Book › Utilities › Eraser

Eraser

Rubs out paint - and, by default, forgets the dots underneath so the web stops reaching in.

What it is

The eraser is a tool toggle, not a brush. Click the eraser button in the toolbar to turn it on; click it again (or pick any brush) to turn it off. While it's on, your strokes remove paint instead of adding it, clearing whatever is underneath on the active layer.

How it works with brushes

The eraser borrows the currently selected brush's shape and size - it doesn't have its own. A fat round brush erases in fat round dabs; the Shapes brush in Squares mode erases square chunks; making the brush bigger makes the eraser bigger. It simply puts the current brush into "remove" mode, so everything you know about the brush still applies.

• Pick the brush whose footprint you want, then toggle the eraser on.
• It erases the active layer only - including any connecting web woven onto it.
• Toggle the eraser off to go straight back to painting with that same brush.

Erase mode: paint, dots, or both

A drawing has two layers of "there-ness": the paint you see and the dots your drawing remembers. A connecting web is woven toward those remembered dots - so a mark you rub out with paint alone can still pull the web back into the space you thought you cleared. The eraser's Erase setting lets you choose which of the two a wipe removes:

• Paint + dots (the default) - wipes the paint and forgets the remembered dots under the stroke, so a connecting web no longer reaches into the cleared area. The honest eraser: what you rub out stays gone.
• Paint only - wipes the paint but keeps every dot. Rub out the ink while leaving the invisible scaffold the web is built on, so a later connecting stroke still weaves toward where the mark was.
• Dots only - forgets the dots without touching the paint. A "forget brush": prune the memory where you don't want connections while leaving your art exactly as it looks.

Erasing and undo

Everything a wipe removes is a single undo step. Press ⌘Z / Ctrl Z and both come back together - the paint and any dots the same stroke forgot. You can rub out a region, decide you went too far, and undo it whole.

When to use which

• Paint + dots - the everyday eraser: clear a region and stop the web from weaving back into it.
• Paint only - rub out ink but keep the structure the web is built on, so connections still reach the old spot.
• Dots only - thin out the memory (fewer connections in an area) without changing how the drawing looks.
• Clear the map - forget every remembered dot at once so new connections start from a blank slate (see Memory maps).
• Layer opacity / delete - fade or drop a whole layer at once (see Layers).