A weekend with an iPad 2. Resistance was occasionally futile...

Date: 27 March 2011 22:59:37

Two weeks ago the iPad 2 was released to fanfare and long, long qs in the US. It's still in short supply, the websites tell me (TUAW, Appleinsider, Macrumors, Endadget and more that I tend to have a scan through every other day or so), and as soon as units are made they're shipped to shops to be bought by a gleeful and often impatient public. Which is a retread of last year when the same thing happened, shop by shop, line by line.

The difference this year? Last year the lack of available units meant that the European launch was delayed by a month. This year it happened just when Apple said it would, two weeks after the US. And that meant I was going to be in a q to get one.

(Even with that short a wait I was very, VERY tempted to get on eBay and see what I could do to get it as early as possible. Madness, yes I know).

Because the iDevice, to me, is one of the most interesting and unique art tools yet created. It's an entirely new workflow towards creating works of art, and something that I've thrown myself into and found myself loving every second of. Without wanting to sound too overblown: the resistance is dead, it's time to dance.

Why resistance? Why not: I still love drawing with pen, ink, water soluble pencils and so on, don't get me wrong. I drew this happily in my sketchbook the other day (don't let the images fool you: drawing them was the better thing that had happened through the day) and found the process VERY therapeutic.

[caption id="attachment_2176" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Me, occasionally grumpy..."][/caption]

But all art, most art, until now has been resistive... A pencil scrapes against paper, a paint brush spreads out and bristles collide against the edges of roughened watercolour paper or push against a canvas and so on. Somewhere along the line something was pressing against an immovable object.

With the iPad it's different: your fingers literally dance on glass. You flow from one corner of the screen to another and the only resistance generally comes from an area of the screen you might not have cleaned well enough :) On an iDevice your finger presses against the window of a world of pixels who all want to come and play. It's... well, magical has been much overused. It's a very freeing media to work with and play with.

Issues? A couple: I found myself coming down with a worrying case of RSI after long painting sessions on the iPad which had never given me issue with the iPod touch (unsurprisingly given the difference in sizes between the two objects). That was fixed by getting a stylus (in the first instance a Pogo sketch, swiftly followed by a Dagi, an Alupen, Sketch socks and a Nomad paint brush, all of which I love for some reason or another. Hopefully soon I'll have a couple of pen cap stylii courtesy of Don Lehman and that'll coax me into trying to find their strength and best use) which takes a little away from the immediacy of using a finger against glass but has made life much more confortable. Similarly the art created is reliant on the apps you use and, in some cases, things just didn't click as much as they could. Sketchbook is brilliant and powerful yet the UI is clumsy and oddly placed. Brushes is brilliant yet lacks dropbox support, Ideas has a lot going for it yet some parts remain unfinished or off kilter with the smooth simplicity of the tools heart.

So, back to the q on the 25th. I'd been sick that week - a stomach bug picked up from my niece - and felt pretty rubbish on the two days I'd managed to make it in to work. I left an hour early on the Friday (and to be honest I leave an hour late far, FAR more often) and stood outside Solutions Inc in Guildford while my wife travelled to Cancom in Merrow. The plan was to buy a black 32 gig at Merrow and a white 32 in Guildford. Simple, right?

Yes, sorry, backtrack. 2 iPads. Not iPad 2. Well, to be perfectly clear: 2 iPad 2's. One white, one black.

You see the problem was (and is) that I just can't tell which is the best canvas to work on, as an artist. The black is great: the screen flows into the bezel and seems larger, the colours less constrained. The white, however, frames the screen perfectly and, more importantly, contains the imagery within the iPad rather than allowing the picture to leak out from the centre to the silver surround. From an eyeflow perspective I had a strong gut feeling that the white frame would be the best to go for but I wasn't 100% convinced. A friend who also wanted an iPad 2 said that if I bought mine at the same time as he did we could spend a week working out which would work best for who and then swap once a decision had been made. Sounded like a great (and very selfless on his part) plan to me so that's what we went for. The only fly in the ointment was that he needed me to sub him until payday which was doable, just.

So I was lucky enough to be able to q for an hour and a half, make a couple of phone calls and secure two units (whereas some people in the states have been q-ing for a lot longer and have less to show for it. Odd and strange). I went home and 6pm with one iPad, two covers and an HDMI cable and waited patiently for the other to arrive. And then I had two. I should have taken a photo at the time :) The other problem being that, within an hour of having both iPads on hand I was due out to lead at youth group and didn't get home until 10. Good timing.

(In fact it was a great group: football and hockey and craft and computer games and all sorts. We had a great time - they're a good bunch of brats we're working with at the moment :) )

Then, from Friday 10pm until, well, now, has been about the drawing, testing, loading apps and so on. (Actually there's been a few breaks: dinner with my dad, taking my mum and kids out for a walk, cooking lunch and so on. When I wasn't doing all of that it was iPad 2 time). Only got a few pics done so far but... first impressions?

It's great. Very sturdy and solid and stable. It's funny how lightweight and tired it makes the iPad 1 seem without doing all that much to distance itself from it. It's thinner, a touch lighter, faster, but you have to give the iPad 2 specific instances to prove itself to really see the difference (Autostitch FLIES for example). The screen seems a touch clearer and more contrasty.

But it feels much more solid - inside and out. It's a shame there's no retinal display, no SD card slot, no decent cameras. That'll be in next years update no doubt (retina and updated camera with facetime HD anyhow). But what there is is another solid update to something which was already game changing. The iPad is the future of computing as far as I'm concerned and drawing on them may well not be the future of art, but it's put some of the most powerful and exciting tools in the hands of potential artists like no other platform. Brushes is the Photoshop of the iPad and costs £2.99? £3.99? Can't remember. But I also can't remember a time when computer art tools have become so democratised*

(*Yes I'm aware that a pencil and paper costs a lot less, especially when you take into account the price of an iPad in the first place. But you can do substantially less with a pencil, for a start, and a pencil comes with a LOT of baggage whereas a simple and cheap painting app on an iPad does not. A pencil often comes engraved with a reminder that most people feel they cannot draw - as Jake Spicer of the Brighton Life Drawing Sessions says "the belief that you can't draw is a learnt adult skill". An art app that you just muck about with and, in some cases helps curve lines or animate strokes? Seems more egalitarian especially as an 8 gig iPod touch is equally useful when it comes to picking up an art app and playing).

Coming up: a couple of Youtube comparative vids and yet more pics. And, for me, a lot more fun in using the machine... Until next year where I dare say I'll be upgrading again :)

[caption id="attachment_2172" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Adobe Ideas picture. iPad 2. Dagi stylus."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2173" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Brushes app, iPad 2, Stylus sock."][/caption]

That second pic may take a smidge of explaining (a smidge? Maybe a little more...) Basically: I'm a big fan of a website called comictwart. It's a collection of twitter based comic book artists who take a theme a week and see who comes up with what. I've been following it for a year or so and having fun as I go. Last weeks subject was ketchup week (for the guys to catch up on what they might have missed while working to deadlines etc). This weeks subject was Emma Frost. Now, Emma Frost as a character I like, sort of, in as much as I don't read comics much anymore but appreciate the artistry. But she's also a pointer to what I don't like about comics: basically they are a bit silly and the girls are drawn... well.. not really with any sort of realism thrown into the mix. So Emma Frost, who is supposed to be a forty plus year old psychic, unpleasant, supercilious villain turned hero generally gets drawn, simply, as Jessica Alba in white underwear. Comictwart managed better and it's a shame that, for the most part, mainstream comics go for the cheap shot/easy option rather than something of more interest. Anyhow, that, and the ketchup, fed into my variation of the theme...

You can catch the Youtube video of the image made here.