Sketch on the canvas with freehand drawing
For freedom and flexibility, sometimes you just need to sketch or scribble your ideas on the canvas. This is easy in boards with “Freehand Drawing”, which includes two markers, a highlighter, and an eraser.
You can draw on and around other objects (like flowchart shapes, or wireframe elements), or create quick designs entirely with the marker.
For best results when drawing freehand, use:
- Safari on iPad with an Apple pencil.
- Desktop computer with a mouse, or “Wacom” style pen tablet.
How to draw freehand in Whimsical
In a board you can switch to freehand with the pencil icon in the toolbar, or by pressing the ‘H’ key to draw different shapes or lines:
Tip: Access the highlighter directly by pressing
Shift +
H.
Then, with the freehand menu open, choose from:
- The marker
- The highlighter
- The eraser
- The selector
The marker is available in two sizes (thin or thick) and both the marker and highlighter are available in the different colors of your
theme:
Note: The highlighter doesn’t support the lightest colors (white, smoke & gray).
To erase more content at once, zoom out and the eraser will maintain its size:
Shape detection
For more structured drawing switch on “Detect Shapes” and any rectangle, circle, straight line, or diamond will be recognized and made uniform:
Tip: For other shapes,
check out this template which shows all the available flowchart shapes.
Drawings can be resized, moved, or erased, like so:
It’s also easy to change the style of an existing drawing. Just select it, then choose a different pen type, or color:
