What happens when you get Ceindy a Wawa White Chocolate Mocha in the afternoon? A Ceindy that’s blogging at 2 a.m. Oops. Anyways, the point of this blog is to ooo and ahhh over my new technological bff my iPad Pro. I’ve had it for a few months now and I’ve gotta say I LOVE IT!
Side note about the featured image – my son was watching me write I love my iPad and added in and my son. And who am I to disagree?
About a year ago, I was ANTI-IPAD for the LONGEST TIME. I thought it was an easy way out, it was going to take away the authenticity of lettering, it was bastardizing the soul of HAND lettering and I WAS NOT GOING TO FALL FOR IT. But then, I did. I fell for it, like the pizza at the end (okay, beginning) of the week. And I thought, just like that pizza, I would feel sick to my stomach after a few hours, and I did – because damn that’s a lot of money to drop on a tablet. But like that pizza, I got over it and still had to eat the cheesiest, biggest slice I can. Well, I guess I didn’t really because I didn’t get the 12-inch, but I did splurge on the newest 10.5-inch and the Apple Pencil, or as the grouchy Target cashier said, “$100 stylus.” No sir, it’s not a stylus – you can’t just use it anywhere (eye-roll).
So why do I love it so much?
UNDO! SCALE! REPOSITION! It’s like all the bad parts of hand-lettering made easier. Oops, your kid or dog bumped into you? You don’t have to rework those hours of marker work, just double tap and undo! Oops, you didn’t quite center it? Just select and drag it on over. Seriously, it’s cut my time working in half. Wanting to show a client color samples or better ideas of what their sketches will turn out as? BAM. DONE. My newest love for this tablet is how EASY it is to make my own letters become cut-outs, like one hundred times easier. (For example the piece below.)
Here are the iPad Drawing and sketch.
But is the lettering on an iPad really HAND lettering?
Yes! Mostly. I’m still drawing all of the letters by hand. Yes, the brushes do help make the thicks and thins very smooth, but it’s with my own hand’s pressures that it is creating that specific look, thanks to that $100 stylus. And yes, there is some automatic smoothing on some of the brushes; I have mine at the juuust riiiight sweet spot for myself. But overall, it’s still many hours staring at a screen (which was what I was trying to deter from when I picked up lettering, how funny things get.)
Do I still letter with pencil and paper?
I still yearn for the authenticity of a good pencil-sketch. (In fact, I created a whole styled shoot invitation suite in graphite, all old school, almost no iPad magic at all. And can I just say, friggen gorgeous!) So, yes – I do still do many sketches in pencil, sometimes the ideas just fly out faster. And yes, I still work with a scanner and lightbox – but I seriously haven’t had all the spare time in the world to play with pens and ink and paint like I used to. There’s little setting up and cleaning up when it comes to an iPad drawing, so it’s hard to choose traditional mediums over the digital kind when you’re really pressed for time.
So there you have it, my new technological bff. I could probably go on for hours, but I think the coffee buzz is wearing down. Have questions about my process or iPad? Email me at ceindyton@gmail.com
P.S. Between me starting the blog and finishing it, I bought my mom an mp3 player… Online shopping at 2 a.m. was probably not the best idea…
P.P.S Between this blog post and creating an image for the blog post I set up my mom’s mp3 player and she LOVED it, so good job 2 a.m. Ceindy, good job.
