Le Blaugue

I like to draw, and I often put my drawings on the web. But there’s a thing I’d love to do, I’d love to draw directly on the web. When I say I like to draw, it’s more that I do that all the time. I have lots of sketchbooks with my scribbles on it. But there’s a big limitation when I want to put it on the web : my scanner is kind of really bad. And it only works on the other computer. So when I want to scribble something for my interweb-friends, I have to draw, get to the other computer, verify it’s working, reboot it, scan, transfer the scan on my comp, go back to my comp, photoshop it, save for the web, upload, and then get back to the other comp to get my sketchbook.

This is frustrating. All I want is to draw on the web… Okay, I know, there’s the « drawing » tool on the new MSN Messenger. It’s fun to use, I know, but drawings cannot be saved, so if I want to read the conversation logs, I can’t. And I don’t want to print-screen every time.

I only want to draw on the web!

I would like simple things. Like, I open a certain website on my browser, I plug my Wacom tablet, I draw, I click ’save’. And my drawing is on the web. Simple! Then I can click ‘blog it’ to blog my drawing, I can also mail it to my friends and copy the url for the topic of my favorite IRC chan!

But such a system doesn’t exist, or not exactly. There’s oekaki boards or artpad.art.com, there’s also flipbook by the fabrica for those who want to make flipbooks, but each of these systems have limitations towards what I desire.

I thought of what I want, and I called it Drawing Board. But the name’s not important. The functionalities are more interesting. I don’t look for a system that ‘replays’ my drawings, like Artpad does. I would prefer a way to insert the drawing in a webpage (blog, forum) when I’ve finished it. Just with a IMG tag and a link to the PNG I just drew. I’d love to be able to specify the size of the image, crop it at will. And what system allows me to upload an image as a background for my drawing?

Of course, there’s no reason to make it a Photoshop. Just a web-based MS Paint equivalent would be sufficient. With more colors than the MSN drawing thing (where there’s no orange!), two or three brush shapes and different sizes, a simple text tool, an eraser… and why not a tool to draw lines and another to ‘erase all’… as long as you keep it simple. And we don’t forget the Crop tool and the one to resize the canvas (to specify it in pixels), and also the ‘background’ tool where you can upload a background pic for your drawing, or just specify the url of your background image.

Then, after you press Save, you can add a fancy frame if you want, and you can do what you want with your image : link it (with various possibilities : HTML, BBCode, Wiki…), blog it (very simple, à la Flickr), send it to your Flickr or ImageShack account, email it to your friends, or copy it to the clipboard, it can be usefull.

Throw in an account registration (not mandatory) so you can have a gallery of all your drawings, a tagging system, comments for all the images, ‘modify/remix this image’ feature, different levels of confidentiality if you don’t want everyone to see what you draw, along with a CC license platform, keep the design placid, pastel and round-cornered, and you can sell it to Adobe as the ‘Flickr for Artsts’.

But well, I only got this idea during the shower. If you have the will and means to make it true, don’t hesitate. The only thing I want, it’s to be able to draw on the web. Simply that, but it doesn’t exist yet…

You can also read this article in french