Xara has a pressure sensitive brush - if you do lineart in the traditional brushwork way then the equivalent in a digital sense is to use pressure as you draw to get the line right first time [as you would with sable] and if its not quite right to either add another stroke to 'build it up' or add another stroke to remove part of it [ie erasing: ideally by just flipping the tablet pen to change mode] - you build up a rhythm it is very important to keep the momentum going - and notice this is all done by stroking as it would be with a traditional brush/eraser
There have been many suggestions to mimic an eraser in xara, but all that I have seen including a couple here: http://www.xara-users.info/board/vie...589f52f#p23978 seem to miss this point because they rely on switching to boolean which, as was said in another context a day or so ago, is like driving down the motorway [freeway] and suddenly hitiing a speed bump - it breaks rhythm. Either that or you simply leave the 'masking' strokes in - but that only works at all if you can define a mask colour relative to a background, and in any case it is adding a whole load of spurious objects in the drawing which you then have to tidy up afterwards and that can get really really complicated [edit and you still have to change colour - which breaks rhythm]
having said all that xara's pressure sensitive brush is a one-trick pony - the live drag makes it now useable, but unless it gets at least as configurable as the illustrator brush set, its hard to see it being used by true brush artists - I was very pleased to see it appear, but I have a nasty feeling that it's as far as it is going to go; if push comes to shove enhancing the brush would currently be a higher priority for me than an eraser, which would only be used occasionally in this context by good brush artists
so Angelize your other suggestion about stroke shapes would get priority vote from me [and I've said plenty about that in the past as well], but both would be nice of course
as a final point have a look here: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...766#post426766 - inking that took me around 30 mins in SAI [raster app] total number of erases around 10 - and excellent practice in using the tool[s] BTW
can anyone tell me how long it would take with the xara shape tool and 'eraser' functions?
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