Gesture Drawing and Sketching on my iPhone

The other night I was waiting for my girlfriend to finish work in the city. I had nothing to do. I didn’t want to read, play games or shop. So I just stood at Flinders Street Station watching the world go by. Suddenly I wanted to draw! But I had no sketch book with me (bad artist , bad!). I did have my iPad stylus and my iPhone handy. So I opened up Brushes and got sketching, pumping out poses and gesture drawings as I waited around.

There were some distinct advantages to this that were immediately apparent. I always feel self-conscious drawing on a sketch-pad in public, I feel voyeuristic (creepy!). Drawing on the phone made me feel as if I was blending in, not drawing (puntastic!) attention to myself. Although my own internal issue, I think it did loosen my sketches up. Limitless paper by drawing on the screen removed my stingy preciousness of wasting paper! I tend to cram, scribble and overlap when I worry about how many pages I have left. The iPhone allowed me to just smack out as many pictures as possible.

There were a few limitations too. My accuracy was sacrificed with the pen and limited screen size. I didn’t have a pressure sensitive pen (in the process of purchasing, blog post to come!). I found the notification centre pulling down when I sketched in the upper quadrant of the screen. .Similarly I found the edges of the screen not sensing my pen touches. Zoom functions seemed appealing but pulled my focus from the whole pose and action itself but might assist me with details.

There may not be a real substitute to paper and pen, but this was accessible, easy and actually eliminated the need to scan and cataloge in my drawing collection. Feeling comfortable and drawing with ease without the physical limitations of materials made this a fun test. Being able to upload directly to my blog from my phone will all these images is proof of the merit of scribbling on your phone.

Check out the results below.