Life Drawing on the iPad

Introduction

The history of pictures begins in the caves and ends, at the moment, with an iPad. Who knows where it will go next? But one thing is certain, the pictorial problems will always be there - the difficulties of depicting the world in two dimensions are permanent. Meaning you never solve them.1

DAVID HOCKNEY

This book is primarily about introducing you to objective drawing from the figure using the iPad. The aim is to demonstrate to you a number of ideas that you can learn and exploit to your own will. It will be possible, given the range of the visual imagination and the opportunity offered by the iPad, to do this in many ways.

You will need a downloadable drawing 'app' or application to work with on your tablet. There are many to choose from and they are all inexpensive. The app I will principally focus on in this book is Procreate but I will, of course, be considering other apps and I will run through the common principal features that are essential to know. These major features across the apps will work more or less in the same way but their interface will be slightly different.

The book focuses on the iPad. Most of what you read here will still be applicable for use on other tablets. The Android system has many of the same apps that can be used on other tablet devices. The iPad has a great choice of drawing apps available for use.

The iPad was originally designed to be used with a finger. With the popularity of drawing apps the stylus has become a necessary tool. There are several to choose from, the qualities vary and, again, these will be covered in some detail.

My advice is to develop a feel for one of the apps and master a few of the principal ideas and approaches in order to get going. In conjunction with this, I will write about the basic approaches to making objective drawings from the figure. Hopefully by combining the two you will be able to construct an image on an iPad fairly quickly. Stick with it as it feels strange to be working on a sheet of glass at first. Do not be too experimental in the beginning or else you will get off-track. It is important to be rigorous with your looking and be objective. After building up some skills, start stretching out the possibilities. Develop a habit of trying out similar ideas in a different way, whether that's using a new brush, changing the colours, undertaking timed poses, multi-layering images or whatever presents itself at that moment. Plenty of options will tempt you.

Work from real life models if you can. A real person will make a huge difference. It is an authentic experience. People move, breathe, live and you will react in many ways. Ways that you cannot when working from secondary sources.

Go to a local life drawing session. There are many to choose from nowadays in most areas, either tutored or drop-in. Look for a session that provides a good variety of models of all ages and types, both male and female.

If you are within a group of people look around and see what others are doing and how they are responding to the figure, even if they are not working digitally. Avoid working from photos if possible or at least get used to working from both. Photos are flat and have no scale. Understand the limitations and benefits of each. The figure is real. It is not trapped in time. Poses are finite and so can put pressure on you to respond in ways you may not normally. Try to make your drawing communicate. The difference between your intention and your response is your unimagined result. This makes it exciting. Have an engagement with reality and so reveal yourself through your drawing.

In this room we all produce very different images, looking at the very same thing. That's not simply the difference in skill or dexterity or a learnt style, it is because the feelings that a nude induces are personal and singular: no two drawings will ever be remotely the same. It is an old truism that in the life room you don't draw the body in front of you, you draw the one inside you. It makes no difference if it's male or female, black or white, old or young: all life drawing is camouflaged, shape-shifting self-portraiture: the images of what we search for in life and culture, an empathy with the human condition and the spirit that makes us sparks of the divine.2

A.A. GILL

WHY IPAD?

To draw and paint and to do it well is difficult enough in any medium. To do it digitally? How can a mechanical object be bent to our will? Can we create a visual response on a tablet that has soul and feeling? Can we draw on a glass surface and hope for a meaningful result?

Well, yes. You can use anything to draw on almost any surface. That is not a problem in itself. It's the drawing combined with the medium that carries the message and that makes it either good or bad. That can be done on an iPad as well as any other surface.

It's certainly true that there is something about the physicality and simplicity of drawing that makes it undefeatable. With strips of charcoal or pens, basic tools in our hands, it has barely moved forward. Brushes, an iPad app, which I use all the time, is not essentially different. It is faster, brighter, more flexible, but in the end it is a stylus on a surface, and the drawing is just drawing. Personal, direct, drawing has not "advanced". It stands outside glib ideas of progress. And it can remind us of something we are sometimes in danger of forgetting.3

ANDREW MARR

Working with the iPad still requires commitment and the use of the traditional skills. Depicting what you see is the difficulty. As Hockney's quote reminds us the technology may have changed but we are confronted with the same visual problems to solve. However, the iPad does offer new opportunities in approach and whether that is significant remains to be seen.

I had never considered working digitally before I purchased an iPad. I knew Photoshop and similar software were remarkable tools for digitally editing images but they had never appealed to me. I think it was the ease of making endless variations of the same image that put me off. I prefer to commit to one image. Also, it was desktop based. I'm an artist who likes to move. I'm a mobile creative, always looking around the corner for the next opportunity for a painting or a drawing. That's why the iPad chimed with me. I carry it around with me every day. Apart from drawing it provides so many of the requirements of a working day. Many of the remarkable possibilities found in Photoshop are now mobile as most of the apps reflect those options. However, my own personal rule is to not create endless variations on a theme.

The convenience of working on an iPad means there are a number of things you can dispense with that you cannot whilst using traditional media. You do not need to understand how oil paint is layered thin over thick and how it dries. You do not need to be able to mix your colours on a palette, unless you are exploring visual colour mixing. You do not have to wait for anything to dry, thus saving time. You will never overwork the paper surface and so compromise it to the point of unworkability. If you love to record what you see, experiment, develop your ideas, explore materials, mix your media and see your work as a time-lapse animation the iPad is for you.

The iPad will challenge you but it will repay you with an infinite range of possibilities that can and will provoke new ideas possibly to be developed with more traditional media at a later stage. Your complete studio is now in your hands at your fingertips. Your spatial requirements have been reduced. Perhaps your overheads will be reduced as a result.

Your working surface is convenient and discreet. You can work where you want to work, more or less. It is a mobile device. Take your studio with you to places you would not normally go, at different times of the day. You can respond there and then, be spontaneous and take risks. No need to try to remember anything or look for basic materials and perhaps miss the moment as a result.

It is also a visual diary stored conveniently in one place, easily organized and accessible, providing you with the freedom to print, send and share your images. The iPad is your portable portfolio. Reveal your work and yourself with ease, without having to show your work in a gallery. Share your work and receive feedback from a wide audience, anytime, anywhere. Everything you might need is there. Celebrate change and innovation. Connect globally.

THE FIGURE AND DRAWING

The figure is the most identifiable subject in art. It is the model for studying structure, proportion, life and vitality. It expresses desire, love, passion, loneliness, anxiety. I think most people would like to be able to capture the figure in some way. The response itself may be in great detail or it could be merely the essence of the figure. Either way, something has been set down that we recognize and it hopefully exudes something we can identify with.

Drawing the figure is always enlightening because it offers and entails so much and it will be different to each of us as we are all unique. All figures are interesting as there is so much variety. There seems to be a strong compulsion to capture one another in paint or through drawing. Something within us wants to 'see us'. There is a desire to record an experience of ourselves and each other in some way. To understand more. To reflect something.

The context of figure drawing can be similar but it is never the same. The lighting may be altered, the pose, the setting, the person, of course. Combine that with technique and process and we can choose from an...