Mastering Paper for iOS: back to the basics

This? This is freakin’ awesome! Thanks so much for sharing your mad skills and expertise with us!

Nicely done! Looking forward to more how-to articles!

Great tutorial! :) Keep going.

You are amazing, thank you so much for making these articles!

You good sir are the man…thanks for sharing your brilliance :)

Very nice written articles, looking forward to the new ones!

Awesome! Thanks for the great tutorial :)

The level of awesomeness is too damn high

Fantastic help for getting started with 53. Thanks so much. Your work is amazing

Need the most basic instruction of all!!! How do I start a new drawing, by bringing up a blank page, which allows me to swipe up to bring in the tool bar

Pinch the page and it will zoom out to a view that allows you to swipe through, add, or delete pages. Pinch again and you’ll see all of your journals. For more help check FiftyThree’s support page, it has videos and animations showing how to do all the basics.

Thank you for this guide!! There is still one thing I do not understand: I have watched your video on the watercolor tool and tried to colour slowly and evenly in one go but the final outcome still looks blotchy. I’m using my finger for this, could that be it?

I’ve noticed that painting with the Pencil stylus allows you paint faster and does seem to produce a smoother tone easier, but the same effect is possible using just your finger.

Try moving in a small circular pattern as you paint, it will help even things. And of course do not lift your finger off the screen or else you’ll start to darken areas and won’t get that smooth tone.

Other than that keep practicing.

Hi Michael, I was scrolling down your page, looking for inspiration (which I do whenever I have drawer’s block), and I saw your ink splatter example and wondered if you could put that in some more detail. Would you mind maybe explaining your process more extensively?

There’s not much more to the process than what I included above.

1. Use the pen tools to create the general shape and fill it in.
2. Add some dots of various sizes around it to simulate the splatter.
3. To make some blobs look more 3D add highlights using white or another light color with the pencil tool.
4. To finish it off add a drop shadow with a light gray and the watercolor brush, zoom in, and paint quickly along the edge where you want to cast a shadow.

I just found your site and articles about Paper and want to thank you!

They are beautiful, very well written and have inspired me to get more out of my Pencil and Paper.

You’re welcome Laura! Glad you’ve found them useful.

My pleasure, Michael. I posted a couple of links to your articles on a blog I wrote a couple of months back so my readers can find them.

Hi Michael I’ve never found anything that makes the transition from pencil and paper to digital that is so effortless. More so because of your great tutorials. I have a question on neutralizing colors by mixing with complement. I dragged the small circle around the color mixer with the compliment also selected but I didn’t see a difference. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the instruction: “To neutralize them, do one full rotation of the Color Mixer with both complementary colors selected.”

My Pencil by 53 is on the way, but I’m learning while using my finger and another stylus.

Did you rotate the little circle clockwise? If you have say red in the big circle, then select a green from the palettes on the right, when you rotate the big circle clockwise you should see it change colors as green is mixed into it.

Looks something like this:

Do you have any advice about different papers for ball pens. Ball ROller Gel and Felt I doodle. But some papers are way better than others and I’m having difficulty figuring out . I have come across newsprint (like the wight of a daily paper. But no idea where to get more. Or even what words I us to search for it. any help will be appreciated

Not really. I work mostly digital these days so I’m probably the wrong person to ask for advice on traditional materials.