Drawing medium of Super Simple Draw

Each one of the major iPad drawing apps try to mimic the real drawing tools like pencil, pen, marker, oil paint, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, airbrush, etc. Some of those apps, like Art Set, did some really amazing job on the simulation.

On the other hand, Super Simple Draw didn’t aim to simulate the real drawing media. Because it is meant to be super simple, and the real drawing tools are sophisticated. It would be hard for someone without formal training to feel comfortable with the real oil paint. A digital oil paint brush simulated with iPad and Apple Pencil only makes it harder, since the pencil tip is too hard and the screen is a little too slippery.

So Super Simple Draw went with a straightforward strategy. It just puts down the color where the pencil (or finger) touches. If you paint the same area with a new color, the new one covers the old. No blending, mixing, or letting the computer simulate how the liquid, gel or particles flow/disperse and interact with other colors.

While aimed to be a simple, after drawing for a while I discovered a few interesting outcomes of this approach.

1. As any new stroke always covers the old mark, it is easy to automatically get rid of the contour lines during coloring. This made the drawing more realistic. (Not going to call this the Sfumato way yet because of the overall amateur/hobbyist-ness here , but it’s somewhere towards that direction)

2. The combination of line width and color darkness (controllable by Apple Pencil pressure) made it possible to do both smooth surface and textured ones (animal fur, feathers, rough surfaces, etc) in a relatively easy way. Wide lines with gentle touch creates a smooth and uniform surface, while thin lines with harder press (darker color) creates any texture on top of that.

As I’m gradually finding these tricks out, I’ve been testing some different styles of drawing.

Cupertino Union Church, mostly smooth colors over larger areas

Bald eagle, while experimenting the texture of feathers

Navy Seal Sculpture, mostly outlines with some simple shading

Jabberball, smooth color with some darker color as shading. Hard black outlines mostly covered by yellow color

Of course I’m still quite a beginner (also never formally trained) on drawing itself, but it is nice to be able to experiment somewhat different styles with this tool deliberately designed to be super simple.

Just to be clear, nothing taken away from the hard work done by Art Set, Procreate, Autodesk Sketchbook, etc for simulating the realistic drawing tools. Those are marvelous and would enable the greatest artists to achieve maximum potential. In the meantime though, Super Simple Draw provides an alternative that is unique, and hopefully easier for beginners to try out different ways to get a few types of drawings that could potentially become moderately nice. One cool thing about art is that there is no absolute answer. It is more about the process and the fun.