If you are considering using your iPad for cartooning, it couldn’t be a better time for it. Back in the day, cartooning on the iPad used to be a huge downer — no matter what stylus you used (and there were plenty of options, many of them pricey) — the results were just … sad ☹️.
And there was a specific reason for those woeful iPad for cartooning results
You know how when you use a soft-ish pencil, you can make lighter and darker marks, as well as vary the width of your lines by pressing harder and softer? Well, that was an experience that the old iPad technology (not sure whether it was the fault of the device, or the styluses, or both) just couldn’t replicate.
Until suddenly they could
The massive game changer was the invention of the Apple Pencil. Pressure sensitive and incredibly responsive, cartooning with the Apple Pencil was just a treat. Cartoonist heaven!
Now, with more and more of us owning iPads, plus the proliferation of drawing and sketching apps out there, the list of things to consider if you want to cartoon on your iPad may seem to get longer and longer.
- Which iPad should you get?
- Apple Pencil or some other stylus?
- What app to use?
- Should you even use an iPad if you are a beginner?
On and on it goes, and of course there are answers to all these questions…
Which iPad should you get?
You don’t need the latest, greatest iPad. As long as the iPad you get can work with an Apple Pencil, you can cartoon on it and achieve excellent results. So yes, you definitely need an Apple Pencil as well — no other stylus will do.
I currently work with the iPad Pro 9.7” and a first generation Apple Pencil and it works perfectly. These days you don’t even need an iPad Pro technology — my daughter has an iPad 6 and it also works with the Apple pencil. Every iPad beyond the iPad 6 does, apparently.
What iPad illustration app should you use?
I recommend an app called Procreate. It’s incredibly powerful, a pleasure to use and improving almost every year (without you constantly being asked to pay for an upgrade).
It’s a very reasonable price — around US$10 at the time of writing — which may seem expensive for ‘an app’ but dead cheap when you compare it to software like Photoshop, which is totally replaces.
There’s a something of learning curve, but that will be the case no matter what drawing software you choose.
What about beginners? Are there reasons NOT to use an iPad if you’re a beginner?
Years ago I would have said, “Start with paper and pencil and get your drawing skills first. You can always learn the technology later”.
My rationale back then was that technology is not a magic wand that will magically turn you into a cartoonist – you first need to learn to draw. And if you attempt two learning curves at once, the tech becomes a distraction more than a tool.
But, my opinion has changed a bit since then…
I’ve found the ease of iPad cartooning really helps beginners — because they can experiment easily…
Using your iPad for cartooning, and specifically the Procreate app alongside your Apple Pencil, makes it incredibly easy to experiment and that really seems to light people’s creative fire.
You have different nibs, pencils and brushes at your fingertips.
You can colour stuff without either having to learn to watercolour or busting out the pencil crayons and getting an overuse injury through colouring miles of blue sky blue and acres of brown ground!
You can tweak and erase, or just delete and start all over again.
“I really wish I had learned Procreate first and used it from the beginning.”
I’ve heard this numerous times in the last few years from people who (on my advice 🤭) put off starting to use their iPad for cartooning until after they had learned to draw.
I have had others who started out with zero interest in using technology ‘go over to the Tech Side’ and convert to cartooning on the iPad with Procreate simply because of the stellar work they saw their course peers doing.
So yes, if you are a beginner and you want to make use of your cartoons (and let’s face it, don’t we all want to make use of our cartoons — on birthday cards, on blogs or websites, as gifts for friends and family?) then you can benefit from cartooning digitally from the very beginning. It’s just a matter of getting to grips with Procreate first.