Tools & Drawing
Canvas has seven tools. Three draw, one erases, one types, and two select.
Drawing tools
Pen — the standard stroke. Clean and consistent; what you'll use for most writing and sketching.
Marker — a heavier stroke than the pen. Good for headings, boxing a figure, or anything you want to stand out structurally.
Highlighter — a wide, translucent stroke that lays over what's already there without hiding it. Use it the way you'd use a real one: over a bill you're worried about, or a number you want to come back to.
All three use the current colour and stroke size, and each tool applies its own weight on top of that — so the same size setting gives you a fine pen line and a broad highlighter band.
Eraser
Removes strokes. It works with a wider radius than the pen, so it clears an area rather than requiring you to retrace a line precisely.
Text
Places typed text on the canvas. Faster and far more legible than handwriting on a phone, and worth defaulting to for anything you'll want to read back later — figures, especially.
Mixing is normal: type the numbers, sketch the arrows.
Lasso
Draw a loop around strokes to select them as a group. Use it to move a cluster of work, or to clear a whole section without erasing stroke by stroke.
Pointer
Selection and manipulation without drawing. Switch to the pointer when you want to rearrange rather than add — it's also the safe tool to be on if you're navigating with a finger and don't want stray marks.
Colour and size
Both are adjustable and apply to whichever drawing tool is active.
A simple convention that pays off: pick one colour for the situation as it is, and a second for what you're proposing. When you come back to a canvas weeks later, that's usually enough to reconstruct what you were thinking.
Undo
Canvas keeps an undo history as you work, so a mis-stroke doesn't need erasing — step back instead.
Working with the bills
The bills for the paycheck are already on the page when you open it. That's the point of the tool — you're annotating your real numbers rather than copying them across.
Practical approach: highlight the bills that concern you, use the text tool for arithmetic in the margin, and draw arrows for anything you're thinking of moving.
Stylus, finger, and mouse
Stylus on a tablet is the best experience by a distance — you can write at the speed you think.
Finger on a phone works for highlighting, circling, and rough marks. For anything numeric, use the text tool.
Mouse or trackpad on the web is fine for selecting and typing, awkward for freehand.