A couple of days ago, I clicked through a link from a post on Twitter about a caricature of Stephen Fry that had been drawn on an iPad, using the Adonit Jot Touch stylus. I've been curious about the Adonit Jot styluses since I read about them somewhere a while back (I think they were the object of a Kickstarter campaign). Their defining feature is a transparent circular disc at the tip of the stylus, which is presumably part of the the touch capacitive bit, since I gather that you need to generate a certain amount of surface area contact with the iPad screen in order to register with the device. The point of the Adonit transparent tip is that it allows you to see the point of contact with the screen and thus see more precisely where you're drawing.
In my own experiments with drawing on the iPad, I've stuck with the the Wacom stylus that I bought, mostly because I shelled out money for the bloody thing (it wasn't that cheap) and because the tip on the Adonit stylus looked a bit too delicate for our household (with two children under four years) and prone to breakage. When I heard about the 'Jot Touch' though, my curiosity was piqued, since it claims to allow you to vary the pressure when you're sketching: one big drawback with drawing on the iPad is the lack of pressure sensitivity. The app I use, 'procreate,' has some capacity to vary the thickness of stroke depending on how quickly you move the stylus, but I've found this hard to control to any useful degree. I'm very much enjoying figuring out how to paint on the iPad, but regret some of the flexibility and control that comes with using physical media.*
The caricature of Fry reminded me of my own juvenile effort for Broadsheet, fifteen years ago (gulp) and I posted a tweet that said as much (although, unsurprisingly, got no reply from Stephen Fry). I'm not sure the original was a good (or nice) joke about Fry's difficulties at the time, but it was my second attempt at caricature, I think (the first being a very crude rendition of Quentin Tarentino to accompany a review of 'Pulp Fiction') and I thought the likeness reasonable and was very pleased with.
So, the point of this rambling post is that I had another go, revisiting my original parody of Fry's 'Smooth Bar-steward' ads for Heineken. I've posted the painting I made on the iPad at the top and posted below an inked version of the pencil sketch I used as the basis for the iPad version (apologies for the poor quality - I don't have access to a scanner under present conditions) for comparison. For some reason, I think the inked version is a better likeness than the digital painting.
* Actually, the blog posting and video on the Adonit site is disappointing when it comes to unveiling the effects and advantages of the touch-sensitive version of their stylus. Nothing about varying line thickness, just a bit of warble about building colour. BIG HINT: If Adonit want to send me one for free, I'd be happy to put it through its paces (at $99 I can't afford to buy one) and blog about it extensively!
