The combination of a large screen or canvas, solid performance, and the Apple Pencil turns the iPad into a small, portable studio that’s ideal for drawing, painting, designing, or animating—whether we’re just getting started or working professionally—anywhere, anytime. It’s like a notebook with infinite pages. So today we’ll see which are the best iPad apps to explore and unleash our creativity.
Procreate, Sketchbook, and Tayasui Sketches: drawing and painting on iPad
Procreate is the great creative classic on iPad: simple, intuitive, straightforward, and with a huge range of varied brushes and the most unexpected textures, which we can also tweak to our preferences. It lets us create everything from quick sketches to huge illustrations thanks to its high-resolution canvases, which on iPad Pro go up to 16K by 8K. Tools like QuickShape (instantly corrects geometric shapes), StreamLine (smooths strokes), Drawing Assist (helps with symmetry and perspective), or ColorDrop (fills areas with color with a single gesture) make many parts of illustration much easier.
On top of that, we can import JPG, PNG, or TIFF files, create small storyboards, GIFs, and simple animations, and at the end see the whole process with the “Replay” time-lapse video—a fast-motion clip to show friends the magic behind our work. With a one-time purchase, we get a professional app that encourages us to draw every day while also making it easy.
Sketchbook, as its name suggests, offers an interface and an experience much closer to what it feels like to draw in a blank notebook. The pencils and brushes react and behave as you’d expect from real ones, and predictive stroke helps lines and curves come out more confidently—something we really appreciate when we draw freehand. We can hide the color palettes to focus on the drawing and, with a reasonably priced one-time payment, unlock more brushes, extra export options, and canvas resizing.
The free version already offers almost everything, and with a one-time purchase more advanced features are unlocked: importing additional brushes and color palettes, resizing the canvas even after we’ve started, or exporting multiple pieces—or an entire album—as a PDF.
Tayasui Sketches stands out for its traditional feel, especially with watercolor and acrylic painting. Its watercolor brushes behave in a very organic way, with soft color blends and edges that feel quite close to real paper. It also includes digital acrylics, markers, pencils, and tools to create gradients and a sense of depth, giving illustrations a very lively touch. One particularly interesting detail is Zen mode, which hides interface elements so we have only the canvas in front of us and can focus on the creative side.
The basic features are free and, if we want to go further, a monthly subscription unlocks unlimited layers, new brushes and markers, a more complete brush editor, and backups of our drawings so we don’t lose anything.
Affinity Designer 2: graphic design and typography on iPad
When we want to move from sketch to final design, Affinity Designer 2 is a great option. It combines vector illustration with bitmap work, so within the same app we can draw icons, logos, posters, or interfaces. The Apple Pencil feels very precise, and the zoom that goes beyond 1 000 000% lets us refine even the smallest detail—something you really notice when we’re adjusting curves or aligning tiny elements.
We can also work with artboards to keep multiple versions of a design in a single document, use grids and guides so everything lines up perfectly, and define global color palettes to maintain project consistency. It also includes tools to retouch textures, create or fine-tune type, and export assets in different formats ready for print or the web.
Dudel Draw: one creative challenge a day
On days when we feel like drawing but don’t know where to start, Dudel Draw is a curious solution for exactly that. Every day, the app suggests a shape as the base of the drawing. They’re simple figures and abstract silhouettes that we can rotate and flip to inspire us and turn them into characters, objects, or animals.
More than a drawing or design app, Dudel Draw is almost an app to train our imagination: how we can go from a “blob” to a meaningful figure, well thought out and well laid out. It’s free and perfect for a daily creative challenge.
Whether we want to use it as a sketchpad, a small portable design studio, or simply enjoy letting our imagination run free, the iPad is the best companion. Really, all it takes is to open one of these apps like a notebook, grab the Apple Pencil, and let our creativity flow.
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