Best iPad Accessories for Digital Artists 2023 - YouTube

If you're anything like me then you've probably seen these advertisements where they're advertising pen tips and iPad accessories a whole lot. I stumbled upon a company called Pen Tips and they sell these Apple Pencil covers which make it so that you have friction on the pencil when you're drawing. As you can see my pen tip is completely worn out. So I actually reached out to Pen Tips and asked them can I try out some of your products and see if they're any good. And well today I got a package from Pen Tips. So let's take a look at what is inside. Let's just roll this out. What is here? Oh okay. We got a bunch of stuff. So magnetic matte screen protector. Oh okay. Interesting. So I did look into this and this seems to be a paper like alternative that doesn't glue onto the iPad. You can actually remove it between uses. I'm really interested to see what this is going to look like. We have a drawing glove. Okay I'm going to try that out. And we have these slip-on pen tips which offer protection, friction and feeling. So these ones probably slide over the pen. So it's going to be interesting to see what this is going to feel like. Pen Tips Eco. Okay I'm going to need to look into what this is exactly. But yeah these ones seem to be similar but maybe they're more economic. Maybe they're better for the environment. There's like a subtle matte feeling. Okay interesting. And then finally we have the ergonomic grip. Because one of the things that I've always felt with the Apple Pencil is I'm not 100% sure which orientation I feel best about holding it. What about you? How do you hold the Apple Pencil? I'm curious to know. So this is an ergonomic grip so you could put on the pencil and that should help you get a better grip. And then we got this small booklet here. Thank you for purchasing Pen Tips. And those will show some of the other things that they offer. Oh they do offer pen tip replacements. I probably should pick up one of those at some point. And a pen pad. Interesting. They make a bunch of different stuff. Cool. Now try the ergonomic grip. Okay pretty simple packaging. We have this rubberized grip. And that probably just slides onto the pencil like so. That is a tight fit. At least it's probably not going to go anywhere. Wow. Okay interesting. It's definitely more comfortable and it definitely provides a stability regardless of its orientation. So that's definitely something to keep in mind. You have to remove this in order to charge the pencil. If you're drawing for hours at a time well that might just be a trade-off that you're comfortable with. Let's open up the glove and see what that is like. Okay there's a case here. And the glove is inside here. I've had a couple of companies send me these gloves before and what I found is that the stitching right here seems to be the telltale sign if this is gonna last or if it's gonna fail. Looks solid right now. So this section right here which touches the iPad it is double padded. Now that I see it I definitely have experienced after a long day of drawing my pinky tends to get numb. Oh yeah. My hand completely stops when I remove the glove. When I add the glove it slides. So that is the glove. So now that we have the glove and the ergonomic grip I'm going to try the screen protector last. Let's first try the slip-on pen tips to see what they feel like. Okay. One thing that they mentioned is that when you're drawing you can hear the clickety-clack of the pencil hitting the screen but as soon as I put on one of these tips it's much more muffled. So that is definitely interesting. Okay. So I'm gonna try my best to do precision drawing. So I have my Dr. Tattoo brush which was designed to be as accurate and as detailed as I can make a brush. So I've got nothing specific in mind. I'm just gonna try drawing something. It's definitely different. I'll just say that from the get-go. I think this is something that I'll probably need to get used to because it's a different feeling. When you're used to your hand sticking to the glass you tend to draw with your fingers but that's not really how you should be drawing. You should be drawing from your elbow. I'm going to try to do a complex shape going here, here, here, through here and all the way there. Let's see how stable I can make it. That is pretty stable and this brush does not have a whole lot of stability in it. I have no issues with precision. I can tell you that. Okay, so that's definitely something to keep in mind. If you do use this feature a lot you have to bear in mind that having this on you might lose that functionality. But I bet if you buy their pen tab you can probably switch between a brush, a smudge and eraser with a press of a button. I may have found a solution. So if you just push the ergonomic grip a little bit backwards then you can hit the pencil like so. Now let's try something different. Let's try drawing with the fractal brushes. For those who don't know the fractal brushes are a completely different type of brush They're 8K resolution and they basically make the artwork for you. That's interesting. So when drawing with the fractal brushes because of the resistance of the pen tip it limits the speed at which I use the brushes. So I'll show you what I mean. So usually I do something like this. The pencil just glides on the glass and it's super effortless to put these down. But as soon as I put this on it does provide some resistance. So there's more control. I'll say that there's more control. It definitely worked. It's just a little bit of a different drawing experience. So what about traditional? So let's try a stroke smudge. This is basically a brush where you can put down the paint. And then blend it afterwards. And this feels more like I'm drawing or I'm painting. I don't know how to describe it. There's a resistance to it that the glass does not provide. So now I'm drawing with a pencil. Now pencil should feel rough, right? When you're drawing with a pencil you should feel that scratchy feeling. This does not feel like that. This feels like I'm drawing with a cloud actually. Because this dampens the feeling. This dampens the feeling. So I do feel very comfortable. But this does not feel like a pencil. Now let's try to see what happens. First of all, if I switch to these pen tips. See if there's a different feeling here. Oh, this seems to glide a little bit better. This is what a pencil should sound like when it's drawing on paper. So what happens if we put on this magnetic screen protector? Wow, I completely butchered that. Okay, let's try it out. Let's see. Three, two, one. Comes in a little mop, okay. So that's probably for keeping it protected while you're traveling. Simple cloth to wipe it away. And then here is the screen protector. So there are no instructions that come with it. I don't know if it's just ready to go or do I need to remove a film or something? So let's take a look at this photo. And let's see how it changes when we put on the protector. Is there a film? I am so confused. It doesn't seem to be a film on top of this. That's the first thing that I notice. The color seems to be different. And that's the same with all screen protectors. If you put something matte on top of your iPad, it is going to diffuse the light. So there's no chance if you were to use something like paper-like or this, you would definitely have the same experience. So let's try now drawing with the artist pencil on this. When I put on the white pen tip with the screen protector, it's much, much quieter. There's no squeaking sound. But as soon as I put the black tips, it has this weird squeaking sound. If you are planning to buy a screen protector as well, just make sure you get the right pen tip. It's these ones you want. Is the pen tips light? Yeah, that's not bad. Let's try the tattoo brush. That feels right. Sounds like paper. Feels like paper. But I'm still sort of curious if I'm using it correctly because the magnetic strip, I don't know if you can see it, but the magnetic strip, it protrudes just a little bit on this side. Okay, so it should go like this. Absolutely. Yeah, now it sticks. It sticks pretty well once you get it on there. But once it's down, it's not moving. Now, obviously, the great thing about this screen protector specifically is the fact that once you've done drawing and you want to, I don't know, like watch a movie or do anything that is not drawing, well, you can simply remove it. And now you have the beautiful iPad screen in all its glory. Now you can watch Netflix, you can play games, you can do whatever, and you don't need to be looking through the screen protector. This is something that I would clearly recommend in an artist's toolbox when you need to do the precision work. So overall, I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality of these products. I'm definitely going to ask for an affiliate link from Pen Tips so that I can give you a discount. So if you're interested in any of these products, I'll leave a link in the description, which should have a discount on it. And if you use that link, you'll be helping out the channel as well. I want to thank you all very much for watching. If you're interested in any of the brushes that I showcased in this video, I'll leave links to that also in the description. Thank you. Have a great day.