Art made on the iPad

The iPad was first deemed a dud because it was a device for consuming media, not creating it. Some didn’t get that message and started creating digital paintings that are selling.

These works of art could easily be mistaken for oil paintings or watercolours – but they’ve actually been created on an iPad. The pictures were created using fingers and apps such as Brushes, ArtStudio and Sketchbook Pro. The device is attracting established artists, who are abandoning canvases in favour of the 9.7-inch iPad screen. And some iPad prints are being sold for hundreds of pounds. Corliss Blakely, 59, was one of the first professional artists to put an iPad painting on the internet. An artist for much of her life, she had worked with traditional oil paints before switching to the less traditional medium. Now prints of her work can be bought for up to £220

4 thoughts on “Art made on the iPad

  1. I don’t understand this. I guess it’s just the irrational aspect of it being done on the magical iPad. Artists have been painting digitally for years, even when all we had was Photoshop 5.

    I’ve been using the Motion LE1600 slate for a while now. I was disappointed that it didn’t catch on with artists. It seemed a natural. It weighs about 3 lbs, has the Wacom Intuos pen and is pressure sensitive. The company has geared the product more toward use in the medical and contractor sectors, though.

  2. There’s always a HUGE market for simplicity. The market for complexity is mostly for Geeks and is much, much smaller.

    Interestingly, professional Geeks dismissed the iPhone in much the same, foolish and shortsighted way they dismissed the iPad… And when I heard the exact same critiques I had heard before about the iPhone, I knew Apple had a monster hit on their hands. I’ll be getting an iPad sometime next year and I look forward to the painting apps I know I’ll be using and launching with a single click.

    Your Motion LE1600 slate uses Windows XP, an operating system that was never designed to be used with a stylus OR touch sensitivity – and if your main OS is a kludge, so then is the user experience… However, the pressure sensitivity is a real plus and I expect Apple to come out with a more “pro” version of the iPad within a few years time that incorporates a real stylus (you can use a special “squishie-tipped stylus” that imitates a tiny finger, but it only simulates pressure sensitivity a little bit).

  3. I don’t see finger painting on a 10-inch screen much of an advancement in art. It’s all about the Apple cool factor. And judging by the way Apple does things now, the iPad will be obsolete in a couple years.

    Apple disappointed when they didn’t develop the tablet they had promised. You’d think that artists would account for a big enough market share to create one. I guess Wacom has taken that share of the market, though, with Cintiq. But it’s still a desktop product.

    But, Apple’s market is the gadget-crazy consumer.

    I like being able to sit in the recliner with my slate and draw. There are two apps that are awesome for this: Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage. They’re designed for tablets and are not clunky at all.

    XP was designed to incorporate a tablet and stylus, as well as voice commands.

  4. (QUOTE)________________________
    I don?t see finger painting on a 10-inch screen much of an advancement in art. It?s all about the Apple cool factor. And judging by the way Apple does things now, the iPad will be obsolete in a couple years.
    (ENDQUOTE)________________________

    Art is art – the tool is irrelevant – it’s the quality of the end result that matters. Before artists were using the iPad, they were using the iPhone. David Hockney (heard of him?) makes his art exclusively on the iPad and used the iPhone exclusively previously. Picasso famously merged a tricycle seat and bicycle handlebars to sculpt a bull. Art is art. Tools are just tools. A brush is just a brush. And YOU are using an “obsolete” tablet, an “obsolete” GADGET for that matter that never sold much. Why did tablets never catch on? Keep in mind it was Windows tablets that never caught on (klunky, kludgy, remember), where as Apple’s iPad is a gigantic hit with a completely different and TOUCH-CENTRIC OS. Does design matter? You better believe it…

    (QUOTE)________________________
    Apple disappointed when they didn?t develop the tablet they had promised. You?d think that artists would account for a big enough market share to create one. I guess Wacom has taken that share of the market, though, with Cintiq. But it?s still a desktop product.
    (ENDQUOTE)________________________

    Apple never “promised” diddley squat. Apple only disappointed geeks – which is a good thing, since geeks love complexity and for the iPad to prosper, it needed simplicity. The fact that you are calling the iPad a “disappointment” as its sales go through the roof shows you wanted it made for geeks, not regular people. Additionally, if Apple had added on pressure sensitivity, usb plugs galore, etc, etc, the price would have quickly gone to the stratosphere which, during a recession, would have been ill advised.

    (QUOTE)________________________
    But, Apple?s market is the gadget-crazy consumer.
    (ENDQUOTE)________________________

    You own a gadget. You are NOT their demographic. Other “smart” phones really ARE gadgets, i.e., complicated and tricky with many, many layers of tabs and windows, made for folks who don’t mind a rather huge amount of hard to understand technical stuff. The iPhone and iPad both have ONE actual button on the front and the learning curve is the lowest in the history of computing. The gadget crazy consumer will buy a Droid.

    (QUOTE)________________________
    I like being able to sit in the recliner with my slate and draw. There are two apps that are awesome for this: Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage. They?re designed for tablets and are not clunky at all.
    (ENDQUOTE)________________________

    Other folks like being able to sit in their recliners with their iPad and draw, too, and just like you, they use apps designed for their iPad: Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage and tons of others.

    For what it’s worth, I demoed at a few computer sales events drawing caricatures using a small Wacom Tablet years ago (16?), and I’m sure your tablet is vastly superior to that old tablet, especially with the excellent software you are using. However, the quality of the artist is more important than whether that artist is using a Cintiq or iPad or a stylus based Windows tablet…

    (QUOTE)
    XP was designed to incorporate a tablet and stylus, as well as voice commands.
    (ENDQUOTE)________________________

    That is true, however, a kludge is a kludge – just because they include a stylus driver doesn’t mean that OS was designed with that in mind during its development. Regular Windows XP does not include tablet and stylus support and only a specific version of the OS supports tablet and stylus commands, drivers, etc.

    The wiser path, not blazed by Microsoft (though they are working on it now) was Apple’s approach which needed a complete re-write of their OS to streamline the entire user experience around touch.

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