Going digital!

Publication date: 27 September 2021



I've begun making freehand digital drawings on my iPad, using an Apple Pencil/stylus and a drawing app called Procreate.

While apps like Procreate provide a wide range of drawing facilities, such as pre-designed textures, which can add entertainment to the process of producing a drawing, as well providing potential visual enhancements to it, my preference is to restrict myself to the most basic tools in the Procreate box.

In practice, this means that I use the same digital pen/drawing nib for drawing and erasing (because I want to replicate, as closely as possible, the way I work with graphite pencil on paper), while taking advantage of the facility to vary line size and opacity. I also make full use of the facility to create a single drawing on various layers, and to 'zoom' into the drawing when I want to manage detailed elements. I work completely freehand, and the drawing I make on the iPad screen is done at the same size as the finished print.

When finished, I copy the drawing to my computer from where I can print it as a high-quality giclee print onto matt archival art paper. Because the image is digital, it doesn't require scanning to get from the original to the giclee print, so none of detail, tone, and texture is lost.

I've limited the editions of these drawings to a maximum of 100 giclee prints. When that number is reached, the drawing will no longer be available for purchase. I will archive the digital file of the drawing so it is available in the unlikely circumstance that a numbered print is damaged and needs replacing - if that happens, the replacement will be exchanged for the damaged version which will then be destroyed. Replacement prints will only be provided if the original numbered and signed copy is returned to me for disposal. Replacement prints will cost the same as one previously supplied (£75 per print).