1st Sketch

[jclements]

Okay Ross ("The Relentless One"), I tried droodling!

Your comment on Master Kleg's picture about drawing lines all at once and then changing their properities or changing line properties as you go, got me going.

Here's what I ran into:

The crosshatching seemed hardest ... I think by increasing the snap-radius it may prove easier to pickup the pen from the pad and start a new line.

Drawing squiggly lines without picking up off the tablet seemed easiest.

I fumbled with going back spontaineously and "reusing" a line style I liked. Keeping the color editor open and using its eyedropper is a must to changing colors rapidly as you scribble. Unfortunately, there is no eyedropper to change the default line and stroke (XARA folks, that would be a nice enhancement to the line gallery). But I did find a work around ... select an existing line, ctrl+C, click on a blank space to deselect (or press ESC), ctrl+shft+A, reselect the Freehand Tool, and then continued scribbling with an existing "line style". I imagine if practiced you could switch between colors and strokes pretty fast (if you're coordinated).

I put the blacklines on one layer first. Then created a new layer behind the first. Then, on this back layer I started "painting" color with a wide line width.

The image isn't anything special, but by quickly drawing squigglies promotes luckey results. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[jclements]

Okay Ross ("The Relentless One"), I tried droodling!

Your comment on Master Kleg's picture about drawing lines all at once and then changing their properities or changing line properties as you go, got me going.

Here's what I ran into:

The crosshatching seemed hardest ... I think by increasing the snap-radius it may prove easier to pickup the pen from the pad and start a new line.

Drawing squiggly lines without picking up off the tablet seemed easiest.

I fumbled with going back spontaineously and "reusing" a line style I liked. Keeping the color editor open and using its eyedropper is a must to changing colors rapidly as you scribble. Unfortunately, there is no eyedropper to change the default line and stroke (XARA folks, that would be a nice enhancement to the line gallery). But I did find a work around ... select an existing line, ctrl+C, click on a blank space to deselect (or press ESC), ctrl+shft+A, reselect the Freehand Tool, and then continued scribbling with an existing "line style". I imagine if practiced you could switch between colors and strokes pretty fast (if you're coordinated).

I put the blacklines on one layer first. Then created a new layer behind the first. Then, on this back layer I started "painting" color with a wide line width.

The image isn't anything special, but by quickly drawing squigglies promotes luckey results. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[jclements]

One other "misfeature" of Xara which got in the way of sketching was that the Line Width pull-down in the Standard Toolbar would always changing the default line color back to black. Very annoying.

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img] XARA folks, wouldn't it be better to keep the existing line color when the "Give New Objects Most Recent Attributes" option is checked ????? If not, could you come up with a new option ??

[jens g.r. benthien]

John,

for the first time? Seems like you have trained it before with pencil and paper ! It's a great one.

jens

[Ross Macintosh]

I'm with Jens! That's a great sketch. I like the nose!

With regards to having a more natural feel I would think you'd want to turn off all snapping. One of the little things I find slightly frustrating about sketching in xara is that if your line returns and ends at its start - the line becomes a shape. I don't think there is any way to get xara not to do that...

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Ross Macintosh]

The whole implimentation of the pressure profile pulldown seems to need some work. I get frustrated that your pulldown choice doesn't seem to stick. The first one you pick keeps returning. I always work with the general option of new objects having most recent attributes. It doesn't seem to work well with the litte pulldown.

A workaround I think I'll try to develop is to have a sample line of each colour and profile you want to use across the top of your page. I will make for myself a sort of "pencil box" as a seperate file - I'll then just copy that "box" into any page where I want to sketch. To select a virtual pencil from the box, you have to copy the desired style to the clipboard and then apply it with ctrl+shift+a to another line. The attributes will then remain for subsequent lines drawn - until something is changed.

Of course all this stuff shouldn't be necessary. Xara Ltd. should look at having the pressure profiles pulldown behave in a more intuitive manner. I'm sure the fine folks at Xara like to have us sketching. Maybe the'll give a little attention to making it easier.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Steve Newport]

About the lines turning into shapes whenever the end comes in contact with the beggening. I'm not quite sure exactly if I'm on the same page as you, I don't have XaraX yet so you could be talking about something completely different, but if you don't want to make it a filled shape whenever the beggening and end meet, just make sure the general color of a new object is transparent.

Steve Newport

[Clements]

Ross, yes good idea about the "pencil box". It would be kind of neat if Xara allowed you to create a custom "User Gallery". If for example, you had your pencil box of various line widths, colors, and nibs in such a gallery, then the pencil box would be like a floating window which could be moved to the area of the page where you are drawing thereby eliminating the need of constantly moving to a fixed place on the page to "retrieve" properties from a "pencil" object.

Steve, I think what Ross was eluding to is that when sketching lines quickly and freely there may be no need create closed objects.

I found that when drawing crosshatch lines in the Freehand mode (which are close together), I had to constantly press ESC each time after I lifted my pen from the tablet; otherwise, I might "reconnect" to the line I just finished ... also having the "twiddle" (tilde) symbol pop up at the tip of the cursor was distracting and cluttered my view.

WORK AROUND METHOD: [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_redface.gif[/img] I just discovered that if the ESC KEY is CONTINUOUSLY HELD DOWN while drawing with the Freehand tool, then lines wont accidentally reconnect and the twiddle symbol wont appear (this won't work, however, if the Ctrl or Alt key is simultaneously held down with the ESC key).

If Xara X had "Show node display" button in the Info Bar to toggle on and off, then the display during Freehand drawing would be uncluttered. Currently, after drawing a Freehand line its nodes are automatically displayed

[gwpriester]

John is no newcomer to art. He is too modest to post some of the elegant schematic drawings he does for a living.

They are quite terrific.

Maybe you could post one or two of those, John.

Especially in light of Steve's questions about perspective. Although your schematics are isometric they look pretty darn 3D to me.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...