iPad gets creative: five years after it was launched, how artists are using the tablet to create new kinds of pictures

Apple's newest advertising campaign aims to show how the iPad can be used for creation, as well as consumption. Five years after the tablet launched, are people still using it just for films, books and email?

What do you use your iPad for? Chances are it’s something slightly different from everyone else.

When the tablet launched, just under five years ago, some functions were obvious, like watching video, checking email, listening to music, reading books. Many felt it would be a way of consuming media, then, though it has features for productivity, too. More recently it’s also become apparent that there’s another purpose to the gadget – to inspire.

That’s never been clearer than right now, with a focus on Start Something New, a campaign that’s all over the Apple website and in Apple Stores. It aims to prove that the company’s gadgets matched with the right apps can be a potent force for creativity.

Apple commissioned a dozen artists to create stuff using Apple Macs, iPads and iPhones, and the results are remarkable. Even better, they’re intriguing enough to encourage the rest of us to have a go, too.

One of the most striking is the artwork by Nomoco who used the iPad Air 2 and the painting app, Brushes Redux, to create haunting images which benefit from the smudgy, rough-edged feel that painting with your fingers can achieve.

The Redux in the title indicates it’s the new version of the Brushes app, re-designed for the latest operating software, iOS 8. Not only are the results enjoyable, you can even replay your creativity, stroke by stroke. This is a side effect of an app that has unlimited undo and redo features which, if you’re me, is essential. As with other apps like this, it’s enormous fun to use and, initially at least, reminds you that you need a little talent to go with the power of the app. Mind you, the joy of not having to clean up your brushes afterwards adds a certain satisfaction at the end.

British painter Roz Hall, also featured in the campaign, says he hasn’t painted traditionally for years. He has recently used Procreate in conjunction with his iPad Air 2. Not only does he save that clean-up time, but the portability of the iPad means he can start a project wherever he is, and doesn't even need a studio any more.

He told the Independent, “I don’t miss the tactile feel of traditional mediums as the responsiveness of the iPad and the Procreate app are amazing. Painting digitally used to feel disconnected but hardware and software have come a long way in a very short time, and no longer get in the way of creative expression. It used to be that you’d have to be making the marks with a mouse or stylus on the table-top and watching the brush-strokes appear on a screen in front of you. With the iPad you are painting directly onto the device and the marks are under your finger-tips.”

Hall’s paintings are deft portraits which capture everything from subtle skin tones to gleaming metal rings. He’s been doing it for a while: “When I first started, it reminded me of painting for the first time, as a child, with my fingers. It felt very natural and made me think of the primitives painting on a cave wall tens of thousands of years ago. Many iPad artists still call themselves Finger Painters.”

If you need something else to inspire you, how about the immediacy iPad painting offers? “You have an almost instant access to your audience. Painting traditionally, your work would be seen in an exhibition, if you were fortunate enough to get your work accepted into a gallery. Now I can finish a piece of work and have it uploaded to my website or various social media, where it can be seen by possibly hundreds or thousands of people around the world. This audience also has the opportunity to reach out to you, whether to comment, critique or commission a piece for themselves. Even receiving a simple ‘like’ on a piece of art you’ve created gives you the encouragement to face the dreaded blank canvas and create again. It can become quite addictive.”

British photographer Alistair Taylor-Young has used the exposure control on the iPhone 6 camera to create arresting images of rain. I asked him whether rain was photogenic. “Rain can be the most challenging in some circumstance, however I find working with the elements helps any situation instead of working against it. Water is such an extraordinary medium and in this circumstance it reminded me of supposed reality, and how each person views any given situation is quite different,” he explained.

And his work, he says, is an opinion, not a photographic record: “As a photographer shooting a scene or situation I’m illustrating an opinion not photographing a scene per se. I use the camera to manipulate what I see until it conforms to my opinion. Sometimes an over cast day is the most beautiful thing in a landscape! The trick is to notice it, appreciate it, and use it. Lots of people looking at the same scene but experiencing different feelings and observations. I’m just showing mine.”

There are many other artists whose work can inspire you – check out apple.com/uk to see their work, or visit an Apple Store.

All this coincides with one of the most accessible, beautiful apps ever, Paper by Fifty-Three, becoming better value than before. The app, a gorgeous and intuitive drawing and painting app, was always free, but adding extra creative tools involved an in-app purchase. Now the Draw, Sketch, Outline and other tools free.

The excellent Bluetooth stylus, called Pencil, complete with a rubber at the back end, adds extra functionality and feels great in the hand. It means you can use your fingers for smudging and blending rather than drawing. And the Pencil is now available in a new colour, Gold, which looks spiffy. It’s not cheap at £49.99 but works tremendously. It’s available from uk.shop.fiftythree.com