Although the interface of Sketchbook Pro is very visual, there are certain functions that can only be accessed through the text menu. These include the preferences of the program, changing the size of the image, mirroring and flipping the canvas, and basic adjustments (changing the Brightness/Contrast or Hue/Saturation). If you can't find an option in the visual menus, it's probably here! Y is for Your Own Brush Palettes

You may know about Blending Options from Photoshop—they allow you to change the physical properties of a layer. For example, the Multiply mode works like a color filter—it makes the layer transparent, but darkening, so it's great for shading.I have 10+ years of experience in using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, both for graphic design and for creating unique works of art as well. I hold a degree in graphic design, but nowadays I work as a freelance illustrator and a tutorial author. I specialize in creating realistic art, especially of animals, and I'm good at designing imaginary creatures in a realistic way. I'm a big fan of dragons and feline creatures! In traditional art, you're limited to a single canvas, but digital art gives you more freedom in the form of layers. Layers allow you to draw certain elements separately, so that you can modify a part of the drawing even after it has been covered with something else. And if you're interested in digital art in general, you may also like our other tutorials on this subject:

If you haven’t heard, I’m teaching a new workshop called Sketchbooking Your Style where you’ll learn a step-by-step process for finding your own original art style by filling out a sketchbook. Livestreams will be held at alternating time slots to accommodate people in all time zones and replays will be available in the classroom after the event. Every year Liz chooses a few SketchingNow courses to go through with a group. Together we work through the lessons and keep each other motivated and inspired!

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In digital art, after you draw something, you can move it to a different place on the canvas, resize it, or rotate it. In Sketchbook Pro, you can do all of this with a single shortcut: V. If you're not using a screen tablet, sometimes it may be hard to keep your lines really smooth, as they would be on paper. Sketchbook Pro has three solutions for this problem: These guidelines are to ensure you don’t feel too precious about your Bad Sketchbook. It is not your Good Sketchbook. It is the place to be random, try risky things, or to just scribble furiously when you can’t do anything else that day. The Randomness settings allow you to make the brush strokes more organic by adding some unpredictability to them.

Even though it's possible to use Sketchbook Pro without a keyboard, if you feel you're more efficient with one, it's possible to assign a hotkey to most of the functions. Many of the hotkeys are identical to the ones you may know from Photoshop, but you're free to modify them any way you want! L is for Layers for Your Sketchbook Design If you have enrolled for the specific course previously, you can join any Live Version of that course for freeWhat's even better, you can use up to 16 axes of symmetry at the same time, creating a beautiful mandala even from the simplest strokes. Even if you think you can't draw, this mandala-creating function will help you unleash your creativity in a very relaxing and fun way. Just draw one line and see the magic happen! T is for the Toolbar for Your Sketchbook Drawing

The software comes with a great set of basic Sketchbook Pro brushes, but every artist has their own style and their own techniques. That's why Sketchbook Pro allows you to customize the brushes in four ways:

Need the perfect notebook to jot down ideas or sketch out concepts? Here are the top 10 sketchbook brands for designers.

It stares, daring us to make a mistake and that doesn’t feel good. Sometimes, a Good Sketchbook is too intimidating and that’s why we need a Bad Sketchbook to get our wiggly creative nerves out. A Bad Sketchbook doesn’t matter so it’s no pressure at all. It’s meant for your bad art. If you are making bad art in your Bad Sketchbook, you are doing it right! That's why in Sketchbook Pro you have an option to make the cursor invisible when the stroke is too small to show the outline of the brush shape. But if you'd rather not see the outline either, ever, then you can turn it off too! Just go to Edit > Preferences > Brush, and experiment with the settings to find the ones that work the best for you. It's another reason why you should opt for Sketchbook for drawing. This is how it looks in Photoshop... ... and how it looks in Sketchbook Pro J is for Jitter-Free Lines as You Draw in Sketchbook