Did you know that Apple offers free classes? They do! These topics can range from how to set up your iPhone to open studio “Office Hours” around projects you are working on. I got an email about a few classes that were happening a couple of weeks ago. One of the classes stood out to me was “Join a Sketch Walk” that featured Procreate. Procreate is a very cool iPad app that is similar to Adobe Photoshop. It’s a powerful tool that a lot of designers/artists use to create. Even my tattoo artist uses Procreate!
Since I already had Procreate, an Apple Pencil, and really enjoy doodling on my iPad Pro, I decided to sign up for the class and see how it was. I signed up for the “Sketch Walk: Architectural Sketching Techniques” class and patiently waited for that weekend to arrive. Turns out, I was the only participant that day (!), so I got to talk one on one with a resident Apple Genius that focused on teaching. This was really helpful for figuring out some cool stuff that I could do with my iPad that I didn’t know about. We wandered around outside taking pictures of a couple of scenes before we went inside the mall area at Eton to sketch.
The way that the class went from an architectural standpoint was observation. We would take photos of things we found interesting, observing things such as vanishing points, and trace over a photo using our iPads. I knew about the concept of tracing every since I was a kid in school. While I don’t have a lightbox currently, and my tracing skills aren’t great, I was still blown away at the concept they taught. We used the layers feature to trace over a photo (by hand) of the outline of the photo we used, then used various brushes to paint over the tracing. I had never thought of doing this before and the ease of actually getting it started really impressed me. Below is the photo that I took and what I traced over it.
While I am no Picasso (yet?), I really enjoyed this activity. It was similar to an adult coloring book in my opinion – nice and relaxing. It was awesome having one on one instruction and learning how to use equipment I already have in cool new ways! This program is called “Today at Apple” and you can check out offerings in your area here: https://www.apple.com/today/
