Intro to Adobe Sketch

by Margaret Penney | March 16, 2017

Adobe Sketch is a new addition to the Adobe Creative suite built to fully enable drawing and sketching on the computer. The app has many new features and also updated ones from other applications, like Illustrator. Sketch is particularly useful if you have a tablet style computer or graphics tablet. In combination with a tablet, the experience of using sketch is incredibly similar to creating drawings in real life.

Bloom typography by Paul Green

Sketch enables the act of expressive and gestural drawing, and painting. It allows artists who prefer more freeform modes of expression and who may have never liked using a computer for creating to actually consider it as just another tool in their artist kit.

The app comes with many custom brushes and pens, enough to create most artwork. Creatives are also designing their own that emulate a variety of real-world styles, like linocut and watercolor.

Cacti by Zoe Fallows

Sketch makes it easy to create artwork from multiple sources. Artists can import work right into the app to either trace or incorporate as elements in a larger illustration or collage. To harness the capabilities of the entire Creative Suite, the app also makes it easy to move artwork from Sketch to Illustrator and Photoshop effortlessly.

We can already see the effect this app is having on the online creative community visual culture as hand-drawn illustrations and fonts proliferate. It’s always interesting to see how a new technology can enable new expression, and in this instance, a fresh take on one of the oldest forms of artistic expression.

The Sketch Served site from the Behance Network has a lot of great examples of inspiring work; included in this article are some favorites.

Gemma O’Brien Make it on a Mobile

DOWNLOAD THE 30 DAY SKETCH TRIAL HERE

Margaret Penney is the Managing Editor of Notes on Design. Margaret is a teacher, designer, writer and new media artist and founder of Hello Creative Co.

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