Tayasui Sketches

Review by eFreeware

Most drawing apps on Android give you a grid of brushes and leave the rest to you. Tayasui Sketches takes the opposite approach: its whole pitch rests on how the brushes behave, with strokes that shift in pressure, angle and width as you move. That single idea shapes everything else in the app, and it is the reason I would point anyone serious about sketching on a tablet toward it before most of the alternatives.

The app is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases. It has been installed more than 10 million times and holds a 3.7 average from 78,576 ratings, which tells me it has found a real audience while leaving some users less than delighted. If you draw regularly and want a tool set that feels closer to paper than to a menu, this is the category of app worth your attention.

A brush-first drawing environment

The core of Sketches is a catalog of more than 20 tools. There is a pen, a Rotring, a felt pen and a pen brush for line work, oil pastel and acrylic for heavier marks, an airbrush for soft gradients, and both dry and wet watercolor brushes. Rounding out the set are an area and filling tool, patterns, a text tool, an eraser, a cutter and a smudge tool. Shapes appear on the list too, though the developer marks those as iPad only, so Android users should not count on them.

What separates this from a basic sketching app is how the brushes are built. Each stroke is designed to react to the pressure you apply, the angle you hold the stylus at and the width of your movement, so a single brush can produce a range of marks without you switching tools. The wet watercolor brush is the one the developer promotes hardest, and it is the feature I would expect to decide the purchase for painters who work in washes.

The interface is described as minimalist and intuitive, which fits the brush-first philosophy. The developer's framing is that beautiful tools produce beautiful drawings, and that claim is doing a lot of work: no app draws for you, and a realistic brush still depends on the hand holding the stylus. What the app can reasonably promise is a set of tools that responds in a natural way, and that is the part worth judging for yourself.

Layers, photo import and building a picture

Layers are central to how Sketches handles anything beyond a quick study. You can stack them to keep a sketch, a color pass and details separate, which makes fixing a section far less painful than working flat. The developer lists layers twice in its own feature rundown, which suggests how much weight it puts on them, and for anyone coming from desktop software they will be the first thing to check.

Photo import lets you bring an image into a drawing, which is useful for working over a reference, tracing a composition or painting from a photograph. The color eyedropper samples a color from the canvas so you can match a tone without hunting through a palette. The Brushes Editor goes further, letting you adjust the tools themselves rather than accept them as shipped, which matters if you want a pen that behaves a specific way across a whole project.

Export and sharing options are described as advanced, so finished work can leave the app rather than staying locked inside it. Stylus support is included, and since much of the brush behavior depends on pressure and angle, a stylus is where this app makes the most sense. Drawing with a finger will work, but the responsiveness the developer emphasizes is built around a pen.

What the free download actually covers

Sketches is free to install and shows no ads, which is a welcome combination in a category where free versions often interrupt the canvas. The money side comes through in-app purchases: a subscription is available weekly or yearly, and a free trial is offered on selected plans only, so not every option will include one. Pro adds layers, extra tool options and more features.

That structure is worth understanding before you commit time to the app. Subscriptions renew automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and the charge lands within 24 hours of that end date. Canceling keeps access until the billing period finishes, but the developer states plainly that no refunds are given for the remaining time, and any unused trial time is forfeited when you subscribe.

I would treat the weekly option as the one to think about hardest. It suits a short, intense project, while the yearly plan makes more sense if drawing is a regular habit. Because the trial only applies to selected subscriptions, it is worth checking which plan you are choosing before you start.

Where the experience asks more of you

A 3.7 average across 78,576 ratings is a solid but not glowing figure, and it suggests the app lands well with some users and less well with others. On a brush-driven tool, expectations run high, and the gap between a realistic brush and a real one is exactly where disappointment tends to sit. The developer's language about the most beautiful brushes and the most realistic tools is marketing, and it is worth reading it as such.

The Pro layer is the other thing to weigh. Layers, tool variants and the wider feature set are part of the Pro options, so the free download is a starting point rather than the full studio. Anyone who wants the full Pro feature set over the long term should factor the yearly cost into the decision.

There is also a practical limit in the tool list itself. Shapes are marked as iPad only, so Android users get the rest of the catalog but not that one. It is a small omission in a set of more than 20 tools, though it is the kind of detail that matters if shapes were part of why you were looking.

Who this suits

Sketches is built for people who draw on a tablet and care about how the mark is made. If you sketch, paint in watercolor or work up illustrations from photographs, the combination of a broad brush set, layers, photo import and a brush editor covers the ground a hobbyist or a working illustrator needs. The stylus support and pressure-sensitive strokes point to the same audience.

It is also a reasonable fit for someone moving up from a very simple drawing app and wanting more control without a desktop workflow. The minimalist interface keeps the tool count from becoming a maze, and the eyedropper and layers are the sort of features that make longer pieces possible.

Where it asks more is on patience and budget. Anyone expecting the brushes to feel indistinguishable from real media should temper that expectation. The app rewards regular use and a stylus.

A brush-led pick for tablet artists

Tayasui Sketches stands out because of its brush engine. More than 20 tools, a wet watercolor brush the developer clearly believes in, layers, photo import, a brush editor and an eyedropper add up to a serious drawing environment, and the absence of ads in the free download keeps the canvas clear.

For a hobbyist or illustrator who draws on a tablet with a stylus and wants layered, pressure-sensitive work, this is a strong candidate. The weekly or yearly subscription is the real cost of entry for the Pro features, and the iPad-only shapes are a footnote Android users should know about. If drawing is a regular part of your week rather than an occasional experiment, the yearly plan and the brush set are likely to justify each other.

What's new in version 1.5.43

Bug fix and improvements 🎉