Artists, grab your iPad and Windows laptop. Astropad Studio for PC is here. Photo: Astropad
Astropad released the first Windows version of Astropad Studio, software that turns an iPad into a drawing tablet wirelessly communicating with a laptop or desktop. With it, artists can mirror their favorite professional drawing or painting apps on the tablet, including using an Apple Pencil with Windows software.
Kids of all ages can enjoy learning to draw themselves as a Peanuts character. Screenshot: Apple
Free training sessions at Apple Stores ended with the pandemic, but have now moved to YouTube. The first of these online Today at Apple sessions shows how to draw yourself as a Peanuts character.
It’s not complicated — Peanuts characters are relatively simple shapes. Even so, there’s plenty of room for customization. Plus, all the software is free and not even a stylus is required.
Whether you already love to draw, or always wished you could, these courses will show you traditional and creative ways to render your vision. With lifetime access to the coursework, you can learn at your own pace. But you’d better jump on this deal right now if you want to take advantage of a massive 97% price cut on the four-course bundle.
Are you drawn to draw with your new Apple Pencil 2? Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac
Got a new Apple Pencil? Once the initial novelty wears off, you might find that it spends most of its time magnetically clipped to the side of your iPad Pro or, worse, stuck in the back of a drawer. After all, there are only so many PDFs to annotate and screenshots to mark up.
Which is a great shame, because what your Apple Pencil really wants to do is create art. You only appreciate the true joy of owning one when you draw with it. So, why not follow this handy how-to guide and start sketching lifelike portraits of friends and family? It’s a really fun hobby.
Computers are great for lots of things, but not everything. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Computers — the iPad, the Mac and anything else where a screen is the main form of interaction — are creativity killers. They distract, frustrate and get in the way of the flow that is essential to any creative work.
That’s not to say they don’t play an important part in art, music, photography or writing. It’s just that a lot of the time, there are much better tools for the job — and they’re getting more popular all the time.
Drawing skills let you create in any medium. Photo: Andrea Nepori
Today’s how-to is a little different. I won’t be recommending special apps for learning how to draw, or even AR apps that help you trace pictures onto real paper. Instead, I’m going to give you a few tips that will help you draw what you see in front of you, whether you’re using a pencil and paper, brush and canvas, or iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.
But first, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that you already know how to draw — you just need to learn how to look. The bad news is that the only way to improve is to practice. A lot. There’s no shortcut. You just have to do a lot of drawing.
Apples Stores will sell you the iPads and Apple Pencils. "Today at Apple" will show how to use them. Photo: Apple
More than 60 new sessions to teach Apple users how to get the most creatively from their apps and devices will be added to the “Today at Apple” program, the company announced in New York today.
Held at Apple Stores around the world, the sessions offer primers on essential hardware and software in the Apple ecosystem. Each workshop is headed by local creative professionals teaching coding, digital drawing, photography, video and making music.
This is how it feels to use iOS 12's new Markup tools Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
iOS 12 doesn’t really have any huge new standout features. It’s more a collection of really solid improvements to iOS 11. It sounds odd to say that my favorite new feature is Do Not Disturb during Bedtime, but it’s made a big difference in how I use my iPhone.
Likewise with today’s Pro Tip. iOS markup for screenshots, PDFs and Photos was already good, but new options for the pen tools make it great.