Drawing

Drawing is the core feature of T-Sketch — a unified drawing system with over 60 brushes across three engines. Press D to switch to Drawing mode.

Three Brush Engines

Every stroke uses one of three rendering engines based on the selected brush. All brushes appear in a single grid — no need to switch sub-modes.

1. Ink Brushes

About 40 resolution-independent brushes rendered as triangle meshes via a C++ vector engine compiled to WASM. Strokes stay crisp at any zoom level.

Writing & Pens — Marker, Pressure Pen 1 & 2, Pen, Fine Liner, Highlighter
Pencils — Pencil 1, 2, and 3 (from light 2B to bold 8B)
Calligraphy — Calligraphy 1, 2, and 3 (Calligraphy 3 responds to stylus tilt)
Spray & Airbrush — Spray 1 (soft airspray), Spray 2 (scattered particles), Spray 3 (feathered splashes)
Art & Watercolor — Soft Brush, Watercolor Wash, Charcoal, Wet Paint
Line Patterns — Dashed, Dotted, Arrowhead, Dash-Dot, Crosses (some with animated variants)
Stroke Effects — Taper, Fade Tail, Gradient Stroke, Pastel Pressure, Glitter
Decorative — Ribbon, Flag Banner, Graffiti, Groovy, Holiday Lights, Lace, Music, Shadow, Twisted Yarn

2. Animated Vector Effects

16 animated effect types. Most support color customization; Fire uses an internal gradient.

Helix, Fire, Smoke, Comet, Electric, Bubbles
Neon, Stars, Shatter, Fluid, Plasma, Pixelate
Rainbow, Ripple, Blood, Fireworks

3. Raster Brushes

8 texture-based brushes powered by the brushlib (MyPaint) engine. These produce bitmap strokes with natural media textures.

Watercolor — Watercolor Expressive, Large Watercolor Fringe
Texture — Smudge, Pointillism 1 & 2, Impressionism
Nature — Short Grass, Long Grass

Controls

Ink and Vector Brushes

Size — adjustable within per-brush min/max range
Opacity — whole-stroke transparency (0 to 1)
Color — 12-slot palette with inline editing (see Color Management)

Raster Brushes

Radius — logarithmic brush radius
Base Opacity — per-dab opacity
Hardness — edge softness (0 = soft, 1 = hard)
Opacity — whole-stroke transparency
Color — same 12-slot palette

Constraint Modes

A dropdown in the panel header lets you snap strokes to fixed angles:

Freehand — no constraint (default)
90° — horizontal and vertical lines
60° — 60-degree increments (isometric grids)
45° — 45-degree increments

Manage Brushes

The Manage button below the brush grid opens the Manage Brushes dialog. You can show or hide individual brushes to customize which ones appear in the grid, and restore defaults at any time.

Keyboard Shortcuts

D — switch to Drawing mode
[ / ] — decrease / increase brush size
1 through 7 — select palette colors 1–7

Magic Stroke

Hold the pen or mouse still for 1 second at the end of a stroke. A pulsing ring appears, followed by a context menu with conversion options:

Ink and Vector strokes — Rectangle, Circle, Triangle, Line, Arrow, Text, Symbol, Image
Raster strokes — Text, Symbol, Image (shapes and lines are not available for raster)

Select an option to convert the stroke into that object type. Press Esc or click outside to cancel.

Vector Only Mode

When zoomed out significantly, raster brushes are disabled automatically and a badge appears. At very low zoom levels, only vector effects and ink brushes are available. This keeps strokes crisp at any zoom.

Per-Brush Settings

Each brush remembers its own size, opacity, and selected color independently. Switching between brushes restores the last-used settings for that brush, including raster-specific settings (radius, hardness, base opacity).

Pressure & Tilt

Pressure-sensitive brushes respond to stylus pressure for stroke width and opacity variation. Calligraphy 3 additionally responds to stylus tilt angle. Pressure Pen 2 works with finger and mouse input by using a default medium weight when no pressure is reported.

Color Management — palettes, Copic colors, and eyedropper
Scene — navigate and manage the scene
Selection — select and edit objects
Shapes — create shapes with the same brush engines