FROM THE EDITORS
Turn Your Experience Into Art
Whether told through photos, videos, collages, or illustrations, a well-crafted story can be a window into someone else’s world—a chance to understand who they are and where they come from. We asked four artists to reveal how they use apps to craft their unique stories.
Find your inner superhero with Sanford Greene
Comic book artist Sanford Greene has helped bring some of the biggest superheroes to life, having illustrated issues featuring Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Black Panther. But he’s found plenty of awe-inspiring stories in the real world too.
In 2023 Greene helped create The Wonders of an HBCU, written and illustrated by his art students at Benedict College in South Carolina. The graphic novel collects eight tales about life at America’s historically black colleges and universities.
“College students are at the beginning stage of their hero’s journey,” Greene says. “You have disappointments and fears and hard lessons—and you have the different emotions that come along with all of it.”
For Greene’s students, looking at their own lives and seeing themselves as the heroes of their own tales was a eureka moment.
“They realized that your story is the most unique story,” he says. “You notice things you never knew were there before.”
Get started on your own hero’s journey with these tips:
1. Find your story
Start by writing a list of your unique traits “that make up you, the person,” Greene suggests. What do you love? What do you find challenging? Don’t edit yourself—just write—and soon you’ll remember stories from your past that define you.
“The hero still has personal internal struggles and might have to balance his hero side with his everyday side,” Greene says.
Distraction-free apps like Bear, Ulysses, and iA Writer are a great way to get your thoughts down fast without worrying about formatting. For taking handwritten notes and sketching, try the infinite canvases of Endless Paper (available on iPad) and App Store Award winner Flow.
2. Plot the scene
Greene likes to break a story into scenes using a technique called “sequential storytelling,” or storyboarding, in which you quickly sketch pivotal moments in your story. Don’t worry about perfecting your drawings—they should be rough.
“It starts with breaking the idea down into sequential stories, then we build the characters and visual information on top of that,” Greene says. “You see this in mediums like film, TV, and videogames.”
The collaborative whiteboard app Miro has a custom template built for creating storyboards; the sketching apps Freeform and Flow give you an endless canvas to work on.
3. “Draw” with your camera
When creating a graphic novel, video is a key resource for Greene. “Often we watch film and animation to study camera angles to learn how to convey a certain level of emotion,” he explains.
Greene also suggests using your iPhone camera to take reference photos of what you want to bring to life on the page—everything from an establishing shot to your own facial expressions. Then import your images into Picsart and use the Comic filter (Effects > Artistic > Comic) to turn it into an illustration.
Explore filmmaking with Samba Diop
When filmmaker Samba Diop started out, he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to see his work at all. He was working as a web developer when, in 2020, he started learning about cinematography and photography. After he uploaded a few of his videos to TikTok, it didn’t take long for hundreds of thousands of viewers to stumble upon them.
“I thought, ‘This is way too artful,’” he says of his early work. Its tone seemed at odds with the platform’s more lighthearted vibe, but Diop soon amassed a sizable following. His 2021 video “When Love Arrives,” a poignant black-and-white vignette about hope and loneliness set to a poem of the same name, has garnered 1.2 million likes to date.
“It was like I was painting on a wall by myself, and then turned around to see a crowd of people clapping,” he says. “That’s what motivated me to delve deeper.”
Find your inner filmmaker with these insights from Diop:
1. Expand your viewfinder
While shooting with a digital SLR camera, Diop uses Monitor+ to turn his iPad into a live monitor so he can position himself wherever he wants on location.
“It proves invaluable when I’m shooting solo and need to be away from the camera,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll set up multiple monitors on multiple iPads, so clients can stay in the loop about what’s happening.”
2. Set up your shot
For Diop, the digital viewfinder Artemis Pro has been a game changer. He uses it to simulate different lenses (comparing a 50mm with a 35mm, for example) so he can plan his shoots with greater precision.
3. Gather references
Diop frequently browses Pinterest for inspirational images. He uses the app to organize what he finds, making separate categories for specific skin tones, lighting setups, and typography he wants to incorporate into his work.
“It’s like having a virtual scrapbook,” he says. “It adds a touch of order to the creative chaos!”
Create a vibrant collage with Natasha Cunningham
Whenever graphic designer Natasha Cunningham needs creative inspiration, all she has to do is step outside her door. Best known for collage portraits bursting with colorful flora and fauna, Cunningham begins her creative process by taking iPhone photos of plants near her studio in St. Catherine, Jamaica.
“Where I live, the sky is blue, and the greenery is green,” Cunningham says. “Nature gives you a beautiful palette.”
Those images invariably find their way into Cunningham’s work, which often focuses on Black heroes—some real, some imaginary. She’s designed eye-catching book covers for renowned science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler and crafted bold promotional artwork for the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
After working for a decade in corporate advertising, Cunningham decided to make a change in 2017. “I wanted to come back to the roots of what I love, which is art,” she says.
She began a social-media side project, posting dazzling portraits she created of musicians and actors she admired as well as of her own friends.
“People I knew wanted me to create their portraits and tell their stories,” Cunningham says, noting that much of her work focuses on people of African and Caribbean descent. “Representation is very important to me, and when I create, I think of a younger version of myself—and about how important it is for a younger creative person to be exposed to a project like mine.”
Here, Cunningham shares ways to capture a portrait as unique as you are:
1. Look to nature
Cunningham suggests photographing the natural elements around you. “The patterns, textures, and colors of a leaf, a caterpillar, or a rock formation hold so much information,” she says.
After gathering inspiration, she uses the app Coolors to create a harmonious palette inspired by a hue she’s come across.
2. Capture your inspiration
A song that sparks something in you. The perfect story about your grandmother that would fit flawlessly in a family-history project. When inspiration strikes, make sure to record it right away. “Collect your thoughts before they vanish. It can be as simple as recording your voice,” Cunningham says.
She dictates her thoughts using the Voice Memos app. Just Press Record is another great option—it automatically transcribes your recordings. Put its widget on your Home Screen to start a new recording without unlocking your iPhone.
Elevate your photos with Micaiah Carter
Micaiah Carter knows how to get people to open up. Over the past decade, the photographer has found acclaim for his quiet, powerful portraits of people of color from around the globe.
“Highlighting people who are not seen is a big part of my work,” Carter says. “The community that surrounds you, the community that inspires you—those are things I want to note in my portraiture.”
While Carter has photographed stars like Issa Rae and Keke Palmer, he has often found his best subjects to be strangers he meets.
“I start by finding something to compliment: ‘I really like your outfit—can I take a portrait of you?’” he says. “That works because once I’m excited about something, they get excited.”
Carter shoots with the camera app Halide Mark II. “I like its simplicity,” Carter says. “You can change a lot of different details, do an edit, and control how the photo is going to look. And it’s just really easy to use.”
Learn how to capture your community with these tips:
1. Frame it right
Whatever camera app you use, Carter suggests turning on grid lines to frame your shot.
“Play around with different angles, and try to construct a composition with the frames,” he says. “Don’t be shy. Just continue to shoot.”
2. Edit on the go
After shooting, Carter turns to the editing app Photomator.
“You can retouch skin, you can take out certain people, you can crop,” he says. “It has all the tools you would need for light photo editing.”
Carter recommends the app’s color matching feature, which uses artificial intelligence to replicate the palette of one image in another. “I’ve used it to emulate photos I’ve taken to keep the colors cohesive in all my work,” he says.
3. See the light
When planning for long shoots, he uses Sun Seeker to track the sun’s course over a day.
“If I’m scouting a location, it lets me see where the sun is going to be at a certain time,” Carter says. He especially appreciates the app’s augmented reality overlay that shows him the sun’s trajectory through the sky.