GADGET GURU
T3’ s artiste en résidence sketches out a more beautiful world for you
Want to filter what your kids see online? Ready to better your digital artistry skills? Wondering why your phone’s battery drains so fast? Guru has the answers
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 (£399) hooked up to your computer’s US B port offers a much more granular level of control and adding pressure sensitivity. Better still, an iPad Pro (£619) with an Apple Pencil (£89), because you can draw on the screen without the jarring disconnect between pen and cursor. Better better still – Wacom’s Cintiq line (the £1,750 Cintiq 27QHD is the best) is the business, and Microsoft’s painfully priced £2,999 Surface Studio, particularly if you’ve picked up the £90 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 (£175) 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 Optoma HD 143X (£500), 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.