DIGITAL SKETCHBOOK

Guessed a few of us had played around with drawing, doodling on smart phone by now. I experimented with digital painting before using ARTRAGE on tablet and was quite pleased with some of its amazing options like the pallette knife that smudges, mixes and blends the adjacent colors together marvelously. But, as far as sketching goes, there’s certainly nothing come close to the joy of the simple pen or watercolor on the good old sheet of paper. It’s the feel and its mobility that made the difference.

However, with today’s many advanced mobile phone features and many competitive drawing applications, sketching on these little gadgets seems to open up yet another line of challenge, in my opnion, for its convenience in size, usage and its many fun features. I use a Samsung Galaxy NOTE for the following sketches on location. Holding a small sketchbook and pen for location sketching is discreet and convenient enough but sketching with a tiny pen on the palm size phone is not only just as convenient but also get away with the subject’s awareness too.

The drawing application or program, if you like, that I used, comes with option for pen and colors and that seems to be where the fun is! Both sketches above was done with option of “Random” color to pen of different size.

Below, the sketch on the left used “Rainbow” color option that made the color of the line changes as you draw and again, with “Random” on the right sketch that each line drawn will be of a different color.

It is fun to sketch on this little toy but the small size of the phone, the feel of drawing on smooth surface and the way one has to select and call up command would naturally put many people away. Below, are more sketches I tried and thought it was still fun, despite the many drawback!

Breakfast Thai style of thick, sweet local coffe in a small glass with half boiled eggs in a shallow bowl, fried plain fritter and toast with butter and dust of sugar.

A Chinese temple by the roadside.

Row of shophouses with a free for all type of development near Pichai Road junction in Bangkok!