YOU CAN TEACH OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS

I have been wanting to share this news for some time.
Over the past 6 months I have been working on creating my own App.
It has been a HUGE learning curve to say the least. But I think I can safely say that

 Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks......

The App icon 

The App will teach people to draw....I do believe that EVERYONE CAN DRAW. With this in mind I will show people how they can draw ANYTHING.

Like I said in my past couple of posts...I'm now into telling the story...so let me tell the

 STORY OF THE APP

Last year I was commissioned to do a drawing, I was having some trouble 'getting it right' it was a rather unusual view point for this particular subject. My husband was being used as a critic. I would do a bit of the drawing then show it to him and ask if it looked right...sometimes an artist needs someone to look at things with fresh eyes. Each time I showed him he would say it wasn't quite right. It was actually a drawing of a horse and having been round horses all my life, I know that the horse has to be right because people know their horses like they know their children.

But for the life of me I couldn't master it. I eventually decided to use the old try ed and true method of the grid pattern. For those that don't know this method it is where the artist draws up a grid on to the paper and the same sized grid on to the image they are trying to draw. Then they just copy each square of the image on to drawing their paper.

When I showed this to the husband he had never seen this method used by me before and was a little intrigued.

Some time later he said to me ..You should do an App that shows people how to draw using the grid method. My first reaction was

 ...A What??

I only had a vague idea what an App was...well that's probably not quite true ...I actually had no idea what an app was.

I wondered how the husband knew what an App was ...considering he is almost unable to turn on a computer let alone operate one!!
But he listens to the radio a lot when he is working and he had heard someone talking about Apps and I suppose the idea came to him. Of course because of this, if the App is a success he will take ALL the credit!! :)

After some convincing I thought well it can't be that hard.

Lets just say ....it has been hard.....maybe if I had any idea what an app was before I started......

For anyone out there thinking about doing this.....the first requirement is to EDUCATE yourself ....don't just drive in at the deep end like I did.

I spent weeks trying to work out how to actually teach people how to do this....at the same time I didn't have a huge budget so it all had to be very simple for the developers.... meaning the internal workings of the app had to not have too many bells and whistles ....I think I went through a couple of sketch books drawing up ideas. In hind site I should have trawled the App store and found a prototype app that I could use to base the operation of my app on.

SIMPLE

...then I could have said to the App developers...here's what I want my app to look like .....just make me the same type as this.

Instead I eventually worked out how to do the 'lessons' and then Goggled App Developers. Told them what I wanted to do...or should I say Tryed to explain what I wanted......

Right here was where the real problems started......It was like speaking to a person from another country who has never even heard ENGLISH before.....don't get me wrong it was the same for them as it was for me...

We eventually came to an agreement on both design and budget and they started building the 'frame work' and I went back to drawing up my 'lessons'

I might add at this point that I am NOT very good with computers....in fact I think the Developers couldn't quite believe just how useless I was. After a while they started to talk to me in a very slow way ...like you would a child. I wasn't offended by this ...it actually helped me to take in what they were trying to explain.

An example from one of the pages of a lesson on drawing this Giraffe.

Now because of my computer skills or lack of... I did the lessons in a very basic way...
I would start a lesson and each stage of the lesson...or progression of the drawing I would explain what I had just done by writing on a strip of paper then placing the paper on to the drawing, I would then take a photo with my ipad.

Very labour intensive indeed.

When this was all finished I realised that the concept was good but I needed the overall App to look professional. I know that this was quite beyond me. At this point I came to a stand still, the producers offered to do some 'graphic desigh' but after seeing their efforts I realised I needed more...I needed a person who understood what I was doing ...a person who believed in it and who was really creative...after all this was an Artists App so it needed to look ARTY.

By sheer luck or just being in the right place at the right time...I found my man!!

I had gone to the Mac Choice shop for some training, the tutor and I got to talking and she mentioned her husband was into graphic design and was also a photographer amongst other things. He sounded perfect....so we got together, he loved what I was doing and in no time saw what was need and got to work. Grateful doesn't even start to explain how I felt. Looking back I probably would have given the whole thing away if he hadn't shown up.


He has also become the go-between man with the App producers, which has been a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders.

So as I write all is coming together just as it should. Hopefully with all the little bits and pieces that Aaron has suggested to make the whole thing sing, we will end up with a very beneficial and pleasure giving App that will help lots and lots of people get back in touch with their creative side!!

Until next time