iPad color management

When working with drawing and painting applications on the iPad, I have noticed that the colors sometimes appear different when I transfer the files to my iMac– they look more saturated or the color balance is inaccurate. I noticed that the files don't contain embedded color profiles and I wondered if I had overlooked a setting within the app or the iPad itself.

With some research I found  a statement from an Adobe Ideas engineer verified what I had suspected- that the iPad doesn't support color management. Frank Stokes-Guinan states that:

iPad portrait of Debra Morgan from Dexter (Jennifer Carpenter)

 If you like this you may be interested in more of my iPad Art

iPad Portrait of Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad

Time lapse video of iPad portrait of Bryan Crantson being drawn. The finished portrait is below.

 

The preliminary drawing, focal points and compositional choices

I recently completed an iPad portrait of Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Debra Morgan on Dexter and I was somewhat disappointed with it. The finished portrait looked too stiff. I spent too much time on the details and I felt that the next portrait should be more expressionistic and fun.

Working from the general to the specific is a painting technique that I use where I start with the basic shapes and progressively refine the details as I go. Painting the general shapes quickly eliminates the white of the canvas and gives me something to react to. I can then make judgements about the proportions, colors and composition. If you watch the time lapse YouTube video, you'll notice that I make a major correction in the very beginning, where I actually move the drawing over to the right so that his head wouldn't be in the center of the frame. The first rule of composition is to avoid centering the subject matter, because that's boring!