Improve your iPad artwork using these six iPad styluses designed for sketching, drawing and painting.
There are so many amazing iPad apps for artistsand iPad apps for designers, but painting, drawing or sketching in those apps just using stubby fingers can feel a little clumsy, and we've found it often shows. That's why it's helpful to have an iPad stylus for precision and accuracy to get the results you want.
There are several different types of stylus for iPad, and we show you a variety of different options here. Some connect to the iPad using Bluetooth for accurate pressure sensitivity, palm rejection and other features. Others, such as Adobe's Ink, actually connects to the cloud to work seamlessly with the company's desktop apps.
You'll also find that some styluses have different styles of tip or nib to help you achieve the results you're aiming for. Some are brush-like, while others are like pencils, pastels or pens.
Here's a round-up of the best iPad styluses (or styli) for artists and designers we've seen.
1.Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus 2Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus 2
Available for £60, Wacom's Intuos Creative Stylus 2 is aimed at those who don't want to shell out for one of Wacom's Cintiq Companions but has an iPad at their disposal. It gives you the tip sensitivity of a Cintiq pen – that's 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity – and the professional, lightweight feel shared by other Wacom stylus products.
Link it up to your iPad mini, iPad or iPad Air through Bluetooth 4.0 and you've got a ready-made Cintiq, to all intents and purposes. Note that the iPad Air 2 is not fully supported, as is the case with most Bluetooth-connected styluses at present.
This second generation of the stylus has a much smaller and more precise tip and better palm rejection, and works with apps including several ofAdobe's apps, ArtRage, Astropad, Autodesk apps,Procreate and more.
2. Adobe Ink & Slide
Adobe has introduced its own stylus called the Ink, which comes with a companion in the form of a ruler called Slide. Ink & Slide are designed to be used with the iPad and four free creative iPad apps: Adobe Illustrator Line, Illustrator Draw, Photoshop Sketch and Brush CC.
The stylish, aluminium tools represent the first hardware devices from Adobe, created in partnership with Adonit. What's cool about Ink & Slide is their connection with Creative Cloud. Ink can be used to copy and paste images via the cloud, sending sketches to Photoshop or Illustrator on your desktop for further refinement later.
Slide can be used to draw straight lines, as you might expect, but touch-based buttons on the surface also allow you to draw precise circles, French curves and more.
As with the Wacom stylus, the Adobe Ink and Slide are not currently fully compatible with the iPad Air 2.
3. Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus
A less expensive option designed with painting in mind is the Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus. It's not Bluetooth connected or pressure sensitive like the Creative Stylus 2 or Adobe Ink, but it only costs around £30 and is actually really cool.
It's different from many of the other styluses we've seen because it takes the form of a paintbrush. That brush has metallic particles embedded into its bristles to make it conductive. There's also a rubber-tipped stylus at the opposite end, too.
Find out more about the Sensu Brush in our Sensu Brush iPad paintbrush review by artist Pete Fowler.
If you like the idea of the Sensu Artist Brush & Stylus but aren't bothered about the rubber tip, you can get the slightly cheaper Sensu Solo that only includes the brush end. Plus it comes in five rather nice colour options and has a handle that's shaped like a traditional paintbrush.
4. Ten One Pogo Connect 2
Another Bluetooth connected stylus now, this one from Ten One Design. You should be able to pick one up for £45, so it's quite a bit cheaper than Wacom and Adobe's offerings. You might spend additional cash if you want the magnetically replaceable nibs, though.
The basic Pogo Connect comes with a standard rubber tip, but there are additional tips available including note-taking tips, precision tips, a premium brush tip, straight brush tip and angled brush tip, all of which are pressure sensitive.
5. Nomad iPad brushes
Similar to the Sensu Brush are Nomad's range of capacitive brushes for iPad. They're not the best-looking gadgets in the world, but they each have brush tips that make creating virtual paintings on an iPad feel much more like painting with real paint.
The Nomad brushes each cost around £25 (although you'll find some for as little as £10 on Amazon), and options include Nomad Compose with two types of brush tip, Nomad Flex with a more flexible brush tip and the Nomad Mini 2 with a retractable brush on one end and a rubber stylus on the other.
6. FiftyThree Pencil
This last one is a bit different to the others in this list, but we've found that it's actually really great for accuracy and speed. It's made by FiftyThree, the makers of the Paper app, so integrates deeply with the drawing and sketching software.
The FiftyThree Pencil stylus, which costs from £39.99, does use Bluetooth, but not for pressure sensitivity like the other Bluetooth styluses in this round-up. Instead, it's used to implement features like palm rejection, multiple tools, blend mode with your finger, erase and more.
Even though there's no built-in pressure sensitivity, the tip has been cleverly designed to allow you to create lines of all sizes by using the point of the stylus for fine details and the tip's angled edge for broad strokes. The opposite end of the stylus acts as an eraser.
These features only work with selected apps for now though, including Paper (of course), some Adobe apps, Procreate and others. You'll find the full list here.
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