'Drawings that come from the heart'

“I almost never used my spare time to draw, because I do it professionally,” says Alon Boroda, a professional illustrator and animator based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Boroda’s dilemma may sound familiar if you have a creative job. On the one hand, you get to do what you love at work. On the other hand, once you’re off work, sometimes the last thing you want to do is more of what you love.

Boroda designs virtual stickers and illustrations for Viber, an instant messaging app, for a living. But since getting a reMarkable Paper Pro, Boroda now stops at a local park on the way home from work to sit and draw. Not for a specific project or to meet a specific deadline. Just for the sake of art.

“reMarkable Paper Pro made me draw again — for fun, for myself, for the love of the creation,” Boroda says. “It’s drawings that come from the heart.”

Boroda’s story raises a question. What deeper level of creativity can we find within ourselves if we rediscover the joy of drawing, writing, playing music — or whatever form our creativity takes — for ourselves?

Technology that ‘tricks your brain’

Boroda has drawn all his life, and he’s particularly interested in digital art. In his search for the perfect sketchbook, he’s gone through Wacom tablets, iPads, Surface computers, reMarkable 2 — essentially “every imaginable device that you can put a pen to.”

He says reMarkable Paper Pro feels more like with pencil and paper than any other device he’s tried.

“It’s the closest I’ve ever got to feeling like I actually have a bunch of papers and markers — and that’s an amazing feeling,” Boroda says. “There's something about this technology that feels more natural, more real. It tricks your brain into feeling this isn’t a digital device.”

Inside an artist’s pencil case

Boroda’s cartoony drawings on reMarkable Paper Pro practically leap off the Canvas Color display. In one, a young child balances a teetering tower of ice cream scoops in a waffle cone. In another, three attendants shovel gemstones into the jaws of a portly dragon.

The key to these drawings is the shader, a writing tool introduced with the launch of reMarkable Paper Pro. Inspired by professional art markers, it can be layered and blended to add depth to sketches and visualizations.

“The shader tool is the tool that makes this tablet for me,” Boroda says. He compares the shader to working with watercolors, and muses about one day hosting an art show where each illustration would be displayed on a reMarkable Paper Pro.

Another important tool in Boroda’s pencil case is layers. He approaches drawing on reMarkable Paper Pro in the same way he would as if he were using physical writing tools and paper. After outlining with the pencil, he adds one or more layers of coloring using the shader and paintbrush, and then a layer of highlights.

‘Use it to doodle’

Paper tablets may best be known as devices you read and write on, but Boroda says reMarkable Paper Pro has unexplored potential as an art tool.

“There are so many illustrators out there — they don’t know what it can do,” he says.

And for everyone else, Boroda’s top reMarkable tip may not come as a shock:

“Even if you're a note-taker, use it to doodle,” he says. “You’ll be surprised.”