Hello readers, I’m Krish Kant Soni, a graphic designer and completed my training from Graphic design training institute in Rohini i.e. ADMEC Multimedia Institute recently. I learned various applications in my course journey and Sketchbook Pro was a concluding software for me. I made various digital artworks using it during my training with mentor Anuradha Sengar. SketchBook Pro is absolutely the best software to polish your artistic skills. You must start by learning about its interface and top tools first. To help you in it, I’ll explain the top 5 tools in SketchBook Pro that you as a beginner should learn first.
Let’s start from its interface first.
Take the above given image as reference to understand the core areas of SketchBook Pro’s interface.
- Tool Bar: It includes all the important tools like selection, flood fill, guides and strokes.
- Color and Brush Puck: Color puck helps in generating new colors and saturation while brush puck helps in changing brush size, opacity, and flow.
- Brush Palette: It covers the basic brushes that we generally use in the beginning of the painting. Pencil, linking pen, air brush, paint brush, eraser, etc. come in it.
- Brush Library: We cab access brush library from Window menu to find the additional brush sets.
- Layer Editor: This section keeps record of all layers we are using in our artwork.
- Color Editor: It shows the color tray using which we can form variety of new shades.
- Lagoon: This is a small section that generally appears at left bottom of workspace. It covers edit, fill, and frequently used options.
- Canvas: This is the place where we draw and paint using the available tools and options.
Now that you are familiar with the interface, let us move forward for the tools.
5 Must to Try Tools in SketchBook Pro for Beginners
1. Brushes
Brushes come in two forms: Brush palette and library. Using the brushes, we can draw as well as paint on the canvas. There are different categories of brushes in the SketchBook like pencil, inkers, markers, airbrushes, blenders, charcoal, texture, eraser, Copic markers, and many more.
The very first brush that you can start from is Pencil that you can find in brush palette on left. Just select it and start drawing on the canvas. You will feel like you’re drawing on paper. If you want to work with more brush types then open the brush library.
Inside brush library, you can import more brushes into application. Plus, you can make your own custom brush too.
Additional thing to note: In order to use brushes naturally, you must connect with pen tablet or install application on pen display device.
Using mouse is not recommended for both learners and users of SketchBook Pro. With pen or display graphic tabs you can control flow and pressure of the brushes. It will feel like you are actually drawing and painting on a real canvas.
Check various brands for drawing tablets and decide the one you find most suitable. Remember, you must have to install driver of the respective graphic tablet in order to utilize its features properly.
2. Layers
SketchBook gives us layers to maintain our artwork easily. So, if you are planning for a sunset view then you will first make a layer for sun first then one will be for sky, and other for remaining elements like birds, trees, buildings, mountains, etc.
The rule is to keep each element on a separate layer to keep the work organized and editable. Doing paining on a single layer becomes difficult to edit later.
CTRL+L is keyboard shortcut for a new layer. You can find its option in layer editor panel too. Many more options are there like we can change opacity of layer, group similar layers, duplicate, rename, delete and even merge multiple layers. All these functions are available in same editor panel.
Please note: Use transparency lock option to lock the pixels of the layer. This way, we can paint freely inside the same layer without any having problem of colors going out.
3. Color Editor
Another important option, you should practice is color editor. You can pick colors and save them for using later. There is an eye dropper option within color editor and it allows us to pick color from any image or artwork of the canvas. It offers a hue wheel with saturation and lightness options. So, forming a new shade it not a big deal for us.
4. Symmetry Tool
I love symmetry tool as it allows me to draw a reflected design quickly. Three types of symmetry guides are there: Horizontal, vertical and radial. In radial we can decide the no of segments and also lock the axis. I used it many times for making mandala art like paintings.
5. Selection Tool
The final group to practice for beginners is selection group. It includes all the crucial tools like Magic Wand, Rectangle selection, Elliptical selection, Lasso, and Polyline Selection. It also has “add to selection” and “subtract from selection” modes. There is a border and deselect option too.
While using Magic Wand, you can use tolerance value to increase or decrease the selection range.
Some additional tools, you must try are Guides and Grids options of SketchBook Pro like perspective grids and ruler guides.
Final Thoughts on SketchBook Pro Tools for Beginners
SketchBook Pro comes with many handy tools for beginners and the one that I explained today are very essential one to try first. If you find them difficult to understand then you can join a 1-month SketchBook Pro course from ADMEC Multimedia. Under this course, you’ll also get chance to work on flipbook animation. And for further exploration, explore software covering in Graphic Design Classes in Delhifrom ADMEC.
