Hello everyone! My prior blog post called “How to Create Speedpaints in Ibis Paint X” has become quite popular, and many have asked for more tips on using Ibis Paint X. So today I’m going to tell you all about using Ibis Paint X. Just be aware that this article will not feature everything about the app, just everything I know!
Opening Ibis Paint X
When you open up the app you will see the homepage. It is mostly blue, with the Ibis Paint X logo, smaller text below the logo saying what version of the app you have, as well as 3 buttons and some artwork in a list known as “Daily Ranking”.
Gallery
The first button with a paintbrush symbol is “My Gallery”, tapping it will bring you to your gallery. The second brush with a star is “Collection”, it brings you to a screen similar to your gallery, but the collection is for artwork that was downloaded from the Ibis Paint X online gallery. Speaking of online gallery, that’s what the third button leads to! The online ranking connects to the online gallery. The online ranking shows the most popular artworks people have uploaded. I do not upload my artwork to the gallery, however that is an option is you’re interested.
In the top right corner of the home page there is a small button with a question mark, and a small button with a gear. The question mark brings you to a page that has a lot of tutorials for Ibis Paint X. The gear brings up a pop up for the settings. I usually leave my settings at their default options, so I don’t really change anything on that part.
When you first open up your gallery, it will look like this (unless you already have artwork in it of course). In the top left, there’s a back option, which will bring you back to the home page, and on the right, there are a few buttons. The plus sign brings up a menu where you can pick the size for a new drawing. I usually use “1:1” but you can use whatever you’d like. There is also a custom size option below all the default ones. You might need to scroll down in the menu to get to the custom option though. The button with an “i” inside a circle shows info for a drawing, however to show this and the other options you need a drawing in your gallery. To select a drawing in the gallery, you tap on it, and the drawing is zoomed into. The button with the “i” causes a pop up to appear that shows you the file size of the drawing, its storage, its creation date, and the last date it was edited. There is also some info that you can edit, such as the title of the drawing, the listed name of the author of the drawing, and description. I leave the ‘author’ bit as unknown, which is the default name. I do name my artwork, so I can keep track of each drawing. There is a “Movie Type” option that allows you to set the speedpaint to be with or without a window. It is set at ‘view fixation’ by default.
You can also upload your artwork for the world to see in the Ibis Paint X Online Gallery, or YouTube. However, I use a different method to upload my speedpaints to my YouTube channel because I usually combine multiple speedpaints and add music that I create in GarageBand. There is a gear button (a settings button) right next to the upload button, which allows you to pick where the speedpaint of the art will be uploaded and decide if you want push notifications about certain things, such as a notification about when the speedpaint (movie) is published, when someone likes the artwork, if someone comments on the page where the artwork was published, if someone comments on the artist’s page, and a news push notification. If you wanted to upload your artwork or a speedpaint to a particular social media platform, you’d have to sign in to that social media, so keep that in mind. The upload button posts your artwork to the Ibis Paint X online gallery. However you need to sign in to Ibis Paint X via either your Twitter or Facebook account to be able to upload to either of those.
When you tap the play button, a preview speedpaint of the drawing is shown to you. The button with an arrow sticking out of a box is the share button, and it allows you to save a speedpaint of your drawing, which I explained how to do in another article called “How to Create Speedpaints in Ibis Paint X”, so just click this link for that. The button with three dots causes a pop up to appear, that allows you to either delete or duplicate a drawing. When you tap select you go back to your main gallery, to select a different drawing. The edit option allows you to well, edit your drawing!
Transform and Translate
When editing your drawing there will be some options on screen. The transform tool causes a small popup to appear which allows you to move, rotate, or change the size of a layer, or a selected part of a drawing. The translate scale option allows you to change the size or rotate by pinching, and you can select whether you are changing size, rotating, or both.
Magic Wand
The magic wand is a selection tool based on colors, this one is most useful once you have colored your drawing, however it can be used any time. There are options in the magic wand tool such as “set”, “add” and “subtract”. The set option sets a selection, the add option adds to a current selection, and the subtract option subtracts from a selection. The default magic wand option is the add option. When using the magic wand tool, you have to tap and hold on a specific part of the drawing, and a magnifying glass sort of thing will appear. Once you let go, a selection based off of where you tapped and held will be made. It’s a similar story if you want to subtract from a selection or set a selection, you just have to select that specific option before you tap, hold, and let go. There are also options for inverting the selection area, and removing the selection. The invert selection area option looks like two squares with circles in them with arrows pointing towards each square. The squares’ colors are inverted from each other. One square is white with a black circle, the other is black with a white circle.
Lasso
The lasso tool is similar to a tool of the same name in other programs such as GIMP, or Photoshop. It lets you free select a part of the drawing. There are options for the lasso tool in a small popup that appear when the tool is selected. Once you select a part of the drawing, you can move it around, change its size, and more. To remove the selection you have to go to the very top layer (the selection layer), and tap the first option on the right, which clears the selection. HOWEVER, when a layer that isn’t the selection layer is chosen, that button CLEARS the layer, so be careful!
Filter
The filter tool allows you to customize your drawing with cool filters, just be aware that some of the filter options need to be accessed by watching an advertisement, or making an in-app purchase (this costs money). So, be careful with this tool, if you don’t want to spend money on the program.
Brush
The brush tool is the main drawing tool for Ibis Paint X. As with the filter tool, some brushes can be unlocked by watching an ad, or paying money. I usually use the default selected brush “Dip Pen (Hard)” though.
Eraser
The eraser tool is used for well, erasing! You can erase things from the layer you have selected with the tool.
Smudge and Blur
The smudge and blur tool (which are below the eraser tool), are used for smudging and blueing respectively, to create neat effects. The brush, eraser, smudge, and blur tools all have their own ‘brush’ options. However, some must be unlocked by watching videos, or paying money. I usually use the default brush options for all of them.
Bucket
The bucket tool (which is below the blur tool) is used to fill in areas quickly, and it doesn’t matter what layer you are on. You can fill in an area that’s many layers away from your selected layer. Just be aware that small gaps in line art may not automatically be filled by the bucket tool, so you may need to zoom into the drawing (by pinching) to check, and use the paintbrush tool to fill in those spots.
Text
The text tool allows you to add text, color it, and give it a background. When you have the tool selected, you tap where you want to add text. Then a popup appears in the corner of the screen with a text box, and some options. The text box is where you type the text you want to add. You can make the text in different positions using buttons below the text box. There are also things you can change such as text size, style, background, spacing, and more. You can even rotate and change the size of the text box by using a couple of buttons near it. In the size option you can change the size of text, with a minimum of 1, and a maximum of 2000. I usually leave it at the default of 40 when I do text, unless I need to make it bigger or smaller as needed. In style you can color the text, and add a stroke for the text, and make it a different color than the text itself. The stroke can be from 1 to 30 in terms of size.
Frame Divider
The Frame Divider tool is used to make frames such as if you are making a comic, or just to add a little detail to your artwork, like if you are drawing a picture frame, and can’t get that rectangle right. You have to tap anywhere on your artwork with the tool selected, and a small “add frame” pop-up will appear. Tap it and the frame adding menu will appear. The default color for the frame you make with the Frame Divider tool is black. However, you can change the color by tapping the square and picking a color from your saved colors, the color wheel, or an HSB/RBG menu. You can change the horizontal space, vertical space and frame thickness for the frame. The red X cancels adding the frame, and the green check confirms it and adds the frame. The horizontal space and vertical space have a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 350. However the higher you go, the less space there is in the frame, so be careful. The default frame thickness is 2, and the frame thickness can go from a minimum of 1, to a maximum of 30. After making the frame, you can change it further by tapping “select” in a small pop-up in the bottom right corner that appears. From there you can change the shape of the frame as needed by tapping one of the red circles that appears on the frame, and moving your finger to get the frame how you want. You can edit the frame as much as you like, however many red circles you need to tap to do so. Though you can only do one red circle at a time.
Eye Dropper
The eye dropper tool allows you to pick and grab a color that is already used in the artwork. You tap and hold for the picker to appear with the tool selected, and drag your finger or pen over the color you want to select.
Canvas
The Canvas tool allows you to change the canvas size, trim something on the canvas, resize something on the canvas, rotate to the left, rotate to the right, invert the canvas horizontally, or invert it vertically. The invert canvas options invert the entire canvas as if it was reflected by a mirror.
Settings
The Settings tool isn’t really a tool, but it allows you to toggle and change different things in terms of settings. I usually leave the default settings.
Color Palette
There is a color palette, though you cannot save separate palettes like in Procreate, but you can save specific colors so you do not have to eyeball them. I have trouble eyeballing colors, so I save the colors as needed. There is also a color wheel you can get colors from as needed. You access the color wheel and color saver by tapping the box on the bottom with your current selected color (this is usually black by default).
Layers
When you have your layers open (it’s accessed by a button which looks like pages, and a number, said number being the number of your selected layer), you will see some options on the right. The first option at the top is the clear layer option. When you have the selection layer selected it changes to clear selection. Be careful when you have a layer selected, or you might accidentally clear a layer. The second option inverts the colors of a layer. The invert layer colors option looks similar in appearance to the invert selection area option in the magic wand tool. The third option allows you to move everything on the selected layer. The fourth option horizontally flips the layer, and the fifth option vertically flips the layer. The sixth option merges the selected layer with the layer below it (it merges the selected layer down). The seventh option allows you to trash or delete a layer. The option labeled “…” allows you to do a few different things such as save the layer as a PNG with a transparent background (labeled Save Layer as Transparent PNG), rename the layer, and other things.
When the eye on each layer bar in the layer list is tapped, the layer you have selected becomes invisible. Tapping the outline of the eye makes the layer visible again.
There are also some options at the bottom left of the layer list. The first option (a plus sign) adds another layer when you tap it, the next option allows you to duplicate a layer, or add a layer from the canvas (meaning add a layer which looks like whatever is visible on the canvas). The next option allows you to import a picture from your camera roll as a new layer on the canvas. The next option is invert canvas horizontally, then the last option is invert canvas vertically, these options were seen earlier in the canvas tool.
Other/My Personal Tips
When I draw, I draw each part individually in a separate layer (sometimes combining if necessary) and merge them after I catch all errors and fix them. I usually color in a separate layer or layers so my line art is not messed up, and I merge almost all the layers when I know I am finished. I do not merge the subject layer with the background layer, just in case I want to change either by themselves at any point.
There you have it! That’s pretty much everything I know about using Ibis Paint X! Enjoy drawing and painting, and I’ll ‘see’ you again in our virtual art world very soon!