Best iPad Drawing Stylus – Turn Your iPad Into A Digital Canvas
Buying a high quality drawing tablet can be expensive.
Fortunately, the technology behind the iPad has improved enough for you to be able to create amazing digital art with it.
Especially in combination with one of the many drawing programs available, you can turn your iPad into a digital canvas.
The only thing you need is a good drawing stylus that can function as your brush.
Do you want to know which drawing stylus for the iPad works best? Keep reading.
Why use a special drawing pen for the iPad?
Using your fingers is the most common way to use the iPad. You can easily navigate your way by touching and swiping.
This works fine for finding an application or flipping the page of an e-book you are reading. But when it comes to making art, your fingertips are simply to big and clumsy.
Painting on an iPad with your fingers is not much different from finger painting. Even as an adult it is great fun, but it doesn’t give the best results.
Using a good stylus with a small tip can solve all these problems. You will have much better control over where you touch the screen and you will be able to work more detailed.
But knowing that you should use a stylus is one thing. And knowing which stylus to use is a completely different thing.
Finding the best iPad stylus for drawing
There are many styluses that can be used with the iPad.
Great, you might think, plenty of options to choose from!
Unfortunately, most of the styluses are made for taking notes. These styluses have a pretty wide tip, which isn’t ideal for drawing because you want to have maximum control over where you touch the screen.
So if you want to find a good stylus to draw with on your iPad, don’t simply buy the first one you see. Instead, keep the following 3 points in mind:
- Stylus tip: make sure the tip is not too big and that it is made of a material that little to no friction when moving on the screen.
- Compatibility: are you using an iPad Air, Pro or Mini? Some drawing styluses are only compatible with one version and not the other. Also check if the stylus is compatible with any drawing app you are using.
- Comfort: styluses come in all sizes and shapes. Make sure to get one that you can hold comfortably even for a long time.
Top 5 best styluses for iPad drawing
When you search for “drawing stylus” in the Amazon store it will give you more than 2000 results to go through.
Who has time to check out all these different styluses, right?
So I saved you the time and compiled a list of the 5 best styluses for drawing on your iPad.
1 Apple pencil
It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that one of the best drawing pencils for the iPad comes from Apple itself.
Simply plug in the connector in your iPad and the wireless connection will establish automatically.
It is comfortable to hold, is responsive and doesn’t show any signs of latency.
Depending on the pressure you exert, you can control the thickness of your strokes.
However, some of the downsides are that the Apple pencil doesn’t have an eraser on the back end and is probably the most expensive drawing stylus.
2 Adonit pixel
Adonit is one of the best manufacturers of styluses. Amongst all their styluses, the pixel model in particular is great for artists.
It has a 1.9 mm tip with good drag performance. As a result, this stylus gives a similar experience of a pen on paper.
Additionally, it has programmable buttons that can significantly speed up your drawing or painting.
3 Bamboo sketch
Wacom is known for their high-quality drawing tablets. But they also offer a variety of good drawing styluses.
As expected of such a respectable brand, the bamboo sketch comes with all the expected features such as pressure-sensitive tip, ergonomic design, and programable buttons.
But maybe the thing you will love the most is the battery life that lasts (almost) forever.
4 Hahakee iPad stylus
The Hahakee stylus has an aluminum body, sharp tip and even a clip. It feels just like using a real pen. It also comes with 4 replaceable rubber tips that you can use in case one of them breaks down.
However, the best thing about this iPad stylus is its long lifetime.
In its standby mode the stylus will last for 30 days, while it can operate for up to 40 hours when in active use. And when it is finally time to charge again, you can do so within 4 hours!
And if you forget to turn the stylus off after using it because are a little forgetful like me, it will automatically turn itself off after 2 minutes without use.
5 FiftyThree digital stylus
This stylus looks more like a pencil and as a result feels solid and comfortable while you hold it. It is even partially made out of real walnut wood.
This stylus is super flexible. It has a built-in eraser on the end to simplify your workflow and comes with palm rejection so you don’t have to worry about accidentally touching the screen with your hand.
The best part is that it is compatible with the iPad 3+, Mini, Pro and iPhone 4S and works with almost any of the major drawing software used on the iPad such as Procreate and Sketchbook.
