I recently bought the GoodNotes® app for my iPad, as I wanted a digital sketchbook for my travels and notes. I didn’t realise the app was mainly for annotating and writing – very very clever and it got me thinking about how to create one to use as a sketchbook.
I started to learn the app and realised that the pen and highlighter tools can be used together for sketching and drawing. Even though there are some great illustrating apps (I use Adobe Fresco), I wanted to use this in a sketchbook format.
Here in this short video, I’m doing a quick sketch of a Lisbon cafe wall tile on a trip to Portugal.
Good notes has a range of templates with some white, cream and dark backgrounds but I have made this one with some more traditional artists papers (in digital format of course).
I chose a drawing of The Little Ballerina by the French impressionist painter Edgar Degas – I like the way you can split the screen on the iPad to view what you are drawing.
I have made the sketchbook into a twelve section tabbed journal with some digital watercolour textured and pastel papers. There are even 8 covers to choose from in a traditional journal style with a suede effect finish.
One tip I have is to set a few preset colours into each pen or highlighter before you start each drawing. If you want to move the drawing around the page, remember to have ‘annotations’ checked as GoodNotes recognises all pen marks as annotations – it doesn’t know you have just made a work of art!
