The stroke wheel

The parts of the wheel

The wheel sits in the corner under your off hand. Everything on it sets your next stroke; to change a mark already on the page, use Tools → Select stroke.

Only one set of rings is open at a time: opening colour folds the brushes, and so on. Drawing folds whatever is open, so there is nothing to dismiss.

The rim: media, brushes, the Eraser and the Eyedropper

• Tap the Eraser, the wedge after the media, to rub out paint on any medium, or take whole strokes; tap it again, or a medium, to paint. It has its own size and strength, set with the wheel's gauges while it's on. The E key turns it on too. See Erase and lift paint.
• Tap the Eyedropper, the last wedge, then tap the painting: the colour there becomes the colour in hand, and you're back to your brush, without painting. The I key turns it on. See Colour.
• Tap a medium to take up the brush you last used in it. Each medium paints on its own kind of layer: see The seven media.
• Tap the medium in hand and the brushes you keep on the wheel unfold as rings of strokes. The first ring starts with the chips Add brushes, Marks and motion and Paint tools, which keep their places. After them come the brushes you last painted with: up to six, from any medium, as many as fit, each marked with a clock. One tap takes one back exactly as you left it. The ring beyond holds the medium's brushes, in your order, so each keeps its place. The medium's tools (Water, Lift, Smudge, the Motion Brush, Freeze and the rest) are behind Paint tools. When there are more brushes than fit, drag along their ring to turn it. Faded ends indicate hidden brushes. The brush in hand is named beyond the rings.
• Tap the brush in hand again, the outlined one, for its variations: the same stroke nearer or farther, broader or finer, and an effect's parts. Brushes leads back. See Variations for layering.
• Add brushes opens the brush library, with search, collections and every medium, to add brushes to the ring.
• Marks and motion opens the ring a motion gauge opens: what the stroke leaves and how it moves, in one place. See The ring: the stroke's motion, below.

A small mark in a chip's corner says where a tap leads when it isn't a choice in the ring you are looking at. A chevron opens another ring of the wheel: Marks and motion, Paint tools, and the brush in hand, for its variations. A chevron pointing back, on Brushes, returns to the brushes. Three dots open a panel or a sheet outside the wheel: Add brushes, More motion and More colors. A chip with no mark chooses something, shows a group in the same ring, or switches something on or off.

A built-in brush is taken up in the colour you are holding; a brush you saved keeps the colour it was saved with. Touch and hold a medium for Use medium, which takes it up without unfolding anything.

With a mouse or trackpad, hovering a sample magnifies it (Hover previews → Magnification in Settings, the default). The hovered wedge expands, its neighbours make room, and only overlapping outer wedges move outward. The movement follows the pointer like a wave. Separate preview opens a card instead, beyond the rings; a finger held on a brush shows its larger card above the rings, in any mode. See Larger previews.

The ring: gauges

Every gauge fills clockwise, and every drag follows the fill: clockwise for more, anticlockwise for less. A drag that sets off along a slanted stretch of the ring turns the gauge round the ring. A straight drag works like a fader pointing the way the fill runs under your finger: right at the top of the ring, down on the right, left at the bottom and up on the left. The change is relative, so touching a gauge never makes it jump, and your finger can carry on past the wedge; about 160 points, or a third of a turn, covers the whole range. While you drag a gauge, or when it comes to mean something else (an effect in hand, say), its name shows in place of its symbol for a few seconds.

Tap a gauge for the brush's own settings 2: large Size, Strength and Water sliders, the brush's Marks (Line, Shapes, Hatching, Liquid marks and Effects by category) with shape settings, followed by Motion with a component and family picker. All settings opens Brush Studio. Every change applies at once.

The ring: the stroke's motion

The ring is half the mark and half its movement: Size, Strength and Water, then three motion gauges.

Tap any of the three to unfold Marks and motion: one ring for what the stroke leaves and how it moves.

• The inner ring holds Still or Moving, More motion, which opens the full panel, and the parts the gauges can move: Whole stroke and, with marks in hand, their own movement.
• The second ring holds every group side by side: Suggested and the motion families (Float & Drift, Waves & Flow, Bend & Stretch, Bounce & Rhythm, Shake & Sketch), then Line, Shapes, Hatching and Liquid marks, then the effect categories (Fire, Smoke & Steam, Sky, Weather, Water, Nature, Creatures, Magic, Explosions). They don't all fit at once, so the ring turns: drag along it to reach the last groups.
• The outer rings hold the chosen group's motions, marks or effects, each drawn as a sample in your brush and colour.

A choice keeps the rings open, so you can choose marks and then a motion; painting folds them. Line takes the marks off, back to a plain stroke. See Add motion, Marks and Effects.

With an effect in hand, Effect movement is chosen for you, so the gauges are its own: how much, how fast and its character, such as Fuel, Flicker and Sparks for fire. Whole stroke keeps its own Amount, Speed and Pattern. Other marks show Liveliness and the two rates they use: Travel for marks that move along the stroke, Pulse for their breathing, Pulse length for a swell that runs through them (Breathing Wash), or Sway. Hatches show Hatch amount, Hatch rate and Liveliness: turning Hatch amount up sets a fixed hatch swaying. Rates read as a multiple of the brush as it comes, or as you saved it, so a fresh brush reads 1.0×. Inside the marks appears where interior movement is supported. Stop all motion holds a static version of the mark.

The corner: Undo, Redo and Tools

• Undo is the wide diagonal wedge, with Redo above it. Hold either to repeat. A two-finger tap on the page undoes, and a three-finger tap redoes.
• Tools unfolds the tools that act on the painting rather than paint it:

While a tool is on, a banner at the top says so, ending in Done; tap it, or tap the medium in hand, to go back to painting.

A tool that needs paint on the layer (Select stroke) is dimmed until there is some. Choosing a tool sends the wheel back to its corner.

The wheel at your pen

Controls on the right

Actions → Settings… → Controls on right 1 moves the wheel to the bottom-right corner and mirrors it, so the squared corner is under your right thumb. Mirrored, the gauges still fill clockwise, so clockwise is still more.

Tip: With the largest accessibility text sizes, the wedges keep their size; touch and hold one to see its name and value large.