With this workshop I’m going to provide you with an introduction to a small application from the Autodesk family, which is now in its second version. From my own experiences I know that SketchBook Pro can easily be introduced into your workflow to get down initial thoughts and/or present a completed image that can be taken further in other applications or stand alone. Bear in mind that it wasn’t designed as a competitor for the more established and complex programs – such as Photoshop or Painter, which have different priorities – but as a sketching tool. To benefit from SketchBook’s features, a graphics tablet is pretty essential, or if you’re made of money, a Cintiq is even better.

I had a degree of familiarity with the first SketchBook Pro, having used just the pencil sketching option for roughing out poses and thumbnails, so the chance to have a look at SketchBook Pro 2 was quite appealing. There were a few things about the first version that left me a little cold, so I was interested to see whether my problems were universal and how much SketchBook Pro had changed here. Well, my answer from my initial play is pretty positive. Here’s what I found out…