Last week we got the new iPad Pro. And besides setting it up, one of the first things I wanted to do was test drive digital painting on the new iPad.
Why we Decided to Get a new iPad
My husband and I are fairly minimalist. For a number of reasons, we don’t like to own a ton of excess, nor do we like to take care of all that excess. In order to maintain this, we are very mindful of our purchases and we regularly take inventory/review what we’re using. Recently, we’ve noticed we could pair down our electronics a bit. In particular, we had an eight-year old macbook air and an older generation iPad that we used for very specific purposes. Also, both were fairly old and starting to slow down. So, we decided that we could get one device to replace both.
The requirements for the device were portability, (moderate) power, and a touch screen. I wanted something for general, light work (i.e., web browsing, writing, reading), as well as note taking and digital painting. To be honest, I never cared too much about tablets in the past. The touch screen capability was cool, sure, but they lacked power for how big they were, in my opinion. But now, the new iPad Pro is as powerful as a laptop, and can handle not only typical web surfing but also RAM-intensive tasks like digital painting on the iPad.
How Is Digital Painting on the new iPad
Let’s preface this section by stating I don’t do digital painting professionally. It’s just a hobby for me. That said, I am really liking digital painting on the iPad. Previously, I was using a Wacom Intuos Pro connected to my iMac for digital painting. And while I love the Wacom, the workflow requires a lot more stuff than being able to draw directly on a tablet. Not to mention, drawing on a tablet while looking at a different screen can take a bit to get used to.
In contrast, digital painting on the new iPad Pro, paired with the Apple Pencil (2nd generation), is intuitive and accurate with little-to-no lag. The pencil, while lacking some features that my Wacom has, has great pressure sensitivity and is a huge improvement on the 1st generation one with better charging and the double tap feature.
I still have to get used to used to the workflow and want to play around more with digital painting on the new iPad. But overall, I’m super happy to have made the (minimizing) switch!
