Ruler (drawing guide)

The ruler is a guide you place on the canvas that your brush snaps to, so you can draw clean, precise lines and shapes freehand. It is only a guide: it is never part of your drawing and never exported.

Turning it on

With the brush or eraser selected, the ruler button sits in the bottom-left canvas cluster (next to the symmetry toggle):

• Tap it to switch the ruler on and off (it remembers the last shape you used).
• Touch and hold it to pick a shape, and to toggle Keep my distance:
  • Line: draw straight lines at any angle.
  • Rectangle: trace clean edges and boxes.
  • Circle: perfect circles.
  • Oval: squashed circles at any angle.

The guide appears the moment you turn it on and vanishes the moment you turn it off.

Using it

• Draw anywhere on the canvas with the brush or eraser. Your strokes bend onto the nearest part of the guide, so a shaky line comes out straight, and strokes around a circle come out round.
• Move the guide by dragging its centre handle.
• Rotate and resize by dragging the handle on its edge; rectangles and ovals get a second handle to set their height.

Reference edge (keep my distance)

By default the ruler works like a real ruler's edge: it locks the distance where your stroke starts and holds it for the whole stroke. Start drawing 20px away from a line and you get a clean line 20px away (parallel); start outside a circle and you get a bigger circle around it (concentric). This lets you build up parallel lines and nested shapes without redrawing the guide.

Turn Keep my distance off in the ruler menu if you'd rather have strokes snap straight onto the guide (draw right on the line).

TIP

Use the line guide to ink a horizon or a character's construction lines, then turn the ruler off and keep drawing freehand.