Touchdraw - getting started

OK I'm going to start with a dead simple exercise - drawing up a nine-patch block.  Just follow me step by step.  For those of you who have missed earlier posts, I am doing this on the £6 Touchdraw app for iPad.

1.   Tap on New Drawing.

2.   On the top toolbar, tap on the i in a circle icon which the big arrow is pointing to.

3.   Click on Units and Rulers (which the big arrow is pointing to).

4.   Tap on Inches.  I start every drawing in inches although you can convert a drawing later on if you forget.

5.   I am going to make a square and fill it with colour.  On this app, you can only fill shapes with colour so for a nine patch, we need to draw nine squares.  Tap on the square rectangle icon on the side toolbar.

6.  Drag your finger across the screen to make a square or rectangle.  My arrow is somewhat redundantly pointing at the square I have drawn.

7.   Once your square or rectangle has appeared, drag any of the blue circles to make it bigger, smaller, shorter, longer.  I have made a 3" square.  My arrow is pointing at one of the corners with the blue dots.

7.   I am going to fill it with colour.  Click on the square so that the iPad knows you want to fill it with colour.  When it is selected, it will have dots on the corners as in the photo above.  If instead it has a blue line around it, this means that you can move it but not change its shape.  To revert to being able to change its shape, click on the spanner on the top toolbar and toggle Easy Drag Mode to "Off".

9.   So your square is selected and now you want to colour it in.  Tap on the fill colour icon on the left sidebar.

8.   Pick a colour from Wheel, List or Favourites and toggle the Fill to "On" in the top right hand corner.

9.   I now want to remove the block border from the square so I once again tap on it to select it and then tap on the border icon in the side toolbar.

10.   Now toggle the Stroke box to "Off".  In this box, there are plenty of other attributes you can play around with to change the lines around your shapes.

11.   So we have one square and now I want to make 8 more.  You can either draw eight more repeating what you did above or you can duplicate the one you've already made.  To do this, tap on the square you have made so that it is selected and then tap on the dialogue box at the bottom of the side toolbar. 

12.   Tap on "duplicate" and a new square will appear.

Repeat until you have 8 new squares. 

13.   Slide the new squares around with your finger to arrange them in a nine patch.  If they keep changing shape when you slide them around, toggle "Easy Drag Mode" to "on" (see step 7 above).

14.   If there is not enough room on your screen, put two fingers on your screen (or a finger and thumb) and slide them towards each other to zoom out a bit.  Or slide them sideways to slide the picture sideways if needed.  To return any page to its full size, think of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz clicking her heels together three times; tap three times on the screen and the picture will return to the centre of the screen, full size.  If your squares won't quite click together neatly, try zooming in a bit, more gridlines will appear and you should be able to make them line up perfectly.

15.   Now let's colour the nine patch in different colours.  I want to colour in four of the patches dark purple so I want to select them all in one go.  You can colour them in one by one by clicking on each one and picking a colour from the wheel, list or favourites from the fill box mentioned in step 9.  But to select more than one, touch and hold the side toolbar in the empty space below the letters and above the dialogue box.  It will change colour to red.  Leave your finger there and select the shapes you want to select.

You can select several shapes at once. 

I have now selected four of the squares and filled them with dark purple selected from the fill box in the same way I selected a colour for the first square.

16.   Ta Da you have a nine patch.  It's not much to look at by itself but by playing with "Select All" from the Dialogue Box, "Group" and "Duplicate", I can make a row of these boxes, duplicate the row to make a quilt of boxes and then add large rectangles which I put to the back of the drawing to add borders.  I'm not saying you all have to work out how to do all this at this stage but this paragraph might give you some ideas to go off and have a play and try to make something more with your nine patch.

17.   Next time, half square triangles.  And in the meantime, if you do make anything, I would love it if you would upload it to my Flickr group so I can see what you've made.  To do that, send it to photos using the little sending arrow icon on the right of the top toolbar then upload to Flickr using your favourite Flickr app.

18.   Please add questions as comments here and I will answer them or, if I can't, Jon from Touchdraw will help me to answer them.  And if any of you are already using this app and can see that I'm doing it the hard way, or have any great tips or would even like to guest post a tutorial, step right on up.