Drawing a frame from scratch
Where you would normally add a picture, press Draw a frame instead. This is the tool for a frame that starts empty. To mark up a photograph you already have, see Annotating a frame.
The pencils
- HB pencil, the everyday one. Takes pressure well and rubs out cleanly.
- 2B soft, darker and broader, for weight, shadow and the lines that matter.
- Charcoal, for blocking in a shape rather than describing an edge.
- Ink liner, an even line that does not vary with how hard you press.
- Rubber, which is the same engine pointed at the paper colour.
Ink strength is separate from the pencil, so the same 2B can be a whisper or a statement.
A stylus gives you pressure. A mouse gets something else
With an Apple Pencil or any pen-type stylus, real pressure drives both the width of the stroke and how dark it lands, which is what makes a line look drawn rather than printed.
A mouse and a fingertip report no pressure at all, so speed stands in for it: move quickly and the line thins, slow down and it presses. It is not the same thing, and it is a great deal better than a uniform line.
If you are drawing with a stylus, resting your hand on the screen is fine. Once a pen has been seen, touch stops drawing and is used for panning and zooming instead.
Coming back to a drawing
A drawn frame is not flattened away. Open the shot and press Edit drawing… to reopen it in the pencil tool with every stroke still separate, so you can rub out one line from last week without redrawing the frame.
That is the difference between the two tools worth remembering: Annotate flattens marks onto a copy of a photograph, and Draw keeps the drawing editable for as long as the board exists.