We’ve talked about art apps, tablets you can plug into your PC, some with screens, some without. But what’s missing… oh yeah! Portable tablets! iPads and Android tablets, and maybe even some more.
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Before we get into it, a quick note on drawing with phones. This is going to be a similar challenge to drawing with a mouse. But I’ll admit I wasn’t really giving the full picture when I suggested that you continue a traditional practice rather than use a mouse. So I’ll make a clear point here: If you want to use a mouse or a phone to learn the concepts of digital art with an app, and even practice your skills, you can. If you’re also using that as your only outlet to learn how to draw, you’re adding a lot of challenges that you probably don’t want. If you’re limited to these options, I highly highly recommend still practicing traditional to get the drawing skills down, while you try out the digital workflows using what you have. I say this to try to keep you motivated in your learning, so that you don’t get caught struggling with limitations of a mouse or phone, but I’ll support you either way.
Let’s just start with the easy one: iPads. If you’ve got any iPad that supports an Apple Pencil… boom, you’re done. I’m gonna be grasping at straws for what to say here, because this is actually one of the categories of things that, yes, just works. The Apple Pencil was made for an iPad, and the entire iPad OS takes advantage of it. Almost every app, even those that have nothing to do with writing or drawing, usually does too. There’s nothing to set up or install. Even pairing the pencil just means sticking it onto the side of the tablet and… you’re done.
You do need to make sure that you buy the kind of Apple Pencil that works with the iPad you have or want, because there are a few kinds around. Two of them charge wirelessly, the oldest one has to plug in to charge – but they all do the job very well. Same for iPads: if you want to draw, pretty much all of them can do it, and you won’t even be missing out by buying a less-expensive or used one. If you find yourself wondering if you get an Air vs a Pro, for example: get the Air. You’d know if you needed the Pro… and typically you don’t. The only thing I’ll call out is that, at the moment, the base model iPad only works with the plug-in Apple Pencil. If that doesn’t bug you, you’re good. All of that considered, if you’re feeling OK on the money side, my general recommendation is the iPad Air: it’s got most of the nice stuff that the Pro has without the hefty pricetag. Once again, I’ll put some recommendation links in the description, but no impulse buying!
On all iPads and Pencils: you get pressure and tilt. On newer iPads you get hover support which in many art apps means you can see the brush cursor before tapping on the screen. And if you have the Apple Pencil Pro, you even get the ability to squeeze and roll the pen to spin brushes and trigger extra menus, but I’ll admit that’s just a nice convenience. The base model stuff is all great too! iPads are made to be creative tools and they do that so, so well.
The app ecosystem really makes it shine, though: there are so many high quality art apps on iPads: Procreate. Art Studio Pro. Realistic Paint Studio. So many more, and while not all of them are exclusive to iPads, they’re once again made to work very, very well with that Apple Pencil. Procreate was what convinced me to finally get an iPad myself, after never previously owning any Apple products. I caved, and I’m hooked. Procreate’s not perfect, but the experience beats so, so many others. I know many of you might not be super excited about Apple’s closed OS, and I don’t think anyones really comfy with Apple’s rather nasty behavior with their app store, but as a tool made for creatives, it nails it.
Anyway. Enough of that. tl;dr: if you have no strong opinions, buy an iPad and you won’t be sad. Let’s talk about Android. When I was putting this video together, I was really skeptical about Android-based tablet hardware for drawing, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. I even went and bought a tablet to try this out myself (no, this channel doesn’t make that much money, but I have another use for this around the house). I got a Galaxy Tab S9 FE, which is less expensive than most tablets and yet still pretty decent. It comes with a Wacom-style pen that doesn’t need charging, and supports pressure, tilt, and hover. Honestly? It’s pretty good! With that hardware, I was pretty excited to dig back into Android apps for art, but… this is where things got complicated.
I’ve found… a couple apps I can recommend. This isn’t another art app video though, so I’ll be quick: Krita works pretty well, has special support for the S Pen on a Galaxy Tab, and supports pretty much everything the PC version does. I tweaked a few settings to give me more space to draw on, but it worked pretty well. Clip Studio Paint also runs well on this, but I’m only recommending you use this if you already have it or know it well – see this video on why. The app “Sketchbook”, formerly owned by Autodesk but now independent, is one of those ones that’s pretty simple, but it does things correctly and gives me Paint Tool SAI vibes in a good way.
For completeness sake, I also tried some more: Infinite Painter feels really nice and I’d love to recommend it, but it isn’t capable of importing or completely exporting PSD. Which means you’re risking your source art being lost if this ever disappears or you want to move to a different app and bring your art with you.
And then there’s the adware problem. Time for a little rant. Not unique to Android but certainly most visible here: there are several apps with a high amount of downloads that stuff themselves full of ads, sometimes requiring subscriptions to remove them. They tend to have UIs that don’t help you get to drawing quickly, or have options in completely nonsensical locations. I think they’ve largely gained popularity because they’re free, and sustain themselves with ads. Let’s look at these because I know some of you will yell at me in the comments if I don’t cover them.
Now, one more quick bit here. If you use one of these apps and like it, great! Keep using it, don’t listen to me. I want people just getting started to know what they’re getting into by choosing something like this, and show some alternatives that may be more productive for learning.
IbisPaint is probably the best of the few I’ll look at here, as it does support PSD and allows you to make a one-time purchase to remove ads. It glues itself to its own social service, has a rather confusing way of managing its gallery, and has some menus that are sometimes obnoxious. But… it passes my layer stress test, and once you get painting it does do it decently well.
HiPaint is sometimes suggested as an alternative here, but it seems to require a subscription to remove ads and arbitrary layer limits, and still similarly has a really disorganized interface. I also did not succeed in importing a PSD to properly test layers or exports, but it didn’t give me hope.
Medibang Paint seems to have a dedicated following, and for a while I was confused because it looked like it was missing a lot and also had a ton of ads. I realized recently that on iPad, Medibang Paint Pro exists, and it’s basically a completely different app. And that one is nice. But it’s not on Android. Supposedly it’s being worked on, but Android has plain Medibang Paint and… oh my. It’s got more ads than a free to play mobile game, and you have to buy a subscription to remove them. I was super frustrated trying to use this. If any of you know some magic secret about this app that I don’t, let me know.
ANYWAY! I guess we did just look at more art apps, but I felt it was necessary to show you what you might be in for on Android. You absolutely can paint on an Android tablet! Just be aware that you might have to search around more, and deal with subscriptions more often than other tablets. If you’ve got your own recommendations, toss ’em in the comments.
What about the Microsoft Surface? Hey, this one’s quite nice and can work for most drawing applications with the stylus it comes with. But it’s at a price point where if you’re looking to buy one of these, you’ve probably already done your research and specifically want a Windows machine. Go get ’em! I support you too.
Assignment time again! Try another art app, try all of the things we’ve done before in that app. Get a feel for how that works: knowing how to find these features again will help you feel more at home in any art app, and empower you to jump around more.
Up next: Right after this video (like, now, I made these at the same time), we’ll look at how you can use these standalone tablets like PC connected ones! Hop right on over to that if you’re interested. After that, we will get into the mechanics of digital art with layers. See you there!
| Production Info | |
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| VRChat World | Sea Breeze by WispyWoo |
| VRChat Avatar | Vulper by Royalty, Meaty, and Reval |