Art Studio

iPad Stylus Review: Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus

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Drawing on an iPad to me is always like swimming upstream a bit. Things that SHOULD be easy… aren’t any more. But for the ease of transporting it, the ease of coloring with it, and the sheer coolness of it, I’ve made my peace with it’s inherent limitations. ( That doesn’t mean I’m not always looking for a better substitute though! ).  I have friends that do amazing work on them, using just their fingers. But I am a stylus guy and I have a TON of them for my iPad. NONE of them are perfect. But the newest one ( I bought it at Best Buy just yesterday ), is my favorite one so far. Let’s just jump ahead a bit and show you a piece I did with the WACOM INTUOS CREATIVE STYLUS last night as I was subjected to yet another episode of “Project Runway”. Hey, what can I say… I live in a house of girls. At least the “contestants” ( my LEAST favorite of whom I drew in the pic above ) are artists and it’s not that ridiculous “America’s Next Top Model” that I sometimes have to pretend to watch. It’s at least slightly interesting. But I digress…

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What YOU really want to know about is what this stylus can DO, right? Well, take a look at the photo here that  I took of my hand drawing in my favorite app, ArtStudio. Niiice line, right? The Intuous Creative Stylus gets its Pressure Sensitivity via Bluetooth, and it works pretty darn well.  It still has the annoying rubber tip, but this stylus is by far the best I’ve used so far on the iPad. It seemed to work really well in Art Studio, Sketchbook Pro, ProCreate, and the new Sketchbook Ink apps. Oh, and in Wacom’s own Bamboo app, too. But I’m not a big fan of that one yet. ( Still waiting for my second fave app, SketchClub, to support it.)

 

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WHY do I like this stylus best? For one, it has a great design and just feels good in your hand. It’s a bit heavy toward the tip, but not too bad. Very similar to my pen I use on my Wacom Cintiq each day. Plus, it actually DOES give you real pressure sensitivity, unlike most of the styluses ( styli ? ) I have tried thus far ( despite their claims ). I’ve been Googling for more info about this pen since I first used it, and it has something called a “Z-Axis”. Seems pretty technical to an artistic mind like mine, but they may be talking about the very thing I like best about it – it has a “bounce”, similar to a brush pen, or even a crowquill pen. I like it so much that even with the Bluetooth turned off, in programs like the aforementioned Sketch Club, it is still my favorite stylus for the iPad. Now is it worth $99? Yeah, I think it is. At least compared to all the other disappointing styluses ( styli ? ) out there!

 

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iPad Caricature: Sean Gleason

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I take a sketchbook and my iPad on any trip I go on. In the Summer particularly, we seem to travel a lot ( One of these days I am going to have to finish and publish one of the many autobio comic stories I have started of some of our trips).

Anyway, for today’s post, Here is a quick sketch iPad caricature I drew this Summer of a buddy of mine ( Hi, Sean! ) at the AMC ( Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita ) convention. ( Visit the AMC Support page at http://www.amcsupport.org/ )

iPad caricatures: Sherlock

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A quick iPad caricature of Benedict Cumberbatch of the latest Star Trek movie and Sherlock Holmes fame on BBC. Just playing around with some different brushes in Art Studio….

iPad Caricatures: James Thomas

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I’m not sure if it’s the upgrade to iOS7 or not, but for some reason this past week, ArtStudio on my iPad has been acting weird. Even basic tools like the Paint bucket have been working erratically. So, what do you do when the “normal” way you work doesn’t work anymore? Change the way you work! That’s what I had to do midway through a live digital caricaturing event I was performing at last week. I’ll see if I can find some of those pix and share them here. I went for a “rougher”, more natural tools looking style, instead of really smooth, slick brushes. I also colored on a lower layer, with a big brush rather than the aforementioned paint bucket, leaving some rim lighting within the lines. This is a drawing I did after the gig, of fellow caricaturist James Thomas, as I continued to play around in this new style. It kind of has a more illustrative quality, so I may keep doing stuff his way.