Enrique Recuero Hates (and by Hate I Mean Love) Drawing on the iPad

Actually I don’t hate art at all. I love it.

I love it more than anything, which brings an element of hate into the process.

I have experienced self loathing for multiple failures in my art, and have been frustrated by how far a distance I have to go before I am satisfied.

And now I hate it even more because I am learning to draw on the iPad.

I hate it like a Alexander the Great hated war, which means he probably didn’t like his friends and soldiers dying, but he actually loved war.

The goal is to have web comics on this website. Do you see any? That would be my fault. (Hate)

I self published 2 comics growing up, before the internet was as bad ass as it is currently. Sadly, through the trials of life (i.e. ex wives) most of that art has been destroyed. There are people around with copies of it, and I hope to one day make them all rich (Love)

The way you drew comics back in the day was you drew them with a non-photo blue pencil, which is a colored pencil that did not show up on copy machines, that is until recent years. My last attempt to do this at Kinkos revealed all of my non-photo blue lines and made my art gross and annoying.

Then you draw with a regular pencil on top of the non-photo blue lines, and then you inked them. Or you got someone else to ink them.

This is how it was done for decades, but now that time is over.

My answer is to start drawing on the iPad, which is awesome (Love) and daunting (Hate).

Let me show you some art that I drew with pencil.

Here is some inked art:

And here is a blasphemous comic I drew in a sketchbook that contained some inked work.

From Happy Birthday Jesus:

So I felt like I was getting somewhere, and along comes the iPad. It is by definition the perfect art tool: it is back lit, people are using them more and more, and it gives you every fucking art tool you could possibly ever want. This is important, as it is easy to spend hundreds of dollars on art supplies just to make cool pictures.

I have 3 art programs on my iPad. This is basically the result of panicking at the infinite complexity of each program and moving on- each time to a more advanced program- the logic of which I cannot explain.

I look at my iPad like a deer looks at headlights. I am just sad that the iPad doesn’t go ahead and run over me like a car would (Hate).

It is unbelievably daunting, I feel like I have lost the ability to walk , but not because I am paralyzed but because I have been reborn in a new body.

Everything feels strange. You draw with your finger, which freaks all artists out. Everyone wants me to get a stylus, but when I research how a stylus works on an ipad it sounds like wearing platform shoes to ride a bike.

The iPad was built for your finger. Apple does not fuck around. Someday they will be the Matrix and milk us for battery juice. Mac is always perfect. When you don’t agree with Mac, the failure is yours. Oh, sorry. Sometimes I act like a fascist.

But the iPad is built for your finger. All a stylus will do is is conduct your finger, and convince the screen your finger is nearby. I have heard rumors of people using beef jerky as a stylus. And you can zoom at amazing levels.

Which means you can get all the detail you could possibly want (Love), except that its also like using a shrinking ray on yourself for a painting (Hate).

My number one problem is that I can’t ever finish anything on the iPad and everything looks like I have just started it 5 minutes ago (Hate).

Although I have finished a couple of pieces.

This one was done on DrawCast, which is free and will bombard you with advertising about other drawing Apps, other than that it is great and it has layers:

Next is this Zombie I drew using Brushes, which is considered very fancy because an artist who does New Yorker covers also uses this app (Love). I already bought another App to replace it. The jury is still out.

I wish I could show you something from Sketchbook Pro, my most recent App, and by far the one which seems to have the most support and tutorials.

Brushes can do anything, but people act like its a box of Crayola crayons as far as sophisticated art supplies, at least according to my search for forums and tutorials. Sketchbook Pro has gotten the love of video game people and other hardcore graphic artists and has been proliferated as thus online.

So I am hoping that added support will make a difference.

The iPad is like Lemarchand’s device on Hellraiser for an artist. It brings angels to some and demons to others, but it is still the Cenobites flaying your flesh off in the name of their enlightenment. I am working on learning to see the angel half.