David A. Windham thumbnail

Lisa

tomato drawing

The sketch above is my first attempt at using Adobe Fresco on my new iPad. It’s mostly just two ‘oil brushes’ and ‘pencil’ traced from a photo of a tomato I grew last year thinking about this years garden. It took me about four hours while listening to Smartless1. I mostly just wanted to show off my drawing but I’ve also been thinking about the iPad itself. I had explained the reasoning for buying it in my last two posts2,3 ,but I also got it because my better half is working long hours on a doctorate which means that I’m now avoiding the television in the evenings and I’m keeping myself occupied by drawing while listing to podcasts and audiobooks. I named her ‘lisa’ for a couple reasons. It’s a reference to the 1983 Apple computer4, Leonardo’s Mona5, and The Simpson6 since I’ve been watching all of the episodes again.

Once again, Apple managed to hit my bank account again all while AAPL stock has gone down in the last couple months. The 12.9″ model costs about the same as my last 13″ Macbook pro. I joked with the staff when I picked it up that I now like to make matching company contributions to AAPL stock anytime I buy a device from them. I’m old enough to remember the Apple Newton and I remember watching Steve Jobs preview both the first iPod and iPhone. I never had a Newton or an iPod, but I jumped on version 1 of the iPhone because I recognized the potential and was neck deep in web development at the time. I got also got the first version of the iPad when it was released. I wasn’t really impressed. I felt like Apple was just expanding the novelty of the hand held touch devices in a larger format. We’ve had several versions of iPad since, but it’s never really felt like an integral part of my workflow excepting for anything other than a browsing device lying around the house. This one feels a bit different, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

The Magic keyboard and Apple pencil should be required accessories. Apple should just package them together. I also added a unique screen covering called Paperlike7 after reading some reviews from illustrators on using the iPad. It gives a little bit of friction to the surface making the pencil strokes much more natural. It doesn’t interfere with anything else aside from adding a bit more anti-reflective quality to the screen. The screen is crazy good mainly because it’s borrowing the same mini LED technology from their five thousand dollar Liquid Retina XDR display. Only drawback of the display I’ve found thus far is that I’m now extremely disappointed with my current monitor setup and I’ve been digging through specs on getting a new monitor while trying to avoid the bill on the XDR8. My favorite monitors ever where the 27″ backlit Apple Cinema displays, but I’ve been wanting to ditch my dual monitors. Dear Apple, please make monitors again… preferably a 38+” 4K with the mini-LED sans the XDR price tag. The camera is also just straight up powerful when coupled with the display. I generally use my FujiFilm X-T3 if I’m ever out hunting photos, but it really makes me want to dongle the iPad display to the camera if I ever had to shoot seriously. I’ve really come to appreciate working with images on it and I can see where it’d fit in nicely to a photographer or videographer’s workflow.

It’s not just the display, camera, pencil or keyboard… it’s mainly the horsepower. I can get the spinning beachball of death9 bouncing with just a couple hundred layers of brushstrokes in Photoshop or Illustrator on my current 16GB i9 Macbook pro. Import those into After Affects and it’s a beach ball party. Although the iPad has the same amount of memory, it’s both theoretically limited by iOS while the software has been optimized for iOS. I haven’t seen a glitch yet, but I’m sure I will once I get lost in a five hour session. I’m planning on switching my desktop and laptop out to ARM later this year. Needless to say, tablet computers and ARM are here to stay. I just published this web post using the iPad and I hope it inspires me to do some more illustrations. Quite frankly, I’m impressed that it’s working on nicely for both work and play. I hope the latter doesn’t take precedence, because I’ve been enjoying it more than the writing code. I came into development through the design door and that’ll likely be my exit too.

  1. Smartless Podcast – https://smartless.simplecast.com/
  2. ARM – https://davidawindham.com/arm/
  3. Age 50 – https://davidawindham.com/age-50/
  4. Apple Lisa – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
  5. Mona Lisa – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
  6. Lisa Simpson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Simpson
  7. Paperlike – https://paperlike.com/
  8. Apple Pro Display XDR – https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/
  9. Spinning pinwheel – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel