Tayasui Sketches: The Most Elegant Sketching App for iPad and iPhone

Tayasui Sketches is one of the most beautifully designed drawing and painting applications available for iPad and iPhone, offering a carefully curated set of natural media tools with an emphasis on simplicity, elegance, and the joy of making marks on a digital canvas. Developed by the French studio Tayasui, the application has been praised since its launch in 2012 for its exceptional design sensibility and for the quality of its natural media simulation, particularly its watercolour brush, which is widely regarded as one of the best watercolour simulations available on iOS.

The application's philosophy is one of deliberate restraint. Where many digital painting applications offer hundreds of brushes and dozens of settings, Tayasui Sketches offers a carefully selected set of tools that cover the most important natural media types without overwhelming the user with options. This restraint is not a limitation but a design choice that reflects a genuine understanding of what makes a drawing application enjoyable to use, and it has made Tayasui Sketches one of the most beloved sketching applications among artists who value simplicity and elegance over feature density.

The Tool Set

The watercolour brush is the centrepiece of the Tayasui Sketches tool set and the tool that has most clearly established the application's reputation. The watercolour simulation captures the characteristic flow and transparency of real watercolour, with paint that spreads and blends in ways that feel genuinely similar to working with real watercolour on paper. The brush responds to pressure and speed, producing thicker, more saturated strokes with more pressure and lighter, more transparent strokes with less, and the paint continues to spread slightly after the stroke is made, mimicking the way real watercolour continues to flow on wet paper.

The wet brush is a related tool that allows artists to blend and spread existing paint on the canvas, simulating the effect of a clean wet brush used to blend watercolour. The wet brush is particularly useful for softening edges and creating smooth tonal transitions, and it works in combination with the watercolour brush to produce effects that feel genuinely similar to working with real watercolour.

The pencil tool simulates the texture and pressure sensitivity of a real pencil, producing marks that have the characteristic grainy quality of pencil on paper. The pencil is well-suited to sketching and line work, and its pressure sensitivity allows artists to vary the weight of their lines in ways that feel natural and expressive.

The felt pen and marker tools simulate the flat, opaque quality of felt-tip pens and markers, producing clean, saturated marks that are well-suited to illustration and graphic work. These tools are particularly popular for urban sketching and journaling, where the clean, graphic quality of marker work is often preferred over the more painterly qualities of watercolour.

The Interface Design

The interface design of Tayasui Sketches is one of its most distinctive and celebrated characteristics. The interface is minimal and elegant, with tools and controls that appear only when needed and disappear when the artist is drawing, leaving the maximum amount of screen space for the canvas. The colour picker is particularly well-designed, providing access to a full range of colours through a simple, intuitive interface that does not interrupt the flow of drawing.

The canvas itself is designed to feel like a real piece of paper, with a subtle texture that gives marks a slightly organic quality and that makes the drawing experience feel more connected to traditional media than the perfectly smooth canvas of many digital painting applications. This textural quality is subtle but meaningful, contributing to the overall sense that Tayasui Sketches is designed to feel like a natural media drawing experience rather than a digital one.

Apple Pencil Integration

The Apple Pencil integration in Tayasui Sketches is excellent, with full pressure and tilt sensitivity that makes drawing with the Pencil feel natural and responsive. The application takes full advantage of the Apple Pencil's capabilities, with pressure sensitivity that affects both the opacity and the width of marks in ways that feel genuinely similar to working with real drawing tools.

The Apple Pencil integration is particularly effective with the watercolour brush, where pressure sensitivity affects the amount of paint deposited and the degree to which the paint spreads on the canvas. Light pressure produces transparent, flowing marks, while heavier pressure produces more saturated, opaque marks, mimicking the way that real watercolour responds to the pressure of the brush.

The Free and Pro Versions

The free version of Tayasui Sketches provides access to a selection of the most important tools, including the watercolour brush, pencil, and marker, along with a basic layer system. The free version is sufficient for casual sketching and for exploring the application's capabilities, and many users find that it meets their needs without requiring an upgrade.

The Pro upgrade at $4.99 provides access to the full tool set, including additional brushes and tools, an expanded layer system, and other features that are useful for more serious work. The Pro upgrade is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, making it an excellent value for artists who want access to the full capabilities of the application.

Who Uses Tayasui Sketches

Tayasui Sketches is used by a wide range of artists, from complete beginners who are exploring digital drawing for the first time through professional illustrators who use it for quick sketches and studies. The application's simplicity and elegance make it particularly popular with artists who want a drawing experience that feels natural and enjoyable rather than technical and complex.

Journalers and travel sketchers are among the most enthusiastic users of the application, appreciating its portability, its natural media simulation, and its simple interface that allows them to capture moments and places quickly without the complexity of more feature-rich applications. The watercolour brush is particularly popular for travel journaling, producing results that have the characteristic loose, expressive quality of traditional watercolour journaling.

The Bottom Line

Tayasui Sketches is one of the most beautifully designed and enjoyable drawing applications available for iPad and iPhone, offering a carefully curated set of natural media tools with an emphasis on simplicity, elegance, and the joy of making marks on a digital canvas. For artists who want a drawing experience that feels natural and enjoyable rather than technical and complex, and for watercolour enthusiasts who want the best watercolour simulation available on iOS, Tayasui Sketches is one of the most compelling and accessible options available.