The canvas
Sketching and shapes
Draw on the canvas with real pressure, box things out with rectangles and lines, and hand a drawing to a model.
Sketch strokes carry pressure. The engine reads it off the pointer event, so a pen gives you a stroke that thins and swells the way a pen should, and a mouse gives you an even line without complaining about it. A fast gesture comes out tapered rather than as a polygon with visible corners. ## Drawing Pick the sketch tool from the bottom toolbar and draw. Strokes land on the canvas as objects, so they move, scale and delete like anything else. Two uses, and they want different habits: - **Marking up.** Draw over the top of an image to say what you mean. A circle round the wrong bit and an arrow are faster than a paragraph, and they land in the same place the work is. - **Drawing something new.** Start on empty canvas when a rough shape is the fastest way to explain a form you cannot describe. ## Shapes Three primitives: **rectangle**, **ellipse** and **line**. Drag one out from the bottom toolbar; a size pill follows the drag so you can hit a dimension. They are deliberately plain. Shapes here are for blocking out and pointing at, not for illustration, and anything more expressive is either a sketch stroke or a vector. :::tip[Shapes versus vectors] A rectangle is canvas furniture. A vector is artwork with editable paths that scales losslessly and can be exploded into parts. If it needs to end up in the deliverable, you want a [vector](/docs/using-plnty/what-you-can-make/vectors/). ::: ## Handing a drawing to a model A sketch is an input in its own right. **sketch** gives you a chalk board to draw on by hand, then drops the drawing on the canvas as a flat image. It runs in your browser with no model behind it, and the image it drops can go into another tool as a shape for that tool to follow.Sketch strokes carry pressure. The engine reads it off the pointer event, so a pen gives you a stroke that thins and swells the way a pen should, and a mouse gives you an even line without complaining about it.
A fast gesture comes out tapered rather than as a polygon with visible corners.
Drawing
Section titled “Drawing”Pick the sketch tool from the bottom toolbar and draw. Strokes land on the canvas as objects, so they move, scale and delete like anything else.
Two uses, and they want different habits:
- Marking up. Draw over the top of an image to say what you mean. A circle round the wrong bit and an arrow are faster than a paragraph, and they land in the same place the work is.
- Drawing something new. Start on empty canvas when a rough shape is the fastest way to explain a form you cannot describe.
Shapes
Section titled “Shapes”Three primitives: rectangle, ellipse and line. Drag one out from the bottom toolbar; a size pill follows the drag so you can hit a dimension.
They are deliberately plain. Shapes here are for blocking out and pointing at, not for illustration, and anything more expressive is either a sketch stroke or a vector.
Handing a drawing to a model
Section titled “Handing a drawing to a model”A sketch is an input in its own right. sketch gives you a chalk board to draw on by hand, then drops the drawing on the canvas as a flat image. It runs in your browser with no model behind it, and the image it drops can go into another tool as a shape for that tool to follow.