Tayasui Sketches Reviews

Not too long ago I discovered Tayasui Sketches, downloading it based on an App Store recommendation. Once I learned the interface and became familiar with the tools, I fell quite in love with TayasuiSketches. I even subscribed to the pro version. All was right with the world. Then version 23 was released, with “new features” such as the ability to backup your sketches to iCloud, and now Tayasui Sketches is useless on my 5th gen. iPad. TayasuiSketches won’t let me create and save a new drawing, or create a new folder. It won’t let me de-select the iCloud backup option. It crashes constantly. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, it did nothing. I reached out to Tayasui via twitter, they did nothing (no response after 6 days). Clearly there’s no tech support there. Plus, there’s no mention of any issues on Twitter or their web site. I finally gave up on TayasuiSketches today. I’m posting this review, deleting TayasuiSketches for good, and moving on to the competition: Autodesk Sketchbook, in case you were curious.

I never write reviews but believe this was very necessary. I have been using Sketches Pro for about 2 years. I liked it because it was simple and for the most part easy to use. There were little things that would come up that were annoying but nothing that big to get upset about until recently. Out of no where the program completely stop working. I cannot undo anything I just drew, it won’t save, it won’t duplicate files; the list goes on. I immediately reached out to their customer service in hopes that it was just me and not the program. I received a very generic, “I’m so sorry you are having difficulties, we will look into it immediately and will be fixing any problems you may be having shortly.” I responded with a request to speak to someone because I had work to finish and a deadline to meet. No response. It has been over a month and they not only not reached out but haven’t fixed ANY of the problems. This program flat out doesn’t work. I have moved on to PROCREATE and it is a much better program all around. My advice, don’t waste your time on Sketches Pro.

I bought the pro version of Sketches about four to five years ago. Sketches was my first digital drawing program other than Apple Notepad. I use it obsessively.

So why, then, am I rating it 2 stars?

Since I first got Sketches, it has progressively been getting worse and worse. Switching layers takes forever. Random lag. Random deletion of entire pictures. And the worst offender, the incessant crashing.

It crashes at startup. It crashes when opening drawings. It crashes when you switch layers. It crashes when you create layers. It crashes when you exacto. Occasionally, it will even crash if you drag the picture too fast! And if you don't save often, these crashes can delete tons of progress!

With the newest major update, the cloud save update, Sketches now uploads your drawings to a cloud- which isn't the issue- but in doing so, it deletes the local save of your drawings. Meaning you no longer can access your WIPs until you connect to the internet.

Once a prized app for its versatility- whether you're on the bus or in class or laying down, you could always pick up your phone and draw- Sketches has been reduced to a buggy, crashing, inconvenient, and downright awful shadow of its former self that definitely does not deserve to cost money.
Buy Procreate instead. I hear it's better.

I never write updates. However, after the most recent update I felt like this was very necessary.

I’ve been using TayasuiSketches for years, it’s been my go-to as an artist and I live for the simplicity of TayasuiSketches. It’s amazing. Because of this, the new update has left me feeling very conflicted. I really hope the developer’s notice the problems that have followed up with this update.

For the first time ever TayasuiSketches is actually slow. When I pinch to zoom out of the canvas it sort of glitches and takes way longer than necessary to leave the drawing. And when I come back to it and it auto saves, sometimes the loading page gets stuck and TayasuiSketches basically crashes. And then there goes all my progress. TayasuiSketches used to occasionally auto save upon changing layers a couple of times; now it only auto saves if I pinch out of the image and click back on it, and that’s if I’m lucky enough for TayasuiSketches to not crash/freeze on me again. Also, when I change layers, it now takes a good minute until my pencil can finally erase or draw.

These problems are absolutely frustrating, but granted I’ve been using TayasuiSketches for so long I really hope it changes. I’d hate to use a different program.

First, let me say that I have used and loved TayasuiSketches for years. For me, it is perfect for initial sketches and quick illustrations. The interface is mostly convenient. I have a few suggestions for improvement, the first of which is to just fix the bugs! If my iPad screen locks, or I switch apps for even a second, I keep coming back the TayasuiSketches ’s loading screen, where it shows the thumbnails of sketches, and often loses everything I was previously working on. This is honestly frustrating, and my app and iOS are all up to date. Aside from this, I would love the option to view sketches in book format, with the option to swipe to the next/previous pages. Often when I’m sharing sketches, I want to show how my idea progressed, and that feels clumsy each time I need to zoom out and zoom into something else. Lastly, I would love to see more gestures (and better palm rejection! This is the only app that gives me problems!), such as one that could hide and show the interface/tools. I think these could really take TayasuiSketches to the next level, make it more convenient to use, and turn it into a true digital sketchbook (something I’ve been looking for!).

I love TayasuiSketches, it’s the only drawing app that I can really draw well with. But this is so, so frustrating. Lately your app has had a lot of problems with freezing and crashing. Whenever it does this, it deletes all or most my progress. Today, I finished a drawing, was happy with it, and closed out of TayasuiSketches . When I came back, I found that the drawing had been entirely deleted. Just a blank page. It hadn’t crashed or anything, just decided not to save at all when I closed out of the drawing and closed TayasuiSketches . I really liked that drawing, this has happened too often, and I’m fed up. I’m sorry, I do love TayasuiSketches, but please try to fix this problem.

Edit: while the deleting every bit of my progress on a given drawing continues to be a problem, there’s more than that. Really, TayasuiSketches is riddled with bugs. It also very frequently has problems with the paint tool, either just refusing to fill in anything at all no matter how many times I tap it (it shows it loading but then it never fills), or it’ll fill in things on other layers, etc. Though I enjoy using TayasuiSketches, all the problems make it difficult.

There needs to be a much greater ability to zoom in. I like working on large canvases and at max zoon, every brush still gives a different pixel size and most do not do 1 pixel across and is still too thick in line width. The zoom in controls need to be more advanced and not so basic. We need to be able to see the zoom magnification # and enter it manually aside from just the slider.

Another thing is in Adobe illustrator when you do a brush stroke, it automatically helps to refine the stroke. So if i do a curve, it smooths it into a refined curve. Just like how you have the line tool when you hold down on the brush stroke, but you can add it so for example if i were to do many strokes for hair it would make it nice curves in the angle of my choosing and instantly.

Please consider implementing this asap as it is a big factor in whether i choose to use your app or not, otherwise I’ll use a different app..

My only problem with TayasuiSketches is that it keeps saving screenshots of the "sketches" that I work on. Usually if I have closed TayasuiSketches while a drawing is in use, if I open TayasuiSketches again, the drawing will be screenshot and saved to my camera roll. Also, if I start a new drawing or open a different drawing, it screenshots those too. No matter how many times I open and close TayasuiSketches or any drawing, it will always screenshot them. Even if I start a new drawing, and leave it blank, it will be screenshot. It's not even a high quality image like when you manually save from the folder view, so I don't understand why it keeps doing that. If there's a way to make that stop, someone please teach me how. Because it's really annoying and tedious when I have to go through all those screenshots and pick out the high quality saves and delete the unnecessary screenshots. Developers, please fix this problem if it's not supposed to do that.
Overall awesome app with a great selection of tools and really useful on mobile. I much prefer Tayasui to Adobe Draw (which many people use and I don't understand how or why because it's so frustrating to work with on a phone).

I generally love TayasuiSketches , but I just tried to create a piece of art using the shapes tool...specifically the circles one, and I couldn’t functionally repeat the gestures to move the circle or change its angle. In other words, I might accidentally be able to move it, but couldn’t replicate it enough to create what I wanted to. Instead of actually moving the circle from point a to point b, by using 2 fingers (as the instructions say), it would rather, just shrink down my entire page...I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, but I worked on it for about a half hour & read all the instructions I could find...app creators, please fix this, or put up some better instructions on how to do this effectively...otherwise, great app!

I really like TayasuiSketches in general. It’s easy to use and I use it to draw all the time. I have a problem with version 23, though, and I’m writing this in the hopes that it will change or be improved. It’s the way folders are organized. Only being able to organize folders by date modified and creation date makes it much harder to organize things. I’m really hoping that they add in an option to organize drawings however you want. If you’re just using TayasuiSketches for individual drawings, it isn’t a big issue. But it becomes a bigger problem if you want to make and/or organize a comic, drawings for a video, drawings for a story, or anything like that.

This is a fantastic drawing app. It has good features, a good aesthetic and the new update brought a pixel brush and a whole bunch of other really good features but it also made a lot of unnecessary changes.
For one, it’s a drawing app. It’s supposed to be simple. When doing something creative I don’t want any input except what I’m working with. so a random quote that has nothing to do with the context of an app used for drawing shouldn’t be there.
Also the large 2-color screen cover tools are broken. They overwrite the layer and you can’t undo them. This wasn’t in the last update and I’m confused why they would mess up a feature that didn’t need fixing.
Another feature that is missing is the normal smear tool. I used it a lot and it’s gone now for some reason. That’s dumb.
Other than that I haven’t found too many other problems other than a slight discoloration/loss of quality when copy/pasting or resizing selections but it’s to be expected.
I can’t think of any other good features I would want for it other than just more/better brushes or a more advanced selection tool.

Okay, so, let me start off by saying that Sketches is the greatest drawing app I’ve found. I absolutely love it! But the reason why I had to give it 4 stars is because seemingly whenever I draw, Sketches lags! Not the entire app, but the drawing tools! I try to draw a perfectly straight line and all of a sudden, either big black circles appear, or the line gets crooked, and heart monitor looking on its own! It’s not too much of a problem for the first five minutes or so, but it’s FRUSTRATING AS HECK after you start getting tired of it. And also, the undo/redo buttons keep absolutely not working 😭The undo button undoes way to much and I lose something I drew! Please fix this, Sketches! I just want to draw! ☹️

I use TayasuiSketches to draw everything on my phone, and I've been using it for over 4 years. Its great for my purposes, and I've had people compliment my lineart quality. It does have autosave, but it crashes unfortunately often, making me lose recent progress. It's pretty scary... It's been like this for years but I never thought about leaving a review until now. Is there a way to fix this?😢
Also: one feature i would really love is the ability to select parts of a layer (like lasso tool) to individually transform it. The addition of the transform tool is great, but I usually only want to transform part of a layer, not the whole layer! That would be a much appreciated addition!

The options are plentiful, fun, and beautiful with a user-friendly interface. I didn't make use of TayasuiSketches much before a I got the Apple Pencil but now that I have one, sketches is my go to for doodling and writing (I'm not much of an artist but I feel like one using sketches!). I second another reviewers suggestion on implementing a sort of book option. So we have sketch books or notebooks, since I use TayasuiSketches for class notes and journaling. I used to use Noteshelf for my writings but I prefer tayasui sketches for everything now that I have the pencil. With a feature that lets us organize sketches into books, TayasuiSketches would be unstoppable!! I know it's for creating artistic masterpieces, but I just love it so much so I'd really love to use sketches for all- art, notes, writing, and journaling.

I really like TayasuiSketches a lot especially when you can use layers in the pro app. There is a lot of different types of brushes and sizes. It has the ruler for straight or diagonal drawing, water color, and more. The only thing that its missing to me is the the shape section to make a perfect circle or square. I'm not a good drawer but adding this would benefit a lot of people (this shape is already in their other app: memeopad). I'm using the bamboo sketch pen ony iPhone 6 on TayasuiSketches. The pen have a slight delay but the sketch app have different various hand position (right, right hand upward, right hand downward, and vice versa). When using the pen, drawing on the edge of the phone is tricky, you would draw a shape and it would sometime skip toward the edge. Coloring the edge can be challenging unless you zoom in. Overall, my family enjoy TayasuiSketches and this is a good app on the go.

So far every drawing app I’ve gotten on my phone has been hard to use or just doesn’t have enough tools to make a good drawing, but TayasuiSketches is very easy to draw even considering you have to use your fingers. There are a couple problems I have with TayasuiSketches though- One, there isn’t a tool that’s really small. I value small pens so the lines don’t look fat if I’m making a detailed drawing. Two, the blending tool is too large. Blending is important if you want smooth pictures but since the blender is TayasuiSketches is so large it blends the outline too. And three, sometimes TayasuiSketches will randomly download your pictures to your camera role. This isn’t a very big deal but it’s kind of annoying having to keep deleting pictures. Anyways, I think TayasuiSketches is great and I highly recommend it to anyone who has interest in art.

This is a great app that I’ve used for many personal projects and even school pieces. I’ve done lots of drawings, paintings, and photo retouches. However, along with the retouches comes a drop in resolution. When importing photos in, TayasuiSketches will lower the pixel count to fit its minimum resolution. It’s a little inconvenient whether it’s for retouches or mixed media. So, the only thing I’d really like to see change in is the option to zoom into photos way closer; until I can see the pixels of an HD photo. This would also mean that TayasuiSketches would have to be able to handle more pixels from the high res photos. This is not an app meant for photos but in the case of art, I’d like to be able to better incorporate this feature through mixed media. Otherwise, it’s a great app that I’ve been using for a couple years. If you enjoy drawing or even photo editing, I’d really recommend that you buy this upgrade.

I purchased procreate, affinity designer, affinity photo, sketchbook, and tried (but don’t own) many more. TayasuiSketches is my go to when I want to just get my ideas out ASAP. There isn’t a complicated amount of adjustments to make with each tool so you can just get down and dirty and draw. Drawing with an Apple Pencil feels great and is pressure and tilt sensitive. (For example, you can tilt the pencil and it shades instead of being a fine point all the time) Out of the apps that I own/tried, I like the lines from the pencil tool because it looks the best to me. The ONLY thing that I would ask for in TayasuiSketches so far is to add finger gestures to rotate the canvas or something equivalent. I like the speed, ease, and usability in which I can translate from just a thought to something tangible and I feel that the ability to rotate the canvas would definitely help push out ideas in a streamlined manner. A minor thing, yes, but it would definitely help.

When I first got TayasuiSketches, it made me pay twice because at first I tried getting the update and failed and then just went and got the actual paid app, and then it was pretty good while I used it for the most part. A few glitches here and there, but usually pretty good. After this most recent update, every time I add a layer it just turns completely black, even on old drawings, all but the base and the first layer and just completely black as soon as I add them. It was fine before the update, I hope that'll be fixed in the next one...?

Edit:so the next update came out and most(all but one) of my drawings survived! Yay thanks developers!

I love Tayasui! It is my favorite app for art and both the Pro version and the original are functional and have very few bugs. However, when it comes to posting my art I have a bit of a problem recently. So, at first posting my art was fine and everything was going smoothly. I could see my art on the “new” page and people were giving it likes. But after a while (and this has happened with the last 3 drawing I’ve made) the art I posted would say someone liked it, usually between one and three likes, but it isn’t on the new page and the like count never went up after the first day. Is this a common glitch? Because I want to keep posting and taking part in art challenges but if nobody can see my art then that won’t be possible. Can I please get some help? Other than that and one other glitch with the posting, this is a must have app for any digital artist and I would recommend it highly! 🙂

My only problem with TayasuiSketches is that it keeps saving screenshots of the "sketches" that I work on. Usually if I have closed TayasuiSketches while a drawing is in use, if I open TayasuiSketches again, the drawing will be screenshot and saved to my camera roll. Also, if I start a new drawing or open a different drawing, it screenshots those too. No matter how many times I open and close TayasuiSketches or any drawing, it will always screenshot them. Even if I start a new drawing, and leave it blank, it will be screenshot. It's not even a high quality image like when you manually save from the folder view, so I don't understand why it keeps doing that. If there's a way to make that stop, someone please teach me how. Because it's really annoying and tedious when I have to go through all those screenshots and pick out the high quality saves and delete the unnecessary screenshots. Developers, please fix this problem if it's not supposed to do that.
Overall awesome app with a great selection of tools and really useful on mobile. I much prefer Tayasui to Adobe Draw (which many people use and I don't understand how or why because it's so frustrating to work with on a phone).

Gave it five stars because I can’t live without the leaky pain pain PE and PEN… Some tessellating tiling properties would be nice… I can’t find a program with a leaky pen that will let me save it as a tilable rectangle like you do in fabric design....... also I would like a better option on fountain pen size voice recognition and I’m too lazy to erase… Spatter option would be nice… i’ll come back with more suggestions later especially if you give me .01% of the profits ha ha… For some reason one of my favorite painting program is this one: I guess it’s because that fountain pen works pretty good without a stylus; I guess I have yet to find a program that implements pressure sensitivity the way I like.

I will draw something then when I’m halfway through it the game cuts off and my progress is gone 😠 ☄️👺