Self Portrait on iPad

I bought an iPad in March of this year and was all fingers and thumbs to begin with. In fact my fingers and thumbs were all I had to work with until I invested in a stylus. However, finding the right stylus is something else. The first two I bought had soft rubber tips which after a month or so tore, but then they were cheap enough to buy, and if I could lighten my touch rather than using it like a pencil or brush maybe I wouldn't go through quite so many. The sensible thing of course, would be to buy a more expensive one such as the Nomad brush stylus which is what I shall do once I have the cash.

There is one other thing before I begin, and that is that the iPad doesn't quite work so well outside, especially in bright sunlight. Unless that is, you buy an anti-glare screen to put over the surface to reduce the reflections. Failing this it is almost impossible to see what you are doing.

The app I use is called ArtRage, which is a superb app but a little prone to freezing up on you once in a while. So it is wise to save your work as you go along. The way around this problem is to reboot your iPad occasionally, which is very easy to do. In fact, I reboot mine everyday.

When you start a new painting on ArtRage it looks like this...

All the tools you require are on the left, ranging from a paint pot down to an oil painting brush, and the colour wheel is on the right. In fact, it couldn't be more obvious and easy to use. Although it took me a good six months to master to be honest with you. The trick I found was to play with the different tools by doodling with them, and then the different layers which are really fun to use. The result of all this play is as you can see below. A self portrait I did looking through a mirror, which I achieved by first sketching it out using the pencil and a little pastel on a layer which overlapped another. The layer below being a pattern I made using the technical pen. All I had to do then was to erase the layer my drawing was on being careful not to erase the drawing itself, which allows the layer below to grin through.

First layer.

 Second layer.

At this stage you erase the background of the second layer to reveal the layer beneath.

In the final stage I strengthened the drawing while altering the background colours to match. In parts I smoothed the pattern out with the palette knife to soften it.

Altering the colours is very easy when using the paint pot. All you have to do is touch the surface of the iPad with your stylus after choosing the colour you want. The change is immediate and if it doesn't live up to expectations you can reverse it just as easily.