Like so many out there, I’ve always wanted to try my hand at painting/drawing but never seemed to show enough talent as an illustrator to justify dedicating much effort, time, or expense toward it, to say nothing of the physical bulk of the media. I’ve put off Pencil figuring I’m too talentless to bother, but I still hope to someday just in case I prove myself wrong, 'cause I would love to be able to make beautiful compositions by hand. For years I’ve put off buying Procreate for the same reasons as well as wanting something more focused on accurate simulation of physical media, but the apps specializing in that never seemed very well presented even when their simulations are decent; I have window-shopped the following: ArtRage, Adobe Fresco, Paintstorm Studio, Art Studio Pro, Concepts, iPastels, Tayasui Sketches Pro
This week, though, I discovered Apple Design Award winner Art Set 4 recently re-written in Metal 2 and on the strength of its watercolor engine promos and its free demo’s stroke responsiveness with just my fingers I used gift card credit to buy it instead of Procreate but I’m beset by curiosity to see someone really stretch their legs with it using an Apple Pencil, yet I think largely due to Procreate’s sucking up so much oxygen in the iPad drawing space literally zero good expositions of Art Set 4’s capabilities exist out there on YouTube that I could find, and also because old versions of Art Set went dormant several years ago so awareness of 4 evidently hasn’t really filtered through into the community yet.
What do you think of Procreate’s brush engine from the perspective of close simulation of watercolors in particular and physical media in general, and if you can spare the $10 what do you think of Art Set 4 (or maybe you know someone, especially who could throw up a video of them using it with a Pencil—even just the free demo would be helpful)? The attached images are just my chicken-scratch with my finger in the demo using 1 brush at 1 size, but the results I thought were pretty noteworthy.