a tour of six other apps, some free. He started with Brushes, used by David Hockney. This was a paid app, but is now free. The 30 page user guide is downloadable. Layers are included, and you can make a video of all stages of producing your masterpiece.
Next was Inspire Pro – a complex app with a huge overload of features and options accessed through a menu. Very little help. Layers are also included.
He then looked at Sketch Book Pro, also free. There’s an OS-X version too.This app has a downloadable 50 page user guide to get you started. One particular feature among the huge number of options for the patterns made by a stroke includes hands, from the Editor brush.

All the above use a logical/menu system of setting up a brush stroke before you put brush to canvas. John said that by the time he found the right brush/width/pattern/opacity, not to mention colour,he lost the will to paint, if not to live!

ArtRage. Good help/user guide screens. The big difference is that it feels a bit more painterly. MYou set up a new canvas and specify the type of canvas/paper, etc, then choose a brush/roller - or even squirt a tube of paint then attack it with a palette knife. However, this made him realise that experience of “proper” painting techniques would be a big advantage here! Choosing your colour is done through a colour wheel.

Art Set is not free, nor is it expensive at £1.49. Again, you can choose your paper, then your weapon, and then your colour from a nice wooden box of paints or pencils labelled with all the artists’ colours we were familiar with in the good old days.

Finally John looked at ASKetch (£2.49), described as a simple black and white sketching program. It has the feel of charcoal or chalk sketching - but it does have colours as well! It has a simple interface, and he was able to do a quick - recognizable! - sketch very soon after first opening it.

The coffee break followed and for the rest of the evening people were sketching away on their iPads or even on their iPhones (and this is where it helps to have a 6!).

At the March meeting there will be a competition to find the best sketch or painting and there will be a prize for the winer. While in February we are going to see how to create a newsletter, with pictures, in Pages.

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