This week in App Smart the topic was apps that can help you learn the very basics of drawing. It seems touch screens and interactive multimedia guides are an ideal combination for teaching you how to put pencil to paper and draw anything from a cartoon car to a portrait.
One simple app that’s aimed at children, but that could serve as a fun entry-level guide for adults too, is the Let’s Learn How to Draw app on iOS for $1.99. This app is great to use, thanks to its very clear interface and the lighthearted way it instructs you as you draw. The app teaches you by showing you with an example of how a drawing is built up from a sequence of lines drawn on the screen. Then you copy these lines in a window on the screen to create your own version. Each step of the drawing is accompanied by a short text description of what you’re trying to do so that you don’t get lost. There’s even an “assist” mode that actually replaces the line you drew while copying the example image with a more correct one. This is a bit of a cheat, but you can use it while you get used to the app and then turn it off.
You can, however, tell that the app is aimed at a youthful audience thanks to the topics for your drawings: Dogs, trains and monsters. It is still great fun to use, though.
The free Android app Learn to Draw has a very similar young feel. This app also uses some fairly cartoonlike imagery. But Learn to Draw works in a slightly different way. It asks you what you want to draw, and then searches the Web for matching images. When you select the image you want to copy from the list presented — an image of, for example a monkey or a tree — that image is displayed in faint colors on the drawing area of the app. Then you use the app’s drawing tools to trace the original. It’s less interactive than some learn-to-draw apps, and there’s nothing in the way of assistance or pointers on good technique, but you may enjoy the more free-form nature of learning like this.
For a sophisticated portrait drawing lesson, the $4.99 iPad app Interactive Sketchbook has four very detailed lessons from an artist. Each lesson talks you through the process of drawing a portrait by showing you how the artist draws, step by step. The app shows an example sketch on the left of the screen, annotated with useful tips like “begin by drawing a circle to represent the cranium.” On the right is an area where you can draw with the app’s tools; you can choose from several different pencil effects to get the result you desire.
As well as this lesson section, the app has a sketchbook section where you can import an image of your choice that you then copy by sketching on the right-hand panel just as in the lessons. You can browse through these sketches later, so in a way it’s a handy portfolio of the drawings you make as you learn to sketch.
There are plenty of other drawing apps in the various app stores that will teach you how to sketch. Many of them are aimed at children, however, which may frustrate you if you’ve moved beyond being able to draw great-looking frogs or cartoon flowers. It’s worth spending some time trying out different drawing apps and also practicing what you’ve learned on paper instead of on-screen. You can always snap a smartphone photo of your efforts if you prefer to keep things stored digitally!
Quick call: The app developer Smule has made a string of fun and alternative music apps; its new Guitar! app, free on iOS, continues this tradition. As the title suggests you get to strum or pick at an on-screen guitar to generate musical sounds as you play along to vocals recorded by real singers.
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