iNudes: life drawing on an iPad

From a second session at life drawing with the iPad.

And a small world it proved to be. The model in the morning had gone to the same Wheeler event as I had, and read my blog about it. And the man drawing next to me, who seemed rather familiar, and who thought likewise, turns out to be my near neighbour from around the corner.

Technical note: A friend thought I used a stylus to do these drawings. But no, you just press your finger directly on the glass surface. (Explained extremely crudely, the touchscreen is made up of two conductive layers separated by the thinnest gap. Pressing your finger on the screen connects the layers at that point causing a change in the current which then registers as an event to be processed. Believe it or not.) The fingertip turns out to be a pretty blunt instrument. The fine or thick lines, textures and colours are selected from a tool box. Tap tap tap, drag circle loop — that’s how your finger takes a line for a walk.

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As a control I did some drawings in ink with brush, and nib. In fact I couldn’t have done these on the iPad — the line weights and precision are just not possible (yet) through the interface, mysteriously sophisticated though it is.

This is a very different body shape from the model above. The brush drawings here are quick one minute poses –much too brief for anything but jabbed scribbles on the iPad, but finessable in ink. The second one — a five minute pose — is a nib drawing and the rather Magdalene-like figure with its thorn-edged Gothicky intensity would also have been un-iPaddable.