Can I use the iPad for Wood Carving patterns?

An iPad is what I use lately for my carving patterns. A change that used to cost hours with a razor blade is one tap on undo. When the drawing is done, it prints full size, one to one, ready to trace onto the board.

Have you ever redrawn an acanthus leaf because a client wanted it higher, and then again when they wanted it moved to the right? Is there a tablet somewhere in your house doing nothing? Then this trick is for you, and it works for small pieces too, though big ones are where it really pays, since getting a big idea onto the board is the hard part.

My iPad pattern method, start to finish

• Procreate on an iPad, though an Android tablet works too.
• A canvas set in real inches, as big as the job itself.
• 300 DPI, or 400 at the very most.
• The Peppermint pencil.
• A JPEG goes into SketchUp, gets scaled to the millimeter, and comes out as a PDF.
• A print shop prints it full size.
• Carbon paper for the first board, clear plastic for the board on the other side.

Why draw a carving pattern on an iPad at all?

On paper every change costs hours of redrawing. A few years back I would stretch a big sheet of paper and draw everything by hand. If the other side had to be the same, I flipped the sheet and drew the detail all over again, and that took me a long time. Lately I use technology, and some of you, not all of you, probably have an iPad already.

Say you have a huge project, 36 by 120 inches, 3 feet by 10 feet (about 91 by 305 cm), and you really don't want to pencil it on paper. Paper is a problem on a job like that, because the design keeps changing.

Let me tell you a story. Maybe ten years ago, maybe more, I had a project about 10 feet long and about 36 inches high, like a headboard. I don't even remember if iPads existed yet. Either way I used no technology at all, only a long piece of paper, and it took me about two weeks to develop every detail and every acanthus leaf on it.

When I sent it to the client, he said, "Would you change that acanthus leaf? I want it higher." Yes, I can. So I took a razor, erased everything I had spent hours and hours drawing, redrew it and sent it again.

Then he called back. "I like it, but I would like to move it toward the right." Okay, no problem, I'll redraw it. Back and forth, back and forth, like dancing.

That is normal, by the way, since I work with high end architects, and sometimes they just like to make changes. I call it the dancing stage. On paper that stage is a waste of time, and if you have no technology you have no other choice. With an iPad I change a leaf in a second, and if I don't like it I hit undo, or redo.

What I like is how easily the drawing gets to the board. I print a sheet of paper and transfer it, and that is no big deal at all. You can do the same on a computer, of course, or on any other device. Personally I really like the iPad, because it is so easy.

What was I drawing in this lesson?

A carved detail that goes on the walls of a room. The board is about two feet (61 cm) wide and an inch and a half (38 mm) thick, and the whole detail it belongs to runs about 10 feet (3 m) long. I divided the design into several parts, and this board is one of them. I marked the area for you on the iPad in a different color, so you can see where this board goes.

The original is not just a drawing, it is a real 3D model I created. Then the client asked me to add some details and expand the design. Building the 3D model again takes so long, and I did not want to do it, so I thought, why don't I just pull out the iPad and draw those details?

In the beginning my drawing did not have certain parts, so I had to add some stuff. The video shows the new leaves sketched right into the render. The piece I added first is the one going on this board, and later I will add another part. These same two videos are also workshop 104 of the Venice Room course, the series where I carve this room. Same video, so watch it in either place.

Which app do I use to draw carving patterns?

Procreate. Plenty of programs will do the job, but Procreate draws to scale, which is huge. You can print the drawing right to scale, at 1:1.

I keep a whole stack of drawings in it, ideas I developed along the way. It works in imperial and in metric, so you can draw in either one.

An Android tablet will work also. The steps below are the ones on the iPad, in Procreate.

Can a Procreate canvas match the real size of the job?

I don't want to mumble. Start from the plus button in the upper right corner, then tap the smaller plus right underneath it. Now look at the upper right of the new canvas. Mine was set to 1920 by 1080 pixels, which is a normal size for video.

DPI is next. 300 is actually pretty high for print, and you can go higher, to 400. I wouldn't go past 400 DPI.

On the left side you choose the system of units. I hit inches, typed 36 for the width and 120 for the height, and it said too large. Don't worry about it. I've done it, and it made the canvas anyway.

From there you get a big canvas with layers, and I just draw whatever I wish, whatever development I want. A smaller job needs a smaller canvas, of course. My list of canvases already had one at 36 by 48 inches (about 91 by 122 cm), and when I hit print, it prints 36 by 48. I hope it makes sense. I said on the video that I could show the whole process if you want more, maybe in a separate video.

Here is how the three ways I have drawn a job compare.

Which brush feels like a pencil?

Peppermint, in the sketching set, is the one I use. You don't have to stick with it, and you can adjust a brush however it feels best to you, but Peppermint just feels normal in my hand.

Where do you print a 10 foot carving pattern?

At a print shop, and it costs less than you think. This job never printed from the iPad itself. The drawing had to fit the board perfectly, to the millimeter, because everything has to be perfect once it goes up on the walls.

So I exported the drawing as a plain JPEG to my computer. Then I opened SketchUp, made a new project and scaled the picture to perfection, since hitting the right lines and the right distances really matters here. How that scaling works is its own lesson, SketchUp for wood carving, in this same course.

SketchUp saved it as a PDF. I took that to a FedEx store, and they printed the whole sheet, all ten feet of it. If you ask me how much I paid, I paid $27. That is a huge piece of paper, and it printed exactly what I drew on my iPad.

Before that I was thinking about buying a plotter, the big printer, so I could print those huge pieces myself. I really don't need it.

A UPS store, a FedEx or any other print shop near you does the same. Maybe it costs a little more in some places, and companies that print layouts for construction can probably be a little cheaper.

How do you get a printed pattern onto the wood?

Lay the print on the board, and I should not unroll the whole thing, but anyway. Trace it with carbon paper underneath. You could use graphite paper instead.

This job has two sides, so I need a second board with the same drawing on it. For that one I lay clear garden plastic over the print, redraw the lines on it, and transfer them to the other board, and then I keep that plastic. The whole transfer takes a few minutes instead of hours and hours of work.

After tracing, the board gets cut out with a jigsaw. I showed that before, so I won't show it again here.

If you are about to buy a jigsaw, buy a good one and not a cheap one. I tried Bosch, I tried DeWalt, I tried several other brands. For me the best was Festool, because it gives me an absolute 90 degrees.

What does the iPad drawing do once carving starts?

It stays close by while I carve. In Venice Room workshop 120, before digging into one section, I took my iPad and my drawing to check what I was planning there. I wanted to make sure I was not making any mistakes.

The same check in workshop 126 showed me a mistake I could make, at a spot that has to curl one way. Not a mistake yet. Still, it is a good idea to double-check, and I'm glad I did.

That drawing is also why I'm not afraid of losing details. One side in workshop 123 needed blending really smoothly, and that did not scare me, because I have the iPad drawing and can always recreate them. Then in workshop 130 I pulled the iPad, found my spot on the picture and got my pencil to put the lines back.

And the screen does not have to hold every detail. On one acanthus head in workshop 106 I drew only minimum details on my iPad and left the rest to develop right on the board.

Can a drawing on the screen be wrong?

A computer and an iPad sometimes don't represent real life, as I said in workshop 107, and then it makes sense to make some changes.

In workshop 92 a design I did on the computer looked okay on the screen, but in real life it was a little too small for the panel. I had a paper cutout, so I took a picture of it and sent it to myself by email. The beautiful thing on the iPad is the pinching. I measured how long a space I could fill and how wide the widest spot was, readjusted the drawing by pinching, and then used the old trick, a piece of plastic and a fine point blue Sharpie.

A freehand sketch on the iPad is still only a sketch. For the Venetian flowers rosette some of my drawings were done on the iPad, and the oval came out smooshed, not a true oval. For a better oval I use the most ancient way to draw, by hand and by eye.

I put it this way on the acanthus over moldings panel. We are carvers, not technical people. Well, we are technical people too, but we work with our hands, and on my iPad I also work with my hands.

Where are the drawing lessons?

Drawing has its own lessons in other courses of the school. How I draw a leaf on a grid is in Roman acanthus 1, and the laws behind a whole composition have a design course of their own.

In Roman acanthus 5 I call it a wonderful idea to print two drawings. Glue one on top of the wood, lay the other right beside it, and you can always reference those lines and recreate them.

I also draw on the iPad when I teach. In the Grinling Gibbons class in Maine I drew the logic of a leaf, a center line, three main divisions, then each division split in three again. On furniture panel 33 I drew a petal as a section cut, concave, then convex in the middle, then concave again.

All of those lessons, and every workshop of the Venice Room, are waiting inside the school.

What does this board turn into?

A wall. There are going to be two of these, one on each side, and then more pieces on the walls. One part becomes a door, and another part is also a door, with carving in it.

Really unique, really beautiful. An absolutely gorgeous project. I love it, I love it, I love it.

First I have to trace everything, maybe fix a few drawings, and then we start developing this part. More tips like this one live on the techniques course page.

I hope you like the idea, and I think it is a good tip. Is your next pattern bigger than your printer? Is the tablet charged?

Shall we carve?