Online sketchpad

Why a sketchpad is different

A sketch isn’t a finished drawing. It’s fast, loose and disposable — you’re looking for a shape, testing an idea or warming up your hand. That calls for different settings from painting: a thin, light line that you can draw over, and no hesitation about using it.

This canvas opens with the pencil at 4px. The pencil is slightly translucent, so when you go back over a line it gets darker — exactly like graphite. Light passes for finding the shape, a firmer pass for the line you want to keep.

Three sketching exercises worth five minutes a day

1. GhostingPick two points. Hover the pointer between them a few times without drawing, then draw one fast line. Repeat ten times. It trains your hand to draw straight, confident lines.
2. EllipsesFill the page with ovals of different sizes, drawn in one motion each. Round shapes are behind nearly every subject — faces, animals, cups, wheels.
3. 30-second sketchesPick an object near you and give yourself 30 seconds to capture it. Then another. Speed stops you fiddling with details.

Sketching with a mouse or trackpad

Drawing with a mouse feels clumsy at first because you move your wrist, not your fingers. Lock your wrist and move from the elbow for long lines, keep strokes short and overlapping for curves, and lean on undo. The mouse vs finger drawing guide goes deeper, including what changes on a touchscreen.

From sketch to finished drawing

When a sketch is worth keeping, switch to the brush at a larger size and draw the final line over your pencil marks, then erase the construction lines. That’s the shape-first method every tutorial on this site uses. If you want subjects to practise on, the step-by-step tutorials start from exactly this kind of light sketch.