Dear all, welcome to this new tutorial! Let's discover Autodesk SketchBook,
a free and complete tool to realize amazing sketches and drawings!
SketchBook collects loads of freehand and guides tools to realize all
drawings and animations without any paid license, available for both
Windows and MacOS desktop and smartphone devices. Despite we are going to
use a desktop version its main features don't differ much as its mobile
app. It is also suggested in case you prefer drawing with digital pens.
When opening SketchBook a blank canvas opens with a standard size. You
can enable the Crop tool and click and drag over it to resize it, once you
click on Apply above.
In addition you can go to Image, Canvas Size... to make precise
adjustments.
The general interface is very handy. You have the main Toolbar above, with
all the tools and features available; the paint Brush Palette on the left, with
all the main drawing tools and the Lagoon wheel at the bottom
that collects the same tools of the Toolbar. This is optimized for pens
since you can select any tool by simply clicking and dragging from any
button. In the same way you can right-click and drag.
You can close any palette with their red button. You can reopen these
from the Window tab.
To start drawing enable any tool from either the Brush Palette or the
Lagoon. These are freehand tools that you can use by clicking and dragging
on the canvas. Each brush tool has its own style, going from the simple
pencil-like brush to an airbrush, a marker, a ballpoint pen or a
paintbrush.
However the Brush Palette is only a small group of all the brushes
available. You can open the Brush Library to find the right one you are
looking for, including shapes, splatters and pastels.
You can undo any action with CTRL (or CMD) and Z or the red/green arrows to
undo and redo any time. Whereas hold down the Space bar key to enable
several visualization buttons to zoom in and out, rotate and move around
the canvas.
To adjust your brush you can click and drag vertically and horizontally
over the two Pucks. The white one is called Brush Puck and sets either the
brush size or the brush flow and opacity. The black one is the Color Puck
and fixes the brush color. Click once on it to set the color brightness,
saturation and hue, enabling the eyedropper to pick the color from the
canvas directly. At this point you can drag from the Puck to adjust the
brightness or the saturation level for the current color.
You can also open the Color Editor to adjust the color precisely or select
the Randomize feature to randomize colors within a defined hue range.
From the Brush Palette you can also enable the Smear, the Blur and the
Sharpen tools to refine your brushes by adjusting shape, adding blurriness
or increasing details by clicking and dragging over these.
On the other hand you can use the Eraser tools to cancel your drawings by
brushing over these with either a hard or a soft level. Adjust eraser
size and hardness from the Brush Puck.
Inside SketchBook you can get several drawing aids over your canvas.
Click on Ruler to drop a straight line that you can rotate, stretch and
move with its nodes. Check the measurements at the bottom and click and
drag over it to draw along its line. This way you can drop several straight
lines as you need. Click on the cross to hide the ruler. In the same way
you can drop an ellipse or a french curve to use as a guideline.
Enable Perspective Guides to make outstanding perspective drawings. Just
select the number of points and place these as you need on the canvas.
Then make your drawing. The same cursor helps you at locating the axes as
you move.
On top enable and disable snappings to these axes, lock the points or hide
the perspective axes.
Use Symmetry to draw on both sides of a single central axis or more of
them as you like. You can use this in combination with other drawing aids
just seen.
SketchBook includes several drawing tools like Steady Stroke and Predictive
Stroke. With the first one you brush after a certain distance; with the
second one you can adjust your freehand drawing in order to make curves
much smoother. Whereas with Draw style you can draw straight segments,
rectangles, circles and polygons by clicking and dragging on the canvas.
In this case you can also apply the Flood Fill tool by simply clicking
within their area. This also works within any enclosed freehand drawing
and can be used to fill an entire canvas background.
On top select between a solid & uniform fill and a linear or radial
gradient. These show nodes that you can move and change in color from the
Color Puck. From its palettes you can apply great ready-made gradients
to start from.
You can also click on the dashed line to add more nodes and use the cross
button to remove any.
SketchBook includes several selection tools used to limit your drawing
area without impacting other sides of the canvas. Enable Select and choose
the tool in order to drop any rectangle, ellipse or freehand shape with
Lasso and Polyline. Use Magic Wand to perform a precise selection with one
click instead.
You can also combine multiple areas together, using Add to unify regions,
Remove to subtract them and Invert to invert the region. Use Deselect to
remove any selection.
All the drawings and objects on the canvas are managed as layers. Click on
Layers to open the Layer Editor palette, showing all the layers present.
By default you have Layer 1, representing your drawing, and Background for
the canvas background. You can create more layers with the plus button
above. At this point select the interested layer to start drawing on it.
Use the eye button to hide and show each layer. If you hide the Background
the canvas will be a checkerd area indicating full transparency.
Moreover you can click and drag from the double arrow to change the
layers order, especially in case you get elements overlapped.
Drag over the right blue bar to adjust the opacity level of each layer
and click on the Lock button to block any possible drawing over it, until
you unlock it. To rename, remove or duplicate any layer just click and
drag from it.
Besides simple drawings you can also work with pieces of text and images.
Go to Add Text Layer to add annotations by defining content, font, size,
style and color. Then you can move, rotate, scale and also distort it
directly. The piece of text has its own independent layer, so make sure
not to have it selected or you won't be able to draw at all.
You can also import images with File, Add Image..., moving and editing it if you
need. Also these images have their independent layer, with the difference
that you can draw inside and adjust the image appearance.
You can also go to Image, Adjust to make corrections on brightness,
contrast, hue, saturation and color balance.
SketchBook also includes advanced Transform tools. Select the correct
layer and enable Quick Transform to move, scale, rotate and distort it.
You can also enable any selection tool to move and extract parts of the
current layer from it. Pay attention that this action is permanent.
The Transform tool is very similar, but uses nodes around the layer
borders. You can switch to Distort to change its perspective, very good
for 3D-like drawings.
Now let's see how to save and export your drawings! Go to File, Save As..
to save your document in several formats. Choose .TIFF if you want to
reopen your work and save all its layers and structure and .JPG or .PNG
to rasterize all layers in an image, with .PNG saving any transparency
present.
With SketchBook you can also open a FlipBook to realize animations, going
from one canvas to another at a defined size between 720p and 1080p and
number of frames per second (fps).
Just like video frames you can draw on the canvas frame per frame, in
order to realize a complete animation. You can use all the drawing and
editing features seen, with the difference that you can fill up to four
layers, including the canvas background.
You can save these animations as .skba files - if you want to edit these
any time - or go to File, Export FlipBook... to export your animation
as a video or a .GIF file.
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