Not too long ago, I got an iPad as a birthday present.
It was something that I’ve wanted for a long time as I thought that it would be a useful accompaniment for drawing my comics, plus, iPads were the only type of tablets which supports Affinity Designer, that I have on my windows laptop, which I’ve been using all the while for my rinaz cartoons. So hypothetically, I could work on my laptop and then continue working on it, on the iPad if I wanted to.
It’s funny because it weren’t for this software, I probably would have gotten an android tablet instead. HOWEVER! Despite so many claims on how easy it was to use, there was a steep learning curve for me and after 4 months, there are still things that annoys me greatly about iPadOS… but that’s probably material for another post.
Nevertheless, I was quite excited to play with my first tablet and here was one of my first artwork with the apple pencil!
Cute but needs a bit work … hahaha.
So what I did was to I watch a number of tutorials on YouTube. At first for Affinity Designer naturally, but eventually saw plentiful of videos recommended for me on Procreate. It looked fun, and it costs about 10 euro, and finally I caved in to all the hype.
At first, I didn’t quite get it. Because I normally worked with vectors. I had to take a short course to understand better. This lesson by Brad Colbow is really good, but if you want to sign up, you should wait for their sale which they tend to have on a regular basis.
But it was only when Inktober was live, was when it got me really started on my groove. Inktober, by the way, is an event held in October where artists (there is also one for writers too) have a theme to draw with a different theme each day.
It was something that intrigued me for a long time and I decided to participate for the fun of it using procreate.
First it looked like this :
Day one : Ring
Day 2 : Mindless
Theme : Mindless
Which weren’t bad …
But it was the next theme – “Dizzy” … which inspired me. I thought about what made me dizzy and remember a happy memory I had as a young girl, and living at my old house in Singapore.
It was then that I got inspired by that to do a continuing theme using my childhood…
Day 26 : Dark
I had such happy memories during the mid autumn festival, playing with my paper lantern with my good friend Micheal and his sister.
Day 29 : Injured
My mom was a seamstress so I had access to a lot of threads and needles which I practiced using on my teddy bears whose paws tend to get loose. I pretended to be a doctor and they would have their surgeries to help them feel better.
Day 30 : Catch
This was supposed to be a scene of my best friend E1 and I in the swimming pool when I pushed him in the pool without realizing that there was someone in the pool! And he hit him! Oops! Sorry! I was a very mischievous kid and I am surprised that E1 didn’t scream at me then.
I tried drawing a pool but it looked horrible, so in the end settled for this simple picture of us playing catch instead at the shophouse near the school.
Not sure if you noticed, but kid me is wearing a yellow dress, my favourite thing to wear then. I don’t know if can ever find a real picture of me since practically all of my pictures are at my parents’s house in Singapore, but hopefully I’ll try to remember to take a look the next time I visit.
Sadly, I didn’t managed to do complete each day because of real life commitments but Inktober was so much fun and extremely inspiring to me and I try to continue to draw when I can.
Autumns are one of my favourite season. I love how the leaves of the trees changes colour to a beautiful red, orange and yellow. Even after so many years living here, I never get tired of seeing this magnificent, spectacular view.
This piece is something that I am very proud of. A cartoon version inspired by a photo taken by the extremely talented Inge Morath where she snapped a photo of a llama in a car in New York. It intrigued me … what on earth was a llama doing in a car?!
(Sidenote, there is an exhibit on Inge Morath at the Trastevere Museum right now. It’s a MUST go. I really recommend it. I enjoyed it a lot)
And in case you were interested to play with procreate here are some links you might like :
P.s Just blogged this completely on the iPad. Yeah I prefer my laptop.
My experience drawing on the iPad
