Canvas drawing tools

Cards are not the only thing that goes on a canvas. Join two characters with an arrow and box the scenes that belong to Part 3 in a rectangle, and the skeleton of the story shows without moving a single card.

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Six tools

Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Arrow, Pen, and Text sit to the right of the divider in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. The R, O, L, A, P, and T keys pick them up directly. Pick a tool and a drawing layer covers the canvas so cards can no longer be grabbed, and an Esc to exit drawing hint appears above the toolbar. Draw a shape by dragging it to the size you want; for text, click once where you want it placed. After one shape you return to the select state, with the pen as the only exception — it keeps drawing. Esc is both how you back out of a half-drawn shape and how you leave drawing.

Pick a tool and drag to draw. Esc gets you out.

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Shape properties

Select exactly one of the things you drew and the shape properties panel appears over the canvas. Drag its header to move it, and use the chevron on the right for Collapse panel and Expand panel. Which entries appear depends on the shape you selected. Stroke color is eight swatches: the default plus seven colors. Sloppiness has three steps, running from a line as straight as one drawn with a ruler to a shaggy line that looks gone over twice. Line & arrow has three: a straight line, a gentle curve, and a line that turns at right angles. The first line or arrow you draw starts as a curve. Pick a color under Fill color and Fill pattern appears below it, offering hachure, cross-hatch, and solid; go back to No fill and it disappears.

The properties panel that appears when you select a single shape. You can drag it around and collapse it.

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Text and rotation

Double-click a rectangle, ellipse, line, or arrow and you write straight into it. A text shape takes input from the moment it is drawn. Top, Middle, and Bottom under Vertical decide where in the shape the text sits. Font size is in px. Type a number from 8 to 400 straight into the field, or press the chevron beside it and pick from a list running from 12 to 128. A text shape starts at 24px and text inside a shape at 16px, so for a chapter title that has to read from a distance, turn it up. The Font list holds App font and Handwriting, the fonts that come with the app, and the fonts you imported in settings. If you don’t pick a font for a shape, it follows Default draw text font under Canvas in settings, and if that is empty too, it uses the app font from the Appearance settings. To write all canvas text in a handwritten style, set the default font to Handwriting. A rotation handle sits above the selected shape. Drag it to turn the shape, and hold Shift while dragging to snap to 15° steps. On lines and arrows, drag the diamond handle in the middle to bow them, and drop it back near the middle to straighten them.

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Styles that carry over to the next shape

A value you change in the shape properties panel becomes the default for the next shape you draw. Turn an arrow into a red dashed line, for example, and the next arrow is drawn as a red dashed line too. Shapes you have already drawn don’t change. The values that carry over are Stroke color, Stroke width, Sloppiness, Fill color and Fill pattern, Stroke style and Line & arrow, and Font size and Align. Each shape takes only the values it uses, so fill applies only to rectangles and ellipses, and stroke style only to lines and arrows. When you select several items and change their color with Change color, that color carries over too as long as at least one drawn shape is among them. Font does not carry over; it follows the default font setting above. These defaults are saved on the device and survive restarting the app. There is no button to reset them, so to draw with the original look, pick Default for Stroke color and No fill for the fill yourself.