Sketchbook

Review by eFreeware

The thing that stands out about Sketchbook is how much drawing machinery it puts on a phone or tablet. Pencils, markers, airbrushes and smear tools are all included, and the app is built around the idea that a sketch can turn into a finished piece without leaving the device. It has been on Google Play since October 2014, and the install count has passed 100 million, which tells you how widely it has been picked up.

The developer pitches it at two groups at once: hobbyists who draw for pleasure and illustrators who need professional-grade tools. That is a wide net, and the app's reputation rests on the same few ideas in both cases: a large brush set, tools that can be adjusted, and an interface that stays out of the way while you work.

What you get when you open a canvas

At its core, Sketchbook is a sketching, painting and drawing app. The developer describes it as useful for anything from a quick sketch to a fully finished artwork, which sets the ambition level: this is not a note-taking doodler, it is a workspace for people who care about how a line looks.

The brush library is the center of that. The range itself is the point: a hard pencil, a soft marker and a blending tool behave differently, and having all three in one app saves switching between them.

Brushes are also customizable, so you can adjust how a tool behaves rather than accepting a fixed set. For anyone who has settled into a particular way of shading or inking, that matters more than the raw number of brushes on offer.

Precision tools for cleaner linework

Guides, rulers and stroke tools are included for work that needs a steady hand or a straight edge. These are the features that separate a drawing app from a sketchpad: you can lay down a line that follows a rule instead of your wrist, which is useful for architectural studies, lettering, perspective grids and any drawing where a wobble would show.

The stroke tools suggest the app is thinking about how marks are made, not just what color they are. For someone drawing on a small screen, that kind of assistance is often the difference between a rough idea and something presentable.

None of this is unusual in a serious drawing app, but it is the part of the toolkit that hobbyists tend to underestimate. A ruler sounds dull until you are trying to draw a window frame or a horizon line.

Layers and blend modes for building up a drawing

You can work in layers, and a full set of blend modes is included. That combination is what lets you build a drawing in stages: a base sketch, then color, then highlights, each on its own layer and each interacting with the ones beneath in a different way.

Blend modes are the part that rewards experimentation. They change how one layer affects another, which is how you get glow, shadow and texture without repainting the whole image. The developer presents this as flexibility for exploring drawings and color, and that is a fair description of what layers are for.

For an illustrator coming from desktop software, layers are usually the first thing they check. Their presence here is what makes the app plausible as a main tool rather than a companion to one.

The interface and the cost of entry

The interface is built for sketching so you can focus on drawing. That is a design claim rather than a feature list, but it points at the right priority: a drawing app lives or dies on whether the controls stay out of the way of the canvas.

Sketchbook is free to download and carries no ads, which removes the usual interruptions from the drawing surface.

The other trade-off is inherent to the format. A phone screen is small for detailed work, and the app's precision tools are partly a response to that. Anyone expecting the same working area as a desktop setup will find the canvas constrained, which is a limit of the device rather than a fault in the app.

Who this fits

Sketchbook is built for people who draw regularly and want a complete toolkit rather than a single-purpose toy. Hobbyists who sketch for pleasure will find the brush range and layers more than enough, and the clean interface means there is not much to fight through before making a mark.

Illustrators and designers are the other obvious audience. The combination of customizable brushes, guides and rulers, and layers with blend modes covers the stages of a drawing from first line to final color, which is what a working artist needs from a mobile app.

The 4.1 average across more than 706,000 ratings suggests a broadly satisfied user base, though an average that size always hides a range of experiences. The app has also been updated recently with bug fixes and performance improvements, so it is not sitting still.

If you draw occasionally and mainly want to pass the time, the depth here may be more than you need. If you draw often and want the tools to keep up, this is the kind of app worth installing.

A full toolkit for people who draw often

Sketchbook earns a recommendation for anyone who draws on a phone or tablet and wants a serious set of tools without paying upfront. The brush library, customization, precision aids and layers with blend modes add up to an app that can handle a quick sketch and a finished illustration in the same place.

The caveats are modest but real. It is free with in-app purchases. The canvas is limited by the device you draw on, and the app's focus is drawing and painting rather than anything broader.

For hobbyists who sketch regularly and illustrators who want a capable mobile workspace, it is an easy install. For someone who draws once in a while, the depth may go unused, but there is little cost in trying it.

What's new

Bug fixes and performance improvements