Digital Canvas. GoPaint App for Artists and More

Hello.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the development of technology accelerated so much that a person born a couple of decades earlier saw the emergence of a huge number of innovations. The transition from kerosene lamps to gas and then to electric ones, the conquest of air and the victory over space, travel became less troublesome, distances were reduced due to the superiority of the speed of trains and planes over kilometers of roads. Miracles were happening in the big, reflected in the small and became the new norm.

Nowadays, the revolution is connected with the advent of the Internet and the development of electronics, we can reach a person anywhere in the world at any time, the main thing is that he has a working mobile Internet. Everyone has become a photographer, as the phone has a camera and a bunch of editors that allow you to modify photos, even add non-existent elements to them, thanks to AI algorithms. The scale of changes is such that it is not inferior to what happened a century ago. Each of us has become a photographer, mastering the intricacies of this activity is not so difficult if you have a camera in your pocket that accompanies you everywhere and always. To some extent, this devalues ​​photography, as it becomes important to catch the moment, to shoot something unusual. We are spoiled by high-quality photos from all over the world, and the average user has learned to take good photos. Twenty years ago, standing out from the crowd with beautiful photos was not difficult, today the task looks incredible. And many people no longer perceive such a hobby as creativity in its pure form, it is too accessible to everyone. Creativity is not only a way of self-expression, but also an opportunity to live life, furnishing it with your thoughts, beautifully wrapped in words, images, drawings.

I admit honestly, all my life I envied those who can draw. As a child I tried to depict what I saw around me, attended children’s drawing clubs. I still remember the feeling of touching squirrel brushes, the smell of paint and how the strokes spread on the paper. It didn’t work out, either I turned out to be untalented, or the teachers were wrong. But from the training of those years I made a judgment that was confirmed many times in life. To succeed in drawing, you need to try, spy on how others draw, make mistakes and try again. This is exactly what they do in art schools.

Drawing implies that you need to set up your workspace at a minimum. You need pencils or paints, paper and a place where you can work with all of this. You also need the right light, otherwise your vision will suffer and the drawings will be distorted. It’s not that all of this is impossible to implement, but there is an obstacle on the road to beauty that not everyone jumps over. Over the years, I have forgotten the name of my art teacher, but I will always remember her words: “Every person has a desire to draw. Not everyone can realize it and learn to see the world, draw it. Even a monkey can be taught to redraw, but putting your soul into a drawing is a task of a completely different level.” Perhaps, due to her youth, she quoted one of the greats, but the words made an indelible impression at the time, I perceived myself worse than a monkey, I could not do many elementary things, for example, strokes on a canvas. The paints were blurring, I couldn’t find the right pressure level, the strokes were always not as light as those of the grown-ups. I gave up and stopped doing it, and became interested in photography.

The advent of tablets has removed barriers for those who want to draw anywhere and anytime. Large screen area, the presence of a “pen” that acts as a drawing tool, and, most importantly, the presence of an advanced application in which you can find many different styles for strokes. Completely different opportunities that allow you to be creative, express yourself with ease, and most importantly, master drawing even without the participation of teachers (now stones will be thrown at me by the latter).

Many people simply have no idea what secrets modern devices keep, what you can do with them. Let’s try to tell you about it using the example of the GoPaint application, which can be found on Huawei tablets (at the moment it is pre-installed on the Huawei MatePad 11.5 S model, other devices will appear later). Now you can’t download GoPaint anywhere separately, it is an exclusive application for specific devices, it turns them into digital canvases with very advanced capabilities. See how students of the Surikov Institute draw.

Several times I met students of this educational institution with tablets, they were drawing from life, their hands were cheerfully fluttering over the screen, on which the outlines of what I could see with my eyes appeared. I am fascinated by how easily and quickly people make sketches, for me it is akin to a miracle.

To start creating, we will need the third generation M-Pencil, the stylus is large but light, fits well in the hand.

Open GoPaint and select the “New Work” section. Note that you have access to different canvases, each with its own resolution and number of supported layers. Everything is serious, like in professional applications, but GoPaint is absolutely free.

If you want 4K resolution, then the number of available layers will be 66, for a lower resolution you can choose up to 320 layers. Different canvas geometry, but also different types, from regular paper to thick watercolor or ink coating. The possibilities for creativity are varied.

In the settings you can see the smoothness of the brush, how quickly the figures appear if you automatically place them on the canvas (circle, square and others, so as not to draw them by hand). The default settings are good, but you can set your own.

The beauty of drawing in the app on a digital canvas is that all your steps are remembered, the app automatically records a timelapse and you can see your mood, how you drew, repeat what you did. Look at the flower drawing.

And here is how the artist searched for himself, tried the application for the first time, experimented.

For each drawing you can see the main stages of its creation, another person can watch how you drew, repeat your experience. This is an extremely important skill for learning.

I asked to draw a human figure to show how it is done step by step, everything is not as simple as it may seem from the outside. The correct proportions appear either when your hand is trained, or when you do it like this.

The drawing looks simple, doesn’t it? Now let’s look at the magic behind its creation.

I liked the picture with the bird, in the settings you can see how long it took to draw it, what parameters were used, for example, the number of layers.

Oh, I completely forgot to show the picture itself.

How does an artist go from a sketch to a finished work? Let’s look at the example of a fox looking at the sky, what strokes give it charm.

These examples alone show how wide the possibilities of GoPaint are, it is a professional tool, but at the same time it is extremely simple, and even a child can master it. Our children get used to applications much easier than you and me, they are on first-name terms with technology.

A tool can’t make you an artist, no doubt about it. But a good tool will help you not get distracted by trivialities. For example, you can choose brushes that respond perfectly to your movements.

What is the beauty of a digital canvas? You can draw anywhere at any time. Just take out your tablet and start drawing what you like or what you see. And here is a complete analogy with the cameras in our phones, which is where I started this story. People have learned to take decent photos, since they always have a camera in their pocket. With drawing, everything is not so simple, you can’t fit a tablet in your pocket, but if you like drawing, then you are no longer limited in anything, the tablet easily fits in a small bag, and weighs little. This means that you will get the hang of it much faster. Moreover, you can see how others draw, analyze their drawings into components, learn from the best. There are no restrictions in creativity, everything rests only on your desire.

I have heard many times that any tablet supports drawing on the screen, a stick is enough. At the very least, this is a misconception. It is necessary for the tablet screen to support pressure recognition, as this determines how a stroke is formed in a particular brush. It is necessary for the application to support a variety of brushes so that they are correctly located on different canvases. In a word, everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance, not all tablets are equally useful in this capacity. And the same GoPaint is a very interesting application for those who want to master creativity. The audience of the application and the Huawei tablet can be both a child who is just learning, and those who already know how to draw, love this activity. An excellent digital canvas for any audience and age.