11 Comments
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Helen Stephens's avatar

Yes, I love the paperlike screen cover, so good. I sometimes wonder about trying the resistant nibs too… but haven’t yet.

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JACQUELINE HOUCHIN's avatar

I'm interested in drawing my own greeting card covers (blank inside) with simple line/cartoon-like kid friendly images. Can I just copy them onto card stock? They are just for me to send out to the children of friends on their birthdays. Any other suggestions.

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Jo Bozarth's avatar

1. Yay! You have a Substack!! I can’t believe I missed that! 🤪

2. Thank you for writing this. I got an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil a couple of years ago for a work project not related to drawing. I immediately bought procreate and Paperlike for illustrating. I was so excited, but after a couple of days I gave up. I am so intimidated by Procreate. But the “learn as you work” theory makes sense. You’ve given me the courage to take a deep breath and give it another go! ♥️🤞🏼

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Helen Stephens's avatar

Sorry I missed this chat ages ago, how’s it going with Procreate? Did you get back into it?

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Jo Bozarth's avatar

No worries! And apologies if you get this response twice...I responded on the Substack email and it disappeared, so now I’m on the app. Lol

It took me a few more months, but I finally did get back to it! I watched a tutorial to get all the shortcuts (double taps and all that). It’s a process, but what isn’t? Happily, this process is actually a lot of fun!!

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Helen Stephens's avatar

Yay!

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Alison Bryant's avatar

Hi Helen, really enjoyed the digital chat.

I was wondering if you are using Paperlike, or something similar on the iPad for a bit of resistance when drawing?

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Helen Stephens's avatar

Yes I love my Paperlike screen. Although it do get a bit squeeze if I am on my screen too long, so I’m thinking of removing it in case it blurs the picture a bit and hurts my eyes/ head. Sorry for this VERY late reply, I just saw your comment!

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Helen Stephens's avatar

The link doesn’t work any more, so here’s the blog post about working digitally: https://www.helenstephens.com/blogposts/pencil-pals-june2022

Helenx

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Adam Ming's avatar

The downsides to working on an iPad is you loose a sense of scale. You might soon in too much and work on tiny details that don’t matter, Or you might neglect to uses scale sufficiently.

I overcome this by sketching in the actual size the final thing (picturebook) is going to be. I do this mainly to get the scale of things. Then I go in to work digitally.

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In general I am quite indiscriminate about working digitally or physically, I go in and out and just use whatever is lying around. I think going between the two and even between software helps keep things well!

Ps: Great to see you on Substack! :)

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Helen Stephens's avatar

Yes, I totally agree, the scale thing is a problem. I wish I could have a HUGE picture book sized iPad. That Zoom in tool has to be used with EXTREME care, there should be a hazard warning! BTW I love your Substack newsletter.

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