Skip to main content

Use Your Mobile Phone as a Sketchbook

As mobile phones become more powerful with bigger screens it just makes sense to utilize these devices as a sketchbook. Chances are, your mobile phone is nearly always within arms reach anyway so, instead of carrying a sketchbook everywhere, why not just use your phone?

My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S5, running Android 6. It's fairly powerful and has a relatively large screen. Prior to that I had a Nokia, Lumia 720 phone running Windows 8.1. It has a smaller screen but I used it a lot for sketching ideas and characters.

Generally most modern phones with a capacitive touch screen (the kind that you can use your fingers with) should be fine for sketching.



However, most phones don't come with a stylus. If your's does and you find it works well for drawing you can skip to the next section.


If you have time to spare I made a video that covers most of the information in
this post and includes an actual demonstration of me creating a
simple artwork from start to finish.

What Stylus?


I've tried numerous styli with my phone to find one that works right for me. Here's a run down of what I have and my thoughts on each. All of these styli are designed to work with any capacitive touch screen and do not have advanced features like pressure sensitivity or palm rejection (implementing these features require software drivers and will limit the stylus to specific devices and apps).

Left to right: 1. Thinner Common Stylus; and Common Stylus; 2. Adonit Jot Pro;
3. Joy PinPoint; 4. Adonit Dash; 5. Generic Fine Point Stylus.
  1. Common Rubber tipped stylus (Cheapest option, find them at bargain stores for a few dollars). If you have nothing else you could get used to these but they are very much like drawing with a crayon. It's hard to see around the bulbous head when you're trying to draw detail.
     
  2. Adonit Jot, Pro (US$30.00 approx). This kind of stylus has a transparent plastic disk attached to a metal point, giving it maximum contact with your device and solving the problem of not being able to see where you're drawing on detailed images. I really like the Adonit Jot, Pro and used mine quite a bit. However it doesn't really capture the 'pencil' drawing experience.
     
  3. Joy, Pinpoint, Precision Stylus. (US$50.00 approx). Joy doesn't appear to sell these anymore but you can still pick up the 3rd generation ones through Amazon. These fine tipped styluses with the carbon fiber tips provide some resistance when drawing on a touch screen and are the closest to feeling like drawing with a regular pencil. The tip is able to be so fine because the stylus is boosted by the power of a single AAA battery stored in the shaft.

    This Stylus has my  preferred stylus tip but I had issues with the one I bought, such as the battery going flat after a week whether I used it or not and the pen its self powering down 5 or so minutes into drawing even if I was still drawing.
     
  4. Adonit, Dash (US$50.00 approx). These are fantastic for drawing with. A single USB charge lasts for up to 12 hours of use and only takes 30 minutes to recharge. The fine tip is great. The only draw back is the hardness of the tip makes it feel more like drawing with a ball point pen rather than a pencil. Otherwise, I highly recommend this stylus.
     
  5. Generic, Fine Point Chinese Import Stylus (US$15-$20.00) - These operate much like the Joy Stylus but are USB powered. Surprisingly good build quality with extra rubber replacement tips included. I really like the 'pencil' like feel of these styluses and, at the price, I just can't pass them up. They work really well.

How well styli work is also reliant on the processing power of your phone. If you have an older phone you may find all of these a little non-responsive or laggy. Just be aware that's down to the phone and not the stylus

What Apps?


The last thing you'll need is a drawing/sketching app. I've tried a whole bunch of them. Note that I've only used Windows and Android based Apps. However if you're using an iOS device you should have no trouble finding great art apps (it's what iOS and Apple are known for).


Sketch It Windows App.
On my Windows phone I settled on an app called Sketch It. A fairly basic raster/bitmap based drawing application. No layer support, it's most impressive drawing feature was being able to adjust the opacity of the brush you draw with. This meant that I could keep my brush color black but begin sketching at 20% opacity for really light construction lines. Increase the opacity to 40% on the next pass and then 60% etc. I really liked it.

On my Samsung, Android phone I wanted something more fully featured that I could potentially create finished art with if I wanted to. There are several good Raster/Bitmap options including ArtBoard and ArtFlow but I finally settled on Infinite Painter.

Infinite Painter is feature rich
with easy to find and use tools.
Infinite Painter can handle relatively large sized artworks at a resolution high enough for printing but it's also great for smaller sketches and artwork  to fill up your Instagram, Facebook or Tumblr feeds. It has features you'd expect of a desktop drawing application organized into easy to navigate menus with tools that are easy to use with a stylus.

Infinite Painter also has a partner app called Infinite Design for creating vector art. It's shares a similar user interface and is great if you are interested in turning your Painter sketches into vector finished art.

Not essential but if you're into, or want to try, I bit of hand drawn animation there are a number of great apps for this too. I love breaking out an app called PicsArt Animator and doodling animated sequences like you might with an old school, post-it note flip book.

Using Painter's Pen Guideline tool to create
perfectly smooth curves.

---o ---o--- o---

There you have it. Everything you need to start using your phone as a sketch book. I particularly like sketching/doodling on my phone when I'm watching something on TV that doesn't require my full attention. It's more productive than constantly scanning social media or watching for emails.



Popular posts from this blog

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Artbreeder - Using AI created Character and Background Content in your Animations

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap

Jarrad Wright, The Big Lez Show - Who Would've thought Animating with MS Paint Could Take You So Far?

A friend of mine recommended I should check out The Big Lez Show after I mentioned to him I make animations for living. He said the show's creator, Australian animator, Jarrad Wright , just makes episodes from his home using MS Paint. Somewhat shamefully I hadn't heard of The Big Lez Show, but the fact that it was being made with MS Paint absolutely hooked me into checking out. If you've never heard or seen the show then you, like I was, are probably thinking how good could it be? MS Paint has kind of a cult following of hardcore animators but no one would use it as their primary animation tool on a series, right? WARNING - before going any further, you need to know The Big Lez Show and its humor contains some pretty strong language. By strong I mean it's peppered very liberally with the 'F' and 'C' words and is very every day Aussie, blue collar speak. Unapologetically, all of that, is part of why it's so good. There's a good chance you've

Moho 14 Released - Still the Best 2D Animation Software for Indy Animators on a Budget

Moho 14 Released. Regular readers know I am a Reallusion, Cartoon Animator advocate through and through. Hands down I would recommend Cartoon Animator 5 first over Lost Marble's Moho 14 to anyone who is just starting in 2D animation, is a team of one, or just needs to animate as quickly as possible. However, feature for feature, Moho is, arguably, the best 2D animation software for the rest of us who can't justify a Toon Boom Harmony , or Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (and even with their applications Moho is very competitive on features). You can get started with Moho Debut for just USD$59.99 which is a cut down version of Moho Pro but it still has the most essential features needed for 2D animation. While Moho Pro is a whopping USD$399.99 (Cartoon Animator, which only has one version, is just USD$149.00) upgrades to new version numbers come down to a quarter of the price at USD$99.00. Even though Reallusion just released features like Motion Pilot Puppet Animation and

Reallusion Releases Cartoon Animator 5 - One Version, More Features, Lower Price!

If you're serious about producing 2D animation as quickly as possible, while still achieving professional results, Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 makes the most compelling case yet as your animation studio/tool of choice. Cartoon Animator's point of difference has always been its ease of use and accelerated workflow. Creating fast, 2D animation using puppet, bone rigged based characters and props, on a stage with 3D depth for easy scene parallax effects. As it has developed Reallusion has incorporated more advanced features like motion capture for both face and body as well as being able to export scenes to post production tools like After Effects with the addition of plugins. After moving away from Flash based vector image support for a few years, Reallusion is back with full .SVG (scalable vector graphics) support for resolution independent graphics. They've also added Spring Dynamic physics and Full Form Deformation tools, both of which make it ridiculously easy t

Cartoon Animator 5 and G2 Characters - Why You'll Probably Never Use Them Even Though They're Great

Since I've previously covered how to get the most out of your purchased G3 and G1 characters for Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5, it would be remiss of me not to look at the greatest character rig of all time, G2 characters. G2 Characters have been mostly relegated to legacy status since Cartoon Animator 3 but, as a rig that let you create fully 360 degree turn-able characters that moved in 3D space, animated with 3D motion files, and were mostly vector based, there was nothing else like them in any other 2D  software. The problem was, even with the templates provided by Reallusion for both Adobe Flash and Serif DrawPlus , they were complex and time consuming to make from scratch. They were also difficult to customize because there was no way to export and edit individual parts. G2 characters just weren't easy enough for the casual Cartoon Animator user to customize so they fell by the wayside. However they're still fully supported in CA5 with all the same functional