maggieappleton-com-7am49k.txt (4226B)
1 [1]Home 2 The Garden 3 [3]Now 4 [4]About 5 notes 6 7 evergreen 8 9 What App is That? 10 11 A guide to the apps and tools I use to create illustrations 12 13 • [6]How to Illustrate 14 15 Planted over 3 years agoLast tended over 2 years ago 16 Back To Top 17 18 19 "What app is that?" 20 21 [8] 22 23 I'm a Promiscuous Polytooler 24 25 I use wide variety of different tools and apps for different kinds of visual 26 creations. I'm not wedded to any one tool in particular – they all have their 27 strengths and weaknesses. I'll use whatever fits the task at hand and move work 28 between them liberally. 29 30 Here's all the apps and hardware that might be involved in a particular 31 creation... 32 33 None of these are affiliate links - I'm just pointing you to official sites for 34 more context 35 36 [9] 37 38 Workflows 39 40 And here's a couple of my common workflows for different styles of 41 illustrations and visuals... 42 43 1. Illustrated notes 44 45 Anything I make that has a painterly and loose hand-drawn feel was made in 46 Procreate on the iPad or Photoshop on the Wacom Cintiq. Or probably a 47 combination – it's easy to move files back and forth between the two and the 48 tools they offer are very similar. 49 50 Illustrations like these... 51 52 Both of these applications allow you to draw in “raster” graphics, meaning you 53 paint pixels onto a canvas. They require a decent level of hand-skills to make 54 sure your lines aren't wobbly, although both applications have smoothing 55 features to help with that. 56 57 When I'm in Procreate I use a small selection of brushes I've gathered over the 58 years. It's hard for me to remember where they're all from, and I've customised 59 the majority of them to suit my personal prefs. Most of them were originally 60 from Max Ulichney's brushes. I have the essentials set ($2), the painters set 61 ($8), and the comics set ($15), and can vouch they're all great. 62 63 I move these pieces to Photoshop if I want to work on a larger screen, or have 64 accidentally enlarged the canvas to a 14000px wide sprawling set of sketches 65 that Procreate can't open without crashing. 66 67 2. Polished vector illustrations 68 69 Illustrations that look more “polished” are made primarily in Adobe 70 Illustrator, with a touch of Photoshop at the end for lighting effects and 71 texture. 72 73 Pieces like these... 74 75 These illustrations are all vector-based, meaning we use mathematical curves to 76 define their shapes, rather than painted pixels. Vectors are great for create 77 hard, crisp edges and working with perfect geometric forms. 78 79 While I love vectors for laying down the foundation shapes of these, I'll move 80 them over the Photoshop once they're 90% done to adjust the colors, add more 81 subtlety to the lighting and shadows, and chuck a bit of texture on the top so 82 they feel more tangible. 83 84 Want to share?Tell Twitter About It 85 86 3 Backlinks 87 88 Why You Own an iPad and Still Can't Draw 89 90 The failure of drawing materials without mediums and meat 91 92 Frequently Asked Questions 93 94 Questions I am often asked to answer 95 96 The Best Illustration Books and Courses 97 98 My favourite resources for learning to draw and developing your visual thinking 99 skills 100 101 Mentions around the web 102 103 Tomiwa 😃 104 Maggie Appleton - indieweb.social/@maggie 105 2 Likes and Retweets 106 107 Want to stay up to date? 108 109 Subscribe via RSS Feed 110 [12][13][14][15][16] 111 © 2024 Maggie Appleton 112 113 • [17]The Garden 114 • [18]Essays 115 • [19]About 116 • [20]Notes 117 • [21]Now 118 • [22]Patterns 119 • [23]Library 120 • [24]Projects 121 • [25]Colophon 122 123 124 References: 125 126 [1] https://maggieappleton.com/ 127 [3] https://maggieappleton.com/now 128 [4] https://maggieappleton.com/about 129 [6] https://maggieappleton.com/topics/how-to-illustrate 130 [8] https://maggieappleton.com/apps#im-a-promiscuous-polytooler 131 [9] https://maggieappleton.com/apps#workflows 132 [12] https://github.com/MaggieAppleton 133 [13] https://uk.linkedin.com/in/maggieappleton 134 [14] https://dribbble.com/mappleton 135 [15] https://twitter.com/Mappletons 136 [16] https://indieweb.social/@maggie 137 [17] https://maggieappleton.com/garden 138 [18] https://maggieappleton.com/essays 139 [19] https://maggieappleton.com/about 140 [20] https://maggieappleton.com/notes 141 [21] https://maggieappleton.com/now 142 [22] https://maggieappleton.com/patterns 143 [23] https://maggieappleton.com/library 144 [24] https://maggieappleton.com/projects 145 [25] https://maggieappleton.com/colophon