"I don't care how the world is running in circles, getting and taking all the time, I'm happy where I am. The strays are my company, the pigeons my friends. There's nothing left for me here, my stoic demeanour hides my loneliness but I have learned to live with it."

I have been using Procreate to paint more now. This time I am attempting to paint clouds in the Manga/ Anime style. Following some tuts found from the Internet, I tried painting some generic clouds and then duplicating some to create a variety. Here's the result:


The numbers indicate the sequence of attempts. The last and the most satisfactory attempt is placed on the top right hand corner, and duplicated on the left with some transformation. The gradient of the background is done with an airbrush tool modified to the largest size and taking advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the Apple pencil to create a smooth transition. I use the Smudge tool to blend the edges of the clouds to make them look natural. It would be wise to paint hard edges first and then blend in an outward motion after.

To make the clouds look natural, one tip is to design the shapes to be asymmetrical. Have different transparency on all the clouds and edge transitions too. Every cloud has to look different. That's the challenging part.

My next test would be to paint different types of cloud and then eventually create a cloud scene in different time of day.

#animeclouds #paintingclouds #procreate #applepencil #ipadpro #clouds #paintclouds #animeclouds

The coffee culture is prevalent here in Singapore too, a fusion of western and eastern coffee connoisseur, sometimes blend with expert opinions of how a country should be run... but in most cases, peaceful savouring of the cafe's finest brew.

Just recently, Clip Studio Paint Ex is released for the iPad Pro. It is both good news and bad news for many ClipStudio Paint user. But it comes with a downside: it is on a subscription basis: SGD11 per month in Singapore. Many of my friends did not welcomed this but rather wished that they could purchase it at one cost. However the app is free to use for 6 months once you subscribed to it. Another artist said you can unsubscribe it anytime when you are done saving the file. I have yet to try but this sounds like a great idea. So I downloaded it and imagined myself working on my comics project off the desktop for once.

The APP is available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clip-studio-paint-ex-for-manga/id1262985592?mt=8 Visit the program's website here for more info: http://www.clipstudio.net/en


The User Interface looks exactly the same as the desktop version. I have yet to try changing the position of the tool sets. My question: How am I suppose to import my existing working files from the iMac to the iPad, and then back again.

The solution is simple. Since my desktop and iPad is sharing the same wifi connection in the studio, I could use Apple Airdrop to transfer files, just by dragging and drop to the folder.

There are always some students in need in class, and you have to attend to them no matter how small the problem is. Fortunately, most problems are good and constructive ones. When some, not a big percentage though, are just lost. I have students who have zero experience in art, be it drawing or painting. Many first timers who do not have a clue on how to hold a pencil to draw. Teaching a class like this takes lotsa patience but most of the time, very rewarding experience. I usually consider teaching an opportunity to learn afresh and to understand the process of learning.



I like students to ask me things, anything. The reason is, I cannot remember everything that I intended to say or teach when it comes to delivering a lecture or some sort. If a class is too quiet, I drift off. I am not the type of teacher who could put up a show, like a magician or a clown does. I am there to impart my experience or knowledge about something, not to entertain. And certainly not to inspire someone to learn something. Don't get me wrong. This is different about inspiring someone to be better. To me, the ability and the desire to learn is from inside out. You have to be interested and be inspired to learn to begin with. My job is not to help with a student's lack of inspiration to learn or to get better. Like a physician who cannot make you get better unless you want to.



Anyway, when the class is focused in their own work, usually their personal project, I would be sketching the students in my spare time. I have been doing that since I started teaching. Its part of my own training and you don't get to sketch people hard at work behind their easels all the time. And it is far more interesting than drawing or painting nude. :D It keeps the class quiet too. And if anyone interested to get behind me to see the process, they are very welcomed to do so.



Here's one done with hard pastels on newsprint. If you can tell, I actually edited this on my iPad Pro with Procreate. It wasn't intentional though. On its own it looks OK, but when I took a pix with my iPhone, the flaws of the drawing become apparent. I have to correct them before I put it out for everyone. It would be embarrassing if someone came to tell me what went wrong with the drawing. Though it is not perfect yet, I am fairly satisfied with the result for now.

Now back to ranting about learning how to draw....

It definitely takes quite a bit of time to learn to draw or paint and to be good at it. There is no shortcut. First of all you need to grapple with the basics, then you have to apply those basics on a more tangible subject matter, like simple geometric forms to human figure. If a student fresh out of school who has no more than doodling on his or her exercise book, the whole process of learning the foundations can seem daunting. I would be if I am that student. Picking up a charcoal or a pencil to draw is like having to learn to use muscles that have not been used before. Just like when I was trying to teach myself to play the piano. I have no idea how to move my fingers at all. I also tried drawing and painting with my non-dominant hand (left hand) and I realise that I am also facing the same problem as a new learner in drawing. I remember those times when I was learning how to drive. The legs just wouldn't want to listen to me. But with practise, driving becomes a breeze. To learn something you need to spend enough time practicing. The more one practices, the better he gets. There is no doubt that any skill needs a considerable amount of investment, in terms of putting in the time. Animators call it putting in the pencil mileage.

To draw well and to paint well, we need to put in enough mileage of time to understand mediums, techniques, ideas, composition, designs, style, and etc. There are so many things to learn and attending just 20 lessons just isn't enough. To become an artist, it takes a life time of learning, exploring and discovering. Without passion to fuel these, it is easy to give up. Moreover, there is also a possibility you may not end up a great artist in the end. However, working hard with patience always pays well.

It was only a couple of years ago, the idea of a food court changed when big companies decided to brand the idea of selling street food in a shopping mall, where patrons would be able to enjoy relatively cheap and their favourite street food in the comfort of air-conditioning. Well the prices went up quite a bit but many of us seemed to welcome the idea of eating in comfort.

Procreate | Ipad | Photoshop

For some, the price hike is not worth it so they stay with the open air food courts, some with ceiling fans, and wouldn't mind basking in the aroma of steam and oil. You could save quite a fair sum if you are eating out everyday.

Procreate | Ipad | Photoshop

So now if I say I am sketching in a food court, most people would understand that I am sketching in the comfort of cool air, and comfy chairs. A food center whilst is alfresco, open air concept, and warm if the ceiling fans are broken, or the climate got too hot and humid. A kopitiam is a smaller version of a food center, usually privately owned, open air and is most of the time found in HDB estates. Every venues have different demographics but equally noisy.

Now here's the class divide. Most, but not all, Singaporeans belong to the middle and upper class, so they wouldn't mind paying more for the same type of food you can get almost halved the price in a food center. Blame it on the weather too. We welcomed the idea of having everything housed under one roof. We want to shop after we eat, why not eat in the mall, thereby we would not be exposed to the elements, protected and kept safe every steps of the way. Food courts are now for the elite.

My journey from my home to Chinatown was made interesting with sketching on board.

With iPad Pro, Apple Pencil & Procreate

For Singapore, Mothers' Day falls on 8 May this year, 2016. Naturally, it is right to celebrate this grand occasion with a sumptuous meal, however it could get a little tricky to get a table in a restaurant in a shopping mall, because everyone would be sharing the same idea of celebrating Mothers' Day with a family dinner. Quite expectedly, the mall was crowded but not as crowded as what I have expected. As we approached the restaurant we wanted to eat in, we saw a little line, and the server was busy with several customers in the line. When we were attended to, we were told we have to order set meals because À la carte orders were not available on Mothers' Day. Well, we walked away as we thought it wasn't worth the money. A simple set meal for 4 could cost at least SGD150 for 6 dishes, including desert. We reckoned we couldn't eat that much too. We walked down to the first level of Parkway Parade (recent it caught fire and has to be closed for a day on 16 May 2016) and decided to settle in "Chicken Up", a Korean fried chicken restaurant. We loved fried chicken but we also ordered for mom a Ginseng Herbal Chicken Soup that was shared among four of us. Eventually we couldn't finish the meal and have to packed to go. The entire dinner cost about SGD80 plus.

During the course of dinner, I drew the busy scene in front of me, with some personal interpretations and capturing some likeness as well. I simply populated the entire sketch with people coming and going, usually from memory. The trick is to remember (as much as possible) the shape that constitute to the figure, pose and so forth. Every figure has its unique stance, pose and the sum of it is the shape or silhouette we register in our mind, more or less with or without the details. Some knowledge of anatomy would be helpful, certainly the ability to draw the proportion is good too.

Overall I am satisfied with the result of this sketch. The composition was balanced with the strategic placements of the darks creating a rhythm leading the eyes from one point to another and back again. The white spaces also create spots of resting areas for the viewer's eyes but also place certain emphasis on specific areas of the sketch/ drawing. Sometimes not much planning was made during the process of sketching, most of the time many decisions were made somewhat intuitively. Draw more think less.... hmmmm.

If its not too noisy sometimes, you could make out what others were talking about. But I usually made up the dialogue in the sketch as I am not particularly interested in what others have to say. I presume if it's not about the government, then it's complaining about their spouses or children, or maybe how tough life is.

Since the launch of the hardware last year in Oct 2015, there have been many positive reviews by users all over the world. My rating for the Apple Pencil and the technology behind it: Awesome, and a 5 Stars rating. I am always attracted to the ease of use of a new hardware. In this case, all you need to do to connect the Apple Pencil to the iPad Pro is by sticking the Pencil's rear end into the charging port. There is no need for syncing to be done. There is no calibration. The Apple Pencil works like a charm with Procreate once the app is activated.

Why sketch digitally?



When Apple Pencil was first launched last year in Oct 2015, I gasped at how well the new stylus worked on the iPad Pro after watching a video demonstration by a great urban sketcher friend from Hong Kong. His name is Rob but he calls himself Rob Sketcherman. I got to know him when I attended a regional sketching symposium in Penang, Malaysia. He was sketching with the iPad, and I was really impressed by how he managed to make everything worked for him smoothly. I have tried sketching digitally with the iPad and iPad Mini with many different stylus but none work like he did. He shared his secrets with everyone else and I bought and tried all his methods but nothing worked for me. During the International Symposium held in Singapore last year in the month of July, I told Rob I was going to purchase a new iPad (v3) as the last resort to sketch digitally. Immediately, he told me to wait for the new iPad, at that time, we did not know that it would be called iPad Pro, but he knew its going to be bigger. I diligently waited for a couple more months before I got myself one in December 2015, and waited another month for the Pencil to arrive. By then I have already seen many video demonstrations on Youtube, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on the gadgets.

There was one burning question in my heart. If the Apple Pencil works so well, why weren't the Apple dealers in Singapore promoting it. For many months, the Apple Pencil did not show up on the shelves in many many Apple shops. A friend has to scour the earth and call up in order to finally find one that carried it. And when I asked around, not many creatives in Singapore actually got excited about it. Eventually I found out that the preferred stylus and tablets are actually Surface Pro, Samsung and Wacom. I guess there aren't many Apple supporters here. Oh well, I really don't care what others think as long as I am happy with my gadgets.

Since then I have been sketching digitally on the iPad Pro and it has slowly taken over my fountain pens and sketchbooks as the preferred choice of sketching, but not taken over entirely. I am still sketching with my pens and watercolours on papers, but recently I wasn't able to decide which to carry with me, so I turned to the iPad naturally. Recently I have also been tweeking the brush settings on Procreate so I could somehow emulate the effects of sketching traditionally. For example, I customised a brush that draws like the brush pen and I loved it.







The flexibility of the Procreate App makes it easy to make adjustments and providing the speed and ease of sketching fast. There is no lack and the response time is awesome. All the factors of a good drawing tablet. I wouldn't want to be bog down by settings, connections, sync-ing and so forth. I need the tablet to feel like drawing on paper though that is quite impossible, due to the glassy surface and the plastic feel of the stylus. The paper presets gives me the options of choosing which paper format and size. I love sketching on the long landscape format.

 



Since it is relatively light weight (almost weigh nothing to me), and fits into my bag easily, I carry it wherever I go. Sometimes my traditional mediums weigh more. I could do so much with so little. :D



It's always fun to finally find something that works well with my work flow. I like to sketch fast and problems like ink flow and finding water (still fun) sometimes frustrate me.

There was a time i love going to the buffet just because I could taste out different kind of food all at the same time. After a while being satiated, everything tasted almost the same. We stopped going to buffet because besides, we decided to cut some slack on eating. It was almost a year later we thought of trying out Asian Market on a weekend when both my wife and myself just felt like chilling in a buffet restaurant.

We did not make a reservation but many did. So we have to let those who have made their reservations enter first, but it was just a short wait of 5mins. The eaters came in hordes, mostly families. I was thinking, the buffet per pax is not that cheap... unless they have discount somewhere, or the minimal to spend would be in the hundreds. There are many rich people in Singapore I suppose.

It was quite a pleasant experience eating at the restaurant before it got rowdy and more crowded. There was no shoving or pushing but there were times I felt arms stretching from above me or under my arm pits just to reach out to the buffet spread. Some people were too hungry to wait for their turn I think or they were just desperate.

So after I got my fill, I sat back, took my iPad out to draw an exaggerated scene of the buffet. As I was drawing I was thinking, when will people learn to wait for their turn? But I was also reminded that this was not that bad compared to a video I saw of Chinese (in China) fighting at a buffet table. It makes me feel odd when I would diligently stood in line to get to the food.

Drawn based on the people sitting around our table. The sign of affluence is everywhere.

#ipadpro #applepencil #procreate #buffet

Hanging out in the cafe was fun too if I have my iPad Pro with me. I am not going to be deterred by dim lighting anymore. Drawing with Procreate offers me with lotsa versatility. With all the digital advantages I have on hand, I have kept in mind to not to rely too much on the digital format, so besides the eraser tool and scaling function, I have tried to minimise the use of other functions, even avoiding the use of zooming in to draw details. This is actually made possible with the use of Apple Pencil, which has a good "point" just like a sharpened pencil or fine point pen. I could see what and where I am drawing now because of that.


Here's a good example of not making my digital drawing look to digital. I have kept the toning or shading rough and "dirty". I avoided blending or creating gradients, even filling out large areas with blacks or a shade. You get a little impatience sometimes with drawing digitally but I tried my best not to use shortcuts. Fortunately, Procreate does not have too many tools like Photoshop, so doing that is not so difficult.


Overall, drawing digitally allows me draw much faster and more without having to carry with me too many things. Adding white for example was easy in this case. Not using transparency tools, but simply controlling the pressure on the pen to get different degrees of lightness. I am still trying to make my lines for gestural, just needing practice on the tool.

They say Apple has created a cult. The members of this cult have all gone crazy for Apple's products especially towards the smart phones and tablets series. I do believe the range of products that were created since the launch of the first device has touched many, including myself. My first device was the iPod, but back then I could't really afford an iPhone until 2010, when I converted from using a HTC smartphone to iPhone 4S. The switch was the best thing, and since then I have not used another other smart device except Apple's.

The thirst for a good digital drawing device has led me to acquire an iPad, but I wasn't able to get it to work as well as I wanted it to. My next upgrade was iPad Mini, which after trying out several stylus from various brands, including the Wacom Creative Stylus 1 & 2, I decided to just forget about drawing on the iPad, though I had some but rare successes. A friend of mine managed to get his iPad 2 and the Wacom stylus 2 to work very well together. He proudly showed me his drawings done with the duo. I blamed it on my first generation iPad Mini which I used for browsing the internet and reading.

iPhone 6+ was a wonderful improvement. I enjoyed the big screen, clarity and speed. The camera is great and everything works to perfection, except for drawing. The drawing apps on the Plus, to me are not working for me. On the verge of giving up, a friend advised me to wait for the newest iPad that would be launched near the end of 2015. Little did I know that it would be the iPad Pro. After seeing the numerous demo videos, I was immediately bought in. I bought the iPad Pro in the month of December when it was made available in the shops and then waited 3 weeks for my online order of the Apple Pencil to arrive.

They are magical to work with and to sketch with. Light weight and sync seamlessly, the 2 devices work so well together I have not felt happier drawing on the tablet. There is still some getting use to with the drawing app (Procreate) , but so far, the drawing experience is great. I am now looking forward to more upgrades with the app so it can offer more.

My cat, Tibby

To draw on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil is fun. The technology finally gels with the hand of an artist. No more glitch, no more tearing your hair trying to pair something together; or getting broken lines during the process of drawing that kills your artistic flow instantly; or crashes of the apps. Not only that, the Apple Pencil has offer more; Tilt and Pressure sensitivity, just like using a real pencil, though not exactly. My true love still remains with traditional tools and materials like pen and brush, and the tooth and texture of paper or the resistance that you get when you draw on paper. The speed of drawing changes with the wielding of the tools while the tools and materials changes how the drawings look on paper. So every artist has his or her own drawing characters.

But the drawing process doesn't change with a digital tool. Drawing still involves the perception, how we see, and translation of what we have understood from what we see onto paper or canvas.

Recently, while searching for a relatively cheap sketchbook to draw on for all my daily visual journal, I found Moleskine Watercolor sketchbook; the latter is retailing quite expensively in Singapore. I got my cheap stash from Book Depository, almost more than halved the prices in the shops. Initially I wanted to do more watercolour on Moleskine watercolour book, but I found that it is better with brush pen and fountain pens. Here's one with brush pen.

Another brush pen was used to add tones to the original black and white inked drawings. The brush pen comes with preloaded grey ink. I bought another with blue but have not tried using it to replace the grey for my drawings yet. It will be interesting.

By the way, a Happy New Year to all you who reads my blog. A big thank you too.

This is the first drawing I did, with Procreate.