Blog post: 19 June 2025
Digital drawing en plein air
Since taking the digital drawing module in the Online Drawing Development course at the Royal Drawing School, I’ve been regularly using my iPad to draw en plein air from observation or to create digital collages in the studio transforming an existing traditional media image. Digital drawing is now a central pillar of my work and has opened up what seem like endless possibilities. I wanted to share my experiences of working digitally because I've benefitted enormously by making digital drawing part of my practice.
Drawing with an iPad as an immediate response from life has now been around for some time, but I'd never really taken drawing that way seriously despite being impressed by David Hockney's iPad drawings in Royal Academy shows. The idea that a digital drawing may exist purely for itself, not as a tool or instrument to make work easier to make, but as a thing in its own right was new to me and still feels relatively novel.
Armageddon at Dumfries House. Digitally drawing in the blinding sunshine of Dumfries House estate one morning, I could hardly see what I was doing and an umbrella was added to my kit.
Digital collage - in this case originally a charcoal study combined with a discarded en plein air study and further transformed with digital drawing.
Good morning Great Dixter. Panoramic digital drawing made in the summer of 2023
The physicality of working outside is immersive. A digital drawing is able to match this experience by being unlimited in scope, expanding and contracting as time and energy allows. Being in a place and letting the eye wander outside of the canvas is made creatively possible through longer panoramic drawings or digital canvases that can be extended into new shapes. Whilst mobile formats with their smaller and longer shapes may result in bolder design decisions or suggest unusual compositional arrangements.
Working across a broader range of colours and introducing new ones very quickly without having to mix paint is appealing, especially when drawing outside. Digital palettes can also be surprising and vibrant with the likelihood of creating a wet media mud bath also dramatically reduced.
Whilst Hockney legitimised drawing on an iPad I'm intrigued to understand what the great drawing practitioners of the past, like Bonnard, Seurat or Chagall would have done with an iPad? Or how experimental artists like Picasso, Ernst and Klee would have tackled the infinite possibilities of a digital workspace? It's fascinating to consider the historical impact of digital from within the discipline of drawing. This is not necessarily to challenge traditional practices or the history of art itself but rather to break some rules having recognised what has gone before.