Creating art on the iPad Using ArtStudio and a Stylus

Using the iPad for drawing is great iPad use for both kids and also for artists, the only difference will be in the finished quality of the work. Using the iPad for drawing like this is also an educational use of the iPad also. Once the old fashioned artist types get their head around using digital media they actually start to love the creative process. It is tough to lose the tactile qualities and feedback you get from using a pencil, art pen or brushes. When you get into using the best stylus, a Boxwave Stylus instead of using your fingers and also see how good it is to be able to change the pencil to a brush so quickly and easily in an app like Art Studio iPad, you will be hooked.

In ArtStudio there is something for everyone, it offers lessons for new users and it also have the breadth of tools that lets you be extremely creative. There are layers that let you leave on part of the drawing in place while you work on another part. You could do a basic outline drawing that you can work over the top of. There is a set of icons at the bottom that you can move out of the way if you want, so you have the full screen to work on. In that row of icons there is the tool chooser, colour palette, layers, shapes, effects, the equivalent of a file menu for import, new image etc and a settings icon. When you touch any of these icon you have the thing pop up that you have chosen. Touch it again to move it out of the way.

There are so many tools to choose from to list in this article, you have to scroll down to see them all, even in portrait mode. When you are using a brush tool you will also see a couple of sliders at the top to adjust the width and the opacity. You can have two colours loaded up and hit the swap button to change from one to the other easily. There is also a pen dropper tool for choosing a tool from the canvas.

Sometimes I might not be totally happy with a line, circle or fill that I have just put on the drawing and I can use a undo button if it is not possible to use the eraser tool to change it back. There are so many tools and effects that I keep finding new ones to use. Like the custom brushes that you can easily create.

The marks that you make are very fluid and painterly and you can of course do things like squeeze a tube of paint to have a colour that you can then move around and manipulate with the smudge and smoothing tools. I have also just found the selection tools so that I can select an area and confine the marks I make to that area. In that there is a lasso, a magic wand, rectangles and circle shapes to use for selecting. There there is a three finger tap which brings up a quick menu for brush settings, zoom and clear layer.

If you want to use ArtStudio iPad to do some photo editing that can be done too by importing from the camera roll or off the clipboard. All in all the application is an excellent canvas for artists whether you are using your finger to control it or a BoxWave Capacitive iPad Stylus. I like to use both and it depends on the tool being used from the tool box in the app. Drawing on the iPad will be one of the best iPad uses for styluses or styli.