Learning New Tools, Finding New Joy (Affinity Designer on iPad)

In this solo episode of Creative Juggle Joy, host Delores Naskrent takes listeners behind the scenes of her creative process to share how switching from Adobe Illustrator to Affinity Designer on the iPad reignited her joy for making art.

Delores opens up about what it’s like to learn new software after decades of experience, why fresh tools can unlock new creativity, and how working directly on the iPad transformed both her workflow and artistic confidence.

She dives into:
 🎨 Why new tools create new thinking
 💡 Key Affinity Designer features that make it a game-changer
 🖌️ How she blends vector and pixel personas for painterly results
 🧠 Mindset tips for learning (and enjoying) new software
 🤝 The importance of community and momentum for artists

Whether you’re a beginner exploring Affinity Designer or a seasoned Adobe user curious about making the switch, this episode is your creative pep talk to try something new, stay curious, and rediscover your joy in creating.

👉 Listen now and be reminded: it’s okay to start slow, to ask questions, and to celebrate every small win on your artistic journey.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Affinity Designer for iPad
• Procreate
• Delores’ Affinity Designer Foundations Course
• Thriving Artist Membership

Transcript

Delores Naskrent: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting episode of the Creative Juggle Joy, where we explore the art of building a thriving, creating business, while balancing all kinds of other things. I am your host for today, Delores Naskrent, and today I'm excited about talking about learning new things, especially new software.

This is something I have done many, many times. If you have ever stared at a blank screen thinking, where do I even start? This episode is for you. I'm gonna share why I have pretty much switched from Adobe Illustrator to Affinity Designer on the iPad, how that choice actually brought my joy back and how I now move between.

Software like procreate and Affinity Designer in a way that makes [00:01:00] my art stronger and my workflow faster. I'll also touch a little bit on core concepts that we cover and why they matter If you wanna make money from your art.

I think in general this is the kind of information that anybody who's trying to make a living or wanting to try to find out and figure out how to make a living from their art, I do believe there's gonna be some important information here that you'll get.

So why learn a new tool at all? Let's be honest. Learning new software is uncomfortable. You feel slow, you make weird mistakes. Buttons are in the wrong place, and if you're working under deadlines, it's tempting to stick with what you know, but there's another truth. Fresh tools can unlock fresh work. New friction often creates new [00:02:00] thinking.

That is exactly what happened to me when I moved to Affinity Designer. I didn't just get a different set of buttons. I got a completely different way of building. I got the speed of the iPad. I have what I consider a much cleaner workflow and some features that fit how my brain. Likes to create.

The result is I am starting to make much more art and I like my art more. That's the big reason I want to talk about this. Not because software is exciting by itself, but because it can reignite your creative energy. I have used Illustrator for years. Those of you who know me know that I started using it when it first came out, so that's in 1988.

It is absolutely powerful and I am super grateful for it, and I've learned so much [00:03:00] by using the program for 40 years. But a few things pushed me to try Affinity Designer, especially on the iPad. In my opinion, the iPad experience is first class with Affinity Designer. This app is fast. It feels designed for touch.

It's good at zooming and nudging points and painting. It's all very fluid and you're working directly with your screen, so your stylus is working directly with whatever you're creating, so you don't have your hand on a mouse. You are literally drawing right on the artwork that you're creating. So that is a big difference in my opinion.

I did use a Wacom tablet with Illustrator, but it's still not the same. I know a lot of people who use Cintiq tablets and Cintiq's I think are probably the closest thing you can [00:04:00] get to that same experience of working directly on your art. However, there is lack of portability with the Cintiq, which you all know if you own one.

The other thing I really love is that the pixel and vector is in one file. So affinity's personas, let me build the really clean vectors and then I can start painting within the vectors. On top of them, behind them, I don't have to leave the document, so there's no more bouncing around with different apps.

Just trying to add what looks like natural media. Another thing is that it's non-destructive by default, so clipped pixel layers, live effects, global colors, all the little things that keep your file flexible. I can change my mind without rebuilding everything. So if I have been using something like an effect, an outer glow, a shadow, I can turn those [00:05:00] off and on.

I can get rid of them completely after I've created something. So that is quite useful as well. If I want to have them collapse together, I can do that. I can bake the two together overall, what I have found is that as I learned where everything was in the software, I was able to work so much faster.

It just matches how I like to draw and finish stuff. I, and the last point is also big for me. I now use Affinity Designer more and more for work that I used to do in procreate alone, not because procreate is bad. I love it. I love procreate and I still use it a lot, but because I can use that sort of vector as a stencil approach in affinity, it gives me much cleaner edges and painterly texture in one place.

I can enlarge those vectors and I can [00:06:00] still paint within them, and I find that everything exports beautifully for print and for licensing. The biggest shift for me has been the fun of it. I know that sounds simple, but it really does matter. In Affinity Designer, I can sketch a simple flower or whatever I plan on drawing that day, and I can switch back and forth between the pixel persona

let's say an airbrush to create soft shadows inside a petal or add a crisp rim light with an add layer. Or I can sprinkle in a little bit of grain all clipped to that vector shape so there's no mess, no fuzzy edges and no fear that I'm ruining anything. I think that play without fear feeling is what brought me back to experimenting.

I do try bolder color. I push my lighting a lot more, and I finish [00:07:00] pieces faster because I'm not rebuilding the same steps over and over. When your tool lets you stay in your flow state, you make more art and making more art grows both your skill and your business. Let me walk you through my typical iPad workflow.

If I'm creating an illustration, for example, I'll sketch and texture ideas, sometimes I start in procreate. It's great for loose exploration. I might find the vibe or gesture or a texture idea there, I can do the same thing in Affinity Designer, so I can do the sketching there as well.

If I have done it in procreate, I will bring that sketch into Affinity Designer, lower the opacity, and then I'll trace it with my solid vector shapes. This is where the main structure of the illustration will happen. [00:08:00] I'll do the simple curves with the minimal amount of nodes that I can, and I will most of the time give my layers, names, and I also group things that go together. Rather than jumping back and forth and taking that into procreate, I switch to the Pixel persona, right in Affinity Designer. And my vector pedals or whatever I'm drawing, act like stencils. So I can paint on a layer and even pick the exact same color that I had for that icon that I'm painting, and then simply do a pixel layer that I've set on multiply blend mode, and that gives me my shadows.

If I want to add highlights, I'll use another layer with that same color, but set the blend mode to screen or add. All of that happens within that clip [00:09:00] shape, so there's no cleanup, nothing to worry about as far as if I were to move that image, I could rotate it. I can enlarge it.

I can reduce it, and I still have that really nice clean vector edge. Because the vectors stay live. I can adapt them for other products without worrying about blurs. I can easily make mockups prints, or use these items for elements in my patterns, all from that same base art. And what I love about it is that it's a vector.

So if I'm gonna use it in a coordinating pattern, I can actually change that vector to be. A little bit different than the original, so that's a real advantage. Just imagine doing that in procreate. I mean, you literally have to redraw that thing in another shape. But yes, procreate is still in my toolbox and more and more I'm finding that [00:10:00] affinity designer is where I build and finish things.

It keeps those edges crisp. It handles print ready exports, and saves me steps. I wanted to share some of the core ideas we focus on and why they help you make better sellable work.

So one of the most important things, of course. Thinking vector versus raster and using both is that the vector keeps your line sharp at any size. Raster gives you the painterly beauty and affinity lets you do both in one file. That means high quality prints, clean mock-ups, and flexible client changes.

That can be important if you're working with a licensing or printing partner. I love the clear structure of the layers.

Layers really speed up my organization and allow for more flexibility. If you are working with a licensing [00:11:00] partner that might perhaps take your work and adapt it to different items. I've had that experience where I produce a placement print and parts of that.

Different layers or motifs within that have been taken and used to create things like picture frames, so they've been relocated and moved around. That is often done by a house artist with a company you're partnered with. I also love global colors and recoloring in Affinity Designer. We can use global colors and change a palette very quickly.

So clients often love different colorways or they wanna see different colorways. So that's something to keep in mind if you are working towards art licensing or are art licensing at the moment. I also love that you can keep everything [00:12:00] non-destructive adding different effects and adjustments.

These are separate layers above whatever item you're trying to affect. The great thing about them is if you don't like them, if it didn't work, you can just eliminate them or turn them off. That is very useful thing to have. In procreate, you can't do that. Like you can have clipping mass or you can paint with a, let's say add a blending mode and put that layer on top.

But when it comes right down to it, if you have made changes, if you've painted on shadows and highlights and things, that's it. It's stuck there. It's permanent, so you can't just turn it off and it's gone. So that's one of the advantages in Affinity Designer, if you're trying to build income from your art, like creating prints and products and licensing client work, the fundamentals save you [00:13:00] time and protect your quality.

They also make you more reliable because it makes it possible for your work to scale. The recipient of the file, your client has the ability to make changes if necessary, if that's part of your contract, you can adapt the artwork to fit different shapes and sizes of items that you might be printing for. So just imagine you've created an artwork and it's for a tall, narrow travel mug that's gonna be set up completely differently than if you have a coffee mug where you're going to need a horizontal wrap, kind of an artwork. Or if you're making art prints. You need a lot more flexibility with your background.

That's one of the things I teach in many of my classes actually. And that's something for you to keep in mind when you have the flexibility of a program like [00:14:00] Affinity Designer, it actually makes it easier. My question to you is, could you learn all of this on your own? Sure. You could.

I had to do it. I pretty much had to learn Illustrator with just experimentation because there was absolutely no support available at the time. You didn't have a million internet, YouTube videos or even books on how to use it. So just by experimenting, we did learn. But having a teacher who's made the mistakes already like me, I've done it in every software, believe me, I've done it in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign.

Procreate, and again, now with Affinity Designer, I have done. Months, years of training on most of these things. I can show you the exact order to learn tools. I [00:15:00] can tell you where the settings are, that matter. I can tell you which settings you can ignore at first. And I also teach lots of tiny habits that just keep your files clean.

So I'm not trying to sell my course at this point. Like I said, it's closed. It'll be open again next year. But one of the things I do wanna encourage you is to find a learning community. So it doesn't have to be me, and I do have the membership, but there are lots out there. I am a member of other teachers communities because I love learning and I love seeing what my classmates are.

Having success with what they're struggling with. A lot of times they're the same things I've either faced before or would have had to face on my own if I didn't have them to share it with me. I think community really keeps you moving. Momentum matters as much as [00:16:00] any button or any trick in the software.

Try to find yourself a good supportive community to work with. Get your questions answered. Learn from other people's learning. Now, if you're brand new to Affinity Designer, here's my advice, start small. Start with one simple motif. I would learn to use all of the shapes that are available. That should be your first.

Way of creating motifs with that motif. Try things like an effect. Try adding a drop shadow or try adding a highlight layer. Try using the blending modes right from the start. I suggest you keep your files tidy, name your layers, and definitely use groups to house things that belong together. If you're doing a flower and it's got [00:17:00] a stem and it's got a center, make sure you group all of those things together.

Your future, you will thank you. Whenever possible use global colors. You'll feel like a genius when you have to do your first. Recolor of an artwork or creating a second color way. I also wanna encourage you to really practice lighting. Try to observe lighting by looking at other artwork or looking at things like right now I've got a bouquet of flowers sitting beside me.

The light is streaming in one side is really well lit, the other is quite dark. I could look at this and draw this for hours, just because the lighting is so fantastic right now, I can really tell the difference. So practice and observe as much as you possibly can. And lastly, I want you to celebrate your [00:18:00] wins.

Even a small improvement is a step forward. Most of all, give yourself permission to learn out loud. It's okay to be slow at first. It's okay to ask the obvious questions. That is how we get better. If this episode lands, while you're taking my Affinity Designer course, use what we talked about today as your mindset for the next few weeks.

Stay curious take small steps and lean on the community. If you're thinking about joining later, keep listening. I'll keep sharing practical ideas and simple workflows you can use right away. Thanks so much for being here. I'm cheering for you. Go away and make something beautiful, even if it's tiny.

Just get the feeling of that accomplishment. The feeling is why we're doing this. I am Delores Naskrent, and until next time, keep [00:19:00] creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding joy in the process.