Can tech help me make better art?

A pen tablet hooked up to your computer’s USB port offers a much more granular level of control and pressure sensitivity

AThat would depend on your preferred medium, and what tech you’re trying to use – chipping away at a block of marble with the corner of an iPad won’t get you very far. If you’re a digital artist, it’s important to get as much control as you possibly can. A pen tablet, such as the Wacom Intuos Pro Medium ($499) hooked up to your computer’s USB port offers a much more granular level of control and adding pressure sensitivity. Better still, an iPad Pro ($979) with an Apple Pencil ($145), because you can draw on the screen without the jarring disconnect between pen and cursor. Better better still – Wacom’s Cintiq line (the $3,699 Cintiq 27QHD is the best) is the business, and Microsoft’s painfully priced $4,699 Surface Studio, greatly enhanced by the $150 Surface Dial peripheral, is probably the best draw-on-screen experience going.

For more traditional media, GaGu has a few suggestions. Moleskine’s Pen+ Ellipse ($339) can translate pen sketches into digital versions which you can work on later. If you want to go the other way, why not consider pointing a projector at your canvas and using it as a guide? Something cheap like the Sony MP-CL1A ($749), is all you need – then it’s up to you to go town with the pencils and oils.

Speaking of which, there’s been a lot of technological investment in paint hues. Look at Stuart Semple’s extra-bold pigments – the reallyvery-black Black 2.0, made as a snipe against the exclusivity of Vantablack, and PINK, which is, er, pink. But so pink.