We love: drawing on our iPads!

Posted:18 June 2013

Kate Osborne has taught watercolour painting at the Garden House but this was very different. Our group had varying experience of painting and drawing and doing both on iPads, ranging from none (me) to quite a bit, though not with the programmes Kate helped us with on this enjoyable course.

 iPad paintings by Kate Osborne www.kateosborneart.com

In the morning Kate introduced us to Brushes 3, and after lunch to Procreate, which I think we found even more flexible, and more fun. She showed us how to choose colours from an infinite palette, and the incredible range of ‘brushes’ you can use to make marks, from gel pens to Chinese brushes to ones that will decorate your page (screen) with Victorian wallpaper or bubbles or gridsor really anything in the world. The choices are so many and varied – you can alter so many factors in each brush – that we only dipped our toes in. We experimented like mad and pooled our knowledge.

Red pepper by Ally P.

We learnt that you can also create and save your own brushes from an imported photo or image: so if you take, for example, a photo of an old stone wall you can make a brush that splashes bits of old stone wall about. My head is still reeling.

Kate demonstrated importing a photo to draw over or alter, and helped us manipulate layers to get different effects. She had brought a number of inspiring books, and some of us went out into the garden to photograph flowers and leaves and interesting structures and textures to experiment with. The iPad can be used as a camera and sketchpad on the go, very portable and flexible. In all, the whole day was a great experiment and just the beginning of a lot of fun. Without getting into your old painting clothes. As Kate pointed out, for once there was no mess and no clearing up!

Words and top iPad painting by Julia Widdows (Garden House fan and friend!) / Inspiring iPad paintings by Kate Osborne below: