How iPad Art Saved My Life
It may sound a bit dramatic but read on…
It was over a decade ago, 2012 to be precise when I was trying to exit a highly toxic and abusive situation in Los Angeles. My family helped make this happen in more ways than one. It was my birthday, and they gave me an iPad. My son had downloaded an art app called Paper that he thought might interest me. Not only did I successfully exit the abusive situation I was in, but my iPad helped me reset my life goals as an artist and get back to the profession that I left after leaving the UK.
Which brings me to why I am writing this blog.
I had given up on my career as an artist five years after leaving my art college in England. I wandered through many different careers, some creative and others not. But I hadn’t drawn anything until the point I picked up my new iPad.
Here I was facing this slippery glass screen with only my finger (the Apple Pencil was not yet on the market). It took me a whole day to create a rather wobbly-looking zebra. That was just the beginning. I was obsessed - working day and night drawing: animals, flowers, trees, people, whatever. I started to share my work on Tumblr (at that time it was pretty cool.)
Early iPad drawings from 2012
Next came an iPad Art group on Facebook through which I met my digital art business partner, Sumit Vishwakarma, and together we created the Mobile Art Academy. From 2013-2019 we held international exhibitions and workshops both in person and online, connecting up iPad artists from around the Globe.
Meantime I was teaching everywhere: schools, colleges, clubs, community centers, you name it. I even taught an on-campus group at Stanford University. I was willing to share the joy I experienced on my iPad with anyone aged 8 to 80.
At the start of my adventure, I attended an exhibition at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum, dedicated to showing the iPad art of David Hockney, one of the greatest living artists. I stood in front of the 10-foot tall prints of his iPad paintings of Yosemite - I was reconnected to an artist had fallen in love with way back in my days at Art College in the UK.
I knew I had come full circle, able to pick back up my career as an artist, which I did over ,the next few years with several solo exhibitions and my work selected to hang as a 6ft by 4ft print in the Google Bikes building. I had arrived.
But like many artists, five years later, I was ready to move on, which I did. But not before experiencing the healing power of art when I completed a series of 35 artworks on my iPad that helped me confront, relive and live through the abuse I had experienced and from which I escaped. I knew then I had to share this restorative experience with others.
I exhibited the series and felt strongly I was ready to return to working with more traditional media. That ultimately led to the writing of The Joy of Drawing A Beginner’s Manual by myself and a fellow artist and Brit, Katy Lea. Following this we co-founded The Joy of Drawing Inc, a non-profit located in San Francisco’s Bay Area. Katy has since returned to the UK but together we built up the company, offering drawing classes throughout libraries in San Mateo County and beyond as well as online and in-person classes and workshops.
Our mission reads: We believe in the transformative power of creativity to enrich lives and promote well-being. Drawing isn't just an art form - it's a path way to improved mental and emotional health - for everyone.
But, in spite of all this, my relationship with iPad Art did not end. Not only do I continue to teach it to those who have been with me for many years Bose work can be seen you can see in the digital section of the gallery on our website.
Nowadays, my iPad plays many roles in my life as a full-time artists, instructor, and the ED of The Joy of Drawing:
I use it to critique my own work and to try out things to see if they work. It is a back-and-forth thing.
I use it to critique the work of my students. They send me a photo of their artwork and I put it into the Procreate app and from there can discuss it and show some possible solutions to problems I see as existing.
I use it to create graphics for my website as well as creating promotional pieces and so forth.
I still use it for rapid figure drawing
I continue to use my iPhone to sketch anywhere and everywhere using the Procreate Pocket app.
There is only one thing that irks me about all of this: I have become so busy with the website, other classes and my own work that I simply do not havve the bandwidth to introduce others to drawing and painting on the iPad.
But that has now ended with the arrival of a 24-year-old dynamo, design student Cassia Gilbert who has become part of our close-knit team at The Joy of Drawing. She is not only talented, she’s a terrific teacher and I am proud to announce she will be hosting a 90-minute weekly class every Saturday from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm (Pacific Time) during which time she will be showing you how to use the Procreate Art App to draw, paint and collage. Here is a video replay of one of her recent iPad paintings of Golden Gate Bridge in the fog…
I really hope you will take the opportunity to join her. The class is hosted on our website. You can sign up by month or by week, and to whet your appetite your first class will be free using the code TRYUSOUT. Register by Week. Register by Month.
I will be blogging later in the summer about David Hockney, and his influence on me in the 60s at Art school up until now. When I met back up with him in 2012 and saw his explorations with the iPad, I knew I made the right decision to take up drawing and painting on my iPad when naysayers were critical of it as “not real art” and other sillinesses.
However, ahead of that my next blog will cover the artist Richard Diebenkorn whose work I will be covering in my DIEBENKORN ONLINE workshop on Sunday, May 18 starting at 10:30 AM Pacific time. This is part of a LEARN FROM THE MASTERS series that I have been giving for the past few years, both online and in-person, covering many different artists from Claude Monet to Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard, and onwards from there. I prefer “LEARN from” to “PAINT like” as I am interested in showing you the influences and what we know of the process of each artist so we can learn from them, be inspired and, as part of the workshops, copy one of their works to learn from that process.
So watch the space for my next blog.
Thank you for listening.