Drawing and sketching apps for iPad

After nearly six months of using the iPad as a sketching machine, I’ve settled on my favorite sketching app.

I’ve tried every single one I could get my hands on, probably close to a dozen of the most popular ones (Everything from Adobe, Linea, anything from Autodesk, anything that shows up in the App Store with the word sketch, and anything I could find from searching for drawing app reviews).

In the end the one that won was the simplest. Paper from FifyThree just works for me. It only has a few drawing tools, and it’s surprising robust for appearing to have so few options. Here’s a few things I like about it:

  • Constraint in pen sizes – I’m forced to choose from a thick marker or a thin pen for my lines. And that’s it. I can’t change the opacity or thickness of the pen tool, so I’ve learned to work with it. In fact, I’ve used it so much that I know exactly what’s going to come out of the pen line. At first I thought it’d be too constricting and I tried a bunch of other apps. But at the end of the day the constraints won.
  • Simple copy and paste – Thanks to a new update, and signing up as a patron, it now supports copy and paste. Yay!

I also love the watercolor brush, fill tool and scissors.

At the end of the day I’ve grown very fond of the app, and consider it the best for what I do every day, which is sketching and wireframes. Here’s a quick sketchnote I did a few months back.