Developing an idea with the Ipad

I am inspired to blog about a process of designing that I love, it has been a game changer for me and my artistic practice. I think about the evolution of tools that I have used throughout my art career to create original artwork. These tools evolved over 20+ years as a graphic designer and now I apply these tools for textile art. The technology for graphics and tools on the computer is constant, and apps for the phone and ipad over the years too many, and I have not tried them all. There are no doubt at least 10 ways to do the same thing but this is what I have found over time that works for me.

In 2021 I upgraded my ipad to an IPad Pro and apple pencil. I would highly recommend investing in this setup for many reasons including daily rituals including ease to read an EPaper and do puzzles with your pencil, receive and respond to email, banking, watching videos and movies. The list is endless, you can do almost everything on an iPad now.

In my experience, reading about the iPad and using it are two different things. Trying anything new takes practice, and being good at anything takes more time and practice. Working with technology can be a steep learning curve, and a tool. This is a lesson in itself. I do not knock old school methods, because they paved the path to new methods, but I prefer to spend more time on certain parts of my process. I do not get artistic pleasure from spending time doing tedious work, I like to get to the fabric part and I know myself and understand how best to get there that works for me. I have yet to find a program that can think up ideas, only tools that can help us bring them to life.

Procreate. For a one-time cost of $18 CAN you can own a powerful software for the iPad. Of course ALL of what you can do with it can seem overwhelming at first, you may never use it to create futuristic full colour drawings like advertised, but what you can do with it only you exploring it and trying will you find out.

Finding reference for things I can dream up is all over the internet. I might google images for, “Angry old man”, or “Chicken sitting on a nest’ to help get me started. I start to collect a folder of potential reference images. Next in Procreate I can import them in and scale and arrange them as I envision. I take pics of hands in just the way I’d like and import them too. Next I draw over the top of these images to create a pattern to scale.

The finished size of this small art piece finished 12” x 12”. Someday I’d like to make this idea a bigger size.

I can teach you how to use Procreate in a few hours and how to incorporate the iPad into your art practice and processes.

I teach Procreate for Beginners and How to use Procreate for artist’s.