I like drawing (duh) and I like computers (really) and yet mixing the two up has been a slow, evolutionary process. From the Koala Pad of the Commodore 64 days to serial and USB mice and back to a drawing tablet in the form of the Wacom Bamboo, the mechanics of computer drawing has been almost as important as the software end of things. Almost.

Drawing software is, how do I say this? either much too simple or simply too complex. OK, you might not say it’s fair to compare Microsoft Paint with Adobe Illustrator but both apps do illustrate opposite ends of the spectrum.

Simple drawing software is always …lacking. Unless you’re an 8-bit artist (which is very cool) blocky, pixelated images aren’t going to flood your portfolio. Or the drawing options are circle and square primitives and a pen tool. Simple paint apps leave you wanting.

And as much as complex drawing tools give you nuanced controls over n-degree details, they always demand a steep learning curve. When I first began my Tee of the Week project, I was so new to Inkscape that I felt my later work with the program benefited from the six month duration of the project – just because I needed to learn all the nuances and controls available to me!

Anyways, a colleague put out a tweet asking what was the best, dead simple drawing program for the Mac and I quickly responded: Scribbles!

OK, Picture This

Scribbles, by Atebits, is a simple Mac application. Meaning there aren’t a zillion icons, pop-up menus, pull-down menus, property inspectors or settings panels. It’s simple in the control department.

But it supports three very important features which I’ll lay out for you:

1. It’s got layers, baby. Meaning: you can make different drawings on top of each other and composite them together into one drawing.
2. It’s got pressure sensitivity, man. Meaning: your drawing tablet will let you draw thick or thin solely based on how you draw with the stylus.
3. It’s got an infinite canvas, dude. Meaning: you can zoom in for miles and draw tiny little details in the speck of a grain of dust on a flea.

Here’s a look at the screen where you switch, add and remove layers:

Drop dead simple. No clutter, no tiny icons, every just works. Here’s the screen where you choose your brush-type:

Here’s a screenshot zoomed in. You can do this, they say, infinitely (I haven’t tested this, given the lack of available time).

Scribbles rightly deserves high praise: it doesn’t set out to be Illustrator or Inkscape but in the above three features (especially the unlimited canvas, not to mention price) it almost out-does them. A definite recommend, if you can expense the steep $19.95 USD price. Heh.

Scribbles system requirements: G4, G5 or Intel Mac. Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 CoreImage capable graphics card recommended (but not required) for full compatibility.

Scribbles is available from atebits.com for $19.95 USD. Free to download and try for as long as you want!

Tags: Mac, scribbles, software

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Using Technology to Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. | Permalink