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Posted on June 2, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

A Change of Place

It’s easy to become so accustomed to your surroundings that you fail to see the forest for the trees. Living in Canmore, we often forget to look around and realize that we are so incredibly fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. You can get used to anything, no matter how idyllic.

Sure, I go on my hikes, sketch and take photos and appreciate the beauty, but when you’ve lived in a place for a long time, you never quite recover the feeling of seeing it anew. It’s only when we happen to hear a visitor exclaim with awe and wonder how majestic and beautiful our mountains are, that many of us stop, look around and think, “yeah, they’re pretty spectacular, aren’t they?”

I found this sense of wonder this morning in Ucluelet. Wandering the small craft harbour, socked in by fog and low hanging cloud. With a camera ’round my neck, a sketchbook in my backpack and my first cup of coffee of the day in hand, I marveled at the sights, sounds and smells, experiencing my first morning in this place.

At 6 AM on a Monday, there are low conversations and murmurs from the boats, as men get ready to head out for a day of fishing. Some of these are surely tourist charters, but clearly there are those that aren’t. Having been a local in a tourist town for many years, it’s easy to spot the difference.

In a broad sense, these locals are no different than any others. Just another morning at work, they’re likely oblivious to the little nuances that are making me smile, take in a scene, or breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t have to work this morning. Anyone who has been in fog knows the sound is different, and I quite like it. Seagulls and ravens criss-cross the harbour, some with little morsels in their mouths, others bitching at the ones who got some when they didn’t.

At home, ravens calling and squawking outside my window is annoying, and I often wish that they’d just shut the hell up. But here, they add to the scene, the immersion in the experience and the change of place has me welcoming their racket.

Sitting at the small table in my cabin as I write, I just looked up and saw a bald eagle fly by in the distance, the details hazy in the lifting fog, but unmistakable with his white crown and tail feathers. It’s a little exciting, because I don’t get to see them often, they show up so rarely at home.

This is how the tourists in Banff and Canmore feel when they see an elk, or if they’re fortunate, a whole herd of them. For locals, the elk are easily viewed as a hazard to avoid while walking or driving. We have our little condescending smiles when the tourists go gaga over them and start snapping pics like crazy. I imagine a local here might have felt the same had they spied me on a dock yesterday, where I spent twenty minutes happily taking photos of a bald eagle high in a tree, silly tourist that I am.

This is clearly why I’m here and why a trip like this is necessary. While calling it an artist retreat sounds haughty and pretentious, it’s really just a change of place to adjust my focus. I’ve no doubt that I’ll return home with a renewed sense of inspiration to paint, write, and sketch. It happens after every vacation, so it’ll no doubt be doubly so after this one.

Finally, it strikes me that I am incredibly blessed. Not only to have the means to take a trip like this, a purely selfish excursion, even politely telling a couple of friends that they could not come with me, but that I have the support of my wife, and those same friends who said, “Go. Have fun. Do what you gotta do.”

Someone once said, “They’re always making more money, but nobody has figured out a way to make more time.”

It’s the fear of squandering my own time, even though I’ve no idea how much of it I’ve got, that had me seeking a temporary change of place. I’m not often at peace, it’s just not in my nature. But this is close.

Ucluelet, BC. June 2, 2014

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Calgary Expo 2014 – The Wrap Up!

This year’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo has come and gone. Much more than a ‘Comic-con,’ the event attracts some of the biggest names on the circuit and with attendance approaching 100,000 this year; it has become one of the largest of its kind in North America.

Many types of vendors flock to the Expo, including artists. 2013 was my first year with a booth and it was an incredible learning experience. I spent a fair bit of money on display hardware, retail walls, print bins and other equipment you don’t think about until you have to, so the first year wasn’t a money maker. I brought far too many prints with me, so with what I brought home, I just ended up with inventory that eventually sold throughout the year at About Canada in Banff, the Calgary Zoo, and my online store.

Armed with a little experience (a dangerous thing?), I started my 2014 prep early, bought fewer prints, added postcards to the mix (btw: VERY successful), and tweaked my plans to streamline things a little before setting up my booth for my second year.

Between the daily editorial cartoons, illustration gigs, and the paintings that I never seem to have enough time for, adding even one trade show to an already busy schedule is a frantic juggling act. Talking with other artists who do this sort of thing, seems we’re all just two seconds away from panic and padded rooms.

The addition of a fourth day this year, really just four hours, was an unwelcome fly in the ointment. While the Stampede grounds in Calgary are only an hour and half drive from Canmore, the odds this time of year that the weather could turn foul (especially this year) meant that commuting every morning and night was unwise. Long days in the booth without a break were exhausting, which made falling asleep at the wheel a real possibility. Adding a fourth day meant taking an extra day away from my office last week in order to set up, plus another night in a hotel, an expense that wasn’t justified by Thursday “just looking today” sales.

I figured I could handle Thursday and Friday by myself and it really wasn’t difficult. The time went by fast and when I needed a bathroom break, my next door neighbours were happy to mind my booth for me. For the most part, there’s an atmosphere of camaraderie among the vendors. We’re all in this together.

My wife, Shonna, arrived on Saturday. Our friend Michelle was attending the event and graciously agreed to bring my lovely assistant to my aid. On Saturday and Sunday, the two busiest days of Expo, I really did need help at the booth and I couldn’t have asked for better. I wouldn’t have done so well had it not been for Shonna’s support, and that pretty much applies to my whole life in general.

While traffic ebbed and flowed, it was busy most of the time. People wanted to talk, asked a lot of questions about the work and seemed genuinely interested. Most artists want to stand out from the crowd, and many told me they’d never seen anything like my paintings, sweet music to my ears. One woman said that they looked like, “cartoon animals who found a way to come into the real world.”

I really liked that.

It was a great feeling to recognize a common reaction to my paintings. Folks would be walking down the aisle, scanning their surroundings, and when their eyes settled on my booth, they’d suddenly stop and smile. It happened more times than I could count and most didn’t even know they were doing it. It got so that Shonna started mentioning it to them. They’d smile, give a nudge to whomever they were with and then they’d come over.

It made me think of Kermit the Frog in the Muppet Movie. Dom Deluise’s character gets Kermit to consider leaving the swamp only when he tells him that he could ‘make millions of people happy.’ There are worse aspirations.

While there isn’t a lot of opportunity for networking when the event is in full swing, I did have some good conversations with nearby vendors. I couldn’t really leave my booth to wander and look around, but one thing about staying in one spot, eventually everybody walks by, so I did get to see some of the great outfits. Many enthusiastic people dress up (cosplay) as favorite characters from TV,film, comic books and video games, putting a lot of effort into their costumes.

One of the great surprises this year was repeat customers. People who bought a print or two last year came back to buy more. Best of all, we recognized many of them. I had plenty of people who said they’d seen my work before but couldn’t figure out where. When I mentioned the Calgary Zoo and About Canada in Banff, light would dawn in their eyes. Many needed no prompting at all, they just told me where they’d seen it, and some had even bought my prints at those venues.

This face to face connection and recognition isn’t something I get while working alone at home or through interaction on social media. It was very gratifying.

While I’m comfortable talking to people and public speaking doesn’t faze me, I’m a very private person and spend most of my time alone. Being ‘on’ for four days in customer service mode was mentally and physically exhausting. I was so drained on Monday that I managed to get one cartoon out and spent the rest of the day in a daze, interrupted by a few naps.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that I want to repeat and improve upon the experience in 2015, especially since it will be a milestone 10^th year for the show. I’ve already booked my booth again and even asked for the same spot. Each year teaches me something new and I learned a lot this time around. I’ll be going into my third year with a more solid foundation and a better idea of how to streamline things, knowing what works, what doesn’t, and with some new ideas I’d like to try.

Even though I cut back from last year’s order and did very well, I still came home with more prints than I wanted, mostly from fear of not having enough for the whole weekend. So once again, I’m having a big post-Expo print sale and everything in the store is up to 30% off.

One of these days I’ll figure the inventory right. Until then, I’ll just keep trying.

Posted on March 25, 2014March 25, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

A Little Death and Darkness

Every once in a while, it’s nice to explore new challenges. It was an exercise doing that very thing which led me to create my popular series of Totem paintings, which are still my favorite pieces to paint. Recently I painted my first landscape, and while it was different for me, a worthwhile exercise and something I’ll repeat again, I doubt that landscapes will be one of the foundations of my future work and business. Feel free to call me on that statement if years from now, I’m painting more landscapes than anything else. As somebody who had never planned on being an artist for a living, I’m well aware that today’s plans are often replaced by tomorrow’s happy accidents.

Recently, a commercial opportunity was put in front of me to paint some images that are a departure from anything I’ve done before, some paintings with a little death and darkness to them. Still encouraged to use my own style in the renderings, which means they’re unlikely to steal any sleep from anybody, this pending series of paintings will definitely look like a matched set. I have no plans to abandon my Totem paintings, but for the next little while, you’ll be seeing the sort of image shown here, while I explore this genre.

While I can’t say anything right now about the intended use for these paintings, I plan to have a little fun with it, stretch myself a bit, and see if I can’t poke a little fun at the darker side of life.

This was painted on both the Wacom Cintiq 13HD and the 24HD displays using Adobe Photoshop CC. It began as a concept sketch that you see below, with the finished piece beside it for comparison. You can click on the image to see it larger.

Posted on March 8, 2014March 8, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Painting Elephant Rock

This is my first landscape painting, a formation near Ucluelet, B.C. called Elephant Rock.

A few years ago, my wife Shonna, and I took a vacation to Vancouver Island, the first time there for either of us. While many find the long drive to be part of the experience, we’re destination types, so we flew into Comox, picked up our rental vehicle (reserved a car, got a massive truck, which was quite a lot of fun), and spent the week touring around. We visited some friends and family, spent a few days in Victoria, then drove out to the west coast of the island where we rented a cabin in Ucluelet for a few days. It ended up being one of our best vacations to date.

The drive out to that part of the island is beautiful. Coastal rainforest, a roller coaster highway that’s not for the faint of heart, with a lot to see along the way. At the end of the road you’ll find Long Beach, hiking trails, spectacular ocean vistas and two little towns. On one end is Tofino and on the other Ucluelet, where we’d booked our cabin. Friends of ours used to live there and loved it and after visiting both towns, we’re glad we stayed in Ukee. We’ve lived in a tourist area for two decades and to us, that’s what Tofino felt like, a tourist town. A couple of hours there and we were happy to head back to Ucluelet, more of a working fishing village, but still a tourist draw as well. It’s only a 30 min drive between towns, but we stopped along the way for a hike through the rainforest on an elevated boardwalk, complete with staircases and bridges that emptied us out onto a beach at low tide, where we could wander among the rocks looking at sea life in the tide pools.

One of the highlights of this island trip was a whale watching cruise through the Broken Islands group, something we’d booked in advance with Archipelago Wildlife Cruises. Al and Toddy live aboard their boat and take tourists out to see the abundant wildlife and incredible landscape and it truly was one of the best days we’ve had on any vacation. We saw Grey Whales, Humpbacks, Sea lions, Bald Eagles and more, and I was happily snapping photos left and right. Now, none of them ended up being good reference for my Totem paintings, but this wasn’t work, it was a vacation.

On the way back, Al drew our attention to Elephant Rock. I recently sent him an email asking for a refresher on the history of the rock and he sent back this explanation. “The rock marks a boundary between the Ittatsoo tribes and the Toquart tribes. The boundary goes beyond the time of tribal memory. Essentially boundaries marked shore rights. If a whale washed up it belonged to the tribe with the rights to that shore line. Within living memory this was a peaceable boundary until the government drew official lines between the various tribes in the area, probably all over the province. They didn’t use that rock, the official line is somewhere between Elephant Rock and the existing village in Ucluelet Harbour. The tribes on either side have never come to agreement over this official boundary.”

Once again, government intelligence rears it’s ugly head. But that’s the other part of my business and I’ll leave that alone right now.

I remember taking the photo and thinking, “I’d like to paint that,” even though I consistently tell people that I don’t paint landscapes. For three years it has laid dormant in my archives until I recently got the urge to give landscape painting a try. While I’m fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, spend a lot of time outdoors and taking photos of the Rocky Mountain landscape in my backyard, it’s funny that my first landscape isn’t from around here. People come from all over the world to visit our neighbourhood and see the sights we get to experience every day. But, you get used to it and as wonderful as it might be, you like to experience something different once in a while, which is why I enjoyed the area around Ucluelet so much. I’m sure if I lived on the island for twenty years, the mountains I see every day here would have a similar draw for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this landscape painting, although it did have me frustrated at times. It took a LOT longer than I thought it would and presented me with challenges I haven’t experienced before. The detail I put into my animal paintings just wasn’t possible here because of the distance in the image, not without making it so massive that even my powerful computer wouldn’t have been able to handle it. It’s still one of the largest paintings I’ve done, the full resolution file measures 40″ X 40″ at 300ppi. I painted it on both the Wacom Cintiq 13HD and 24Hd displays using Adobe Photoshop CC (photos only used for reference). The square composition was unusual for me as well. But it was a personal piece, an experiment, and well worth my time and energy. I’m quite pleased with the finished result and there will be more landscapes in my future.

One epiphany I had while painting this was that I wasn’t just painting a place, but capturing a moment in time. I was trying to get each branch right, the height of each tree to match its neighbour, the small ripples in the waves, and the light just right. But, the reference photo was taken three years ago. I realized that this island wouldn’t look like this, now. The rocks would, sure, but trees grow, they die and landscape is ever changing. I rather liked that idea, that this was a moment that is gone, but I could still go there in the painting. And it really felt like being back there. As I painted, I saw things that had previously gone unnoticed. Painting in a shadowy spot in the brush, I realized “hey, there’s a tree trunk in there.” or working on part of the rock formation and having a mental shift that made it feel more like sculpting than painting.

As odd as it might sound, this painting was a bit of a spiritual experience, one that I’m grateful to have had. I’m going back to Ucluelet on my own later this Spring, an artistic retreat just to sketch, paint, write and take photos. I’ve booked a little cabin right on the harbour. I’ll be going on another cruise with Al and Toddy and I’m looking forward to seeing Elephant Rock once again in person. Having spent so much time with it in this painting, I believe I’ll see it with new eyes.

Click on any of these images to see them larger.

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Commission – Cows

My commission work to date has been dogs and cats (and one beautiful horse), but a friend of ours recently tasked me with painting this gift for his wife. As she loves cows and is now pregnant with twins, he wanted a painting of a mother and two calves to hang in the nursery. I cautioned him that comparing his pregnant wife to a cow at a time when most women’s sensibilities are heightened, might be a recipe for disaster, but he assured me more than once that it would be fine. The canvas is still in the proofing stage, but he showed her the digital image of the piece this past weekend and she loved it. Apparently there were happy tears. So, with his permission, I’m able to share it now.

This was one of my most challenging paintings to date. The hairs on a cow are very small and short and the features aren’t as malleable as I’d first imagined. When painting one animal, I can usually find reference that will allow me to see all sides of the subject to decide which will lend itself best to my Totem style of painting. First, I had to find multiple reference photos of the right breed of cow (Holstein Friesian), which was not an easy task. I bought twice as many photos than I used as I couldn’t play around with the composition without the full resolution files. There ended up being three different comps and thankfully my wife helped me decide which was best for the painting. With three subjects in the image, it became a juggling act to try and show the best sides of all of them, in the correct proportions with the right lighting. Then I had to make them look cozy, cute and comfortable, but not crushed together. Finally, I had to lay down all of the right conditions to allow all three personalities to show up after many hours of painting, something I’ve often said never seems to be quite my doing, or under my control. When it comes to the life in these paintings, I’m often surprised (and grateful) when it arrives.

While I don’t consider this part of my Totem series, it is definitely painted in that style. Even though it was a commission piece, I will be offering prints of this image in the store in the coming weeks as well. The commission piece will be printed at 18″ X 24″ as a giclée on canvas with a black shadowbox frame. I’m hoping to be able to deliver it next week.

I honestly have no idea how long this took to paint as I worked on it during a very busy time, while juggling other deadlines. There was at least one session where I worked through the night on it. I’ll admit to being very frustrated with this piece at times when things weren’t going as well as I wanted them to, but to be honest, that happens a lot and it always turns around. I learned a lot from this painting and had to experiment and adjust brushes and technique to get the look I needed in places. So there was artistic growth here, too, which is always welcome.

Click on either image to see a larger version. This piece was painted in Photoshop CC on my Wacom Cintiq 24HD.

Posted on January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Photo Reference and Painting Comparison

It was suggested this morning on social media that it would be interesting to compare the reference photo I used for my Parrot Totem with the finished painting. Since some digital painters trace over photos, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to show that I don’t, so it kills two birds with one stone. OK, that’s probably a really bad metaphor, especially considering the subject of the painting.

Pete Collins is one of the Photoshop Guys with the KelbyOne organization and I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with him at Photoshop World in Las Vegas a couple of times. Pete’s a great guy, loves to encourage creative types and is a very talented illustrator and photographer himself. One year, he sent me a folder full of pics he’d taken at the zoo and told me I could use any of them for reference, which was incredibly generous of him, but anybody who knows Pete wouldn’t be surprised by the gesture. He’s good people.

Click on the images to see them larger.

I’ve used a few of them for painting sketches and now two of them for finished paintings. Pete also supplied me with the main reference for my Ostrich Totem. While I usually end up using more than one reference, this one was pretty good and was my main reference for the finished painting. I bought a couple more from iStock for the close detail reference, as Pete’s wasn’t a large photo so the anatomy for some of the fine detail wasn’t visible here.

As you can see, it’s obvious this is the reference I used, but with my style of painting, especially with the Totem paintings, I take a lot of liberties with painting the anatomy, especially in the face and proportions. It is a caricature of the animal, rather than a copy of the photo. Zooming in on the detail, the photo doesn’t provide a lot because it wasn’t large, so you can see where I took more liberties with the details. My painting is very large, so I could still zoom in quite a bit further. I rely on reference photos because I can’t exaggerate an animal’s features or paint the relationships in the anatomy accurately if I don’t know what the animal looks like. Most artists will either paint from life (in a perfect world) or will use photo reference when available. When I’m painting commission portraits of pets, I need VERY good reference pics in order to get the likeness as close to reality as possible. When I’m painting my Totems, however, I can get away with a little bit less because I’m going to be distorting reality anyway.

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Parrot Totem

As sometimes happens, I hadn’t planned on painting this Totem anytime soon, if at all. I just happened to do a painting sketch for practice of this Macaw a little while ago. When I posted the rough painting on social media, the response was very surprising. People really seemed to like it. I asked my wife, who is always my harshest critic, a trait I both love and loathe about her, and she said she really liked it as well. Since I needed to get another Totem done fast in order to meet a print deadline for my Calgary Expo booth in April, I figured it might as well be the Parrot Totem. I realized while finalizing the files that this is my 20th Totem painting. Where does the time go?

While it has become a cliché for me to say that ‘I really had fun with this painting,’ it can’t be said for this one, at least not entirely. From the original sketch to the final hours, this one kind of felt like work, couldn’t quite get in the groove for most of it. However, I woke from a sound sleep last night around 1:30AM for no reason in particular, and I lay in bed for a half hour until I realized I wasn’t going back to sleep. One of the benefits of my office being mere steps from my bedroom, I did what I usually do on the rare occasions I can’t sleep, I got up to paint. And from 2:00AM to 730AM when I finished the painting, I was really enjoying myself with it, so insomnia turned out to be a good thing. Or perhaps the reason I woke in the first place was that the parrot was squawking for closure. Either way, I’m happy with the finished result.

I’ve stopped keeping track of how long these take, but were I to guess, maybe around 20 to 25 hours in between my other work. It was painted in Photoshop CC on both the Wacom Cintiq 13HD Cintiq and the 24HD Cintiq, moving back and forth between the two, depending on whether or not I was working in my office or painting in the evening while watching TV in the living room. Thanks to Pete Collins for the reference photo he gave me a few years ago. I finally got around to using it. Pete’s a generous soul and a great guy, but don’t tell him I said that. It’ll go to his head.

I think another reason that I wanted to paint it was that people seemed to be just fine with the painted sketch being a finished product and I most certainly was not. Add many more hours to it and here’s the difference between the two.

Posted on January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

An Editorial Cartoon in Two Minutes

This is just over an hour of sketching, drawing, and painting, condensed down to two minutes. From sketch to finished work created digitally using a Wacom Cintiq 24HD display and Photoshop CC. While the majority of my editorial cartoons are sketched on paper first and then scanned, this is pretty much the whole process I go through for each cartoon. This is best viewed at full screen in HD. To learn how this is done, you can purchase my cartooning DVD at PhotoshopCAFE.

Posted on January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Another Meerkat Sketch Painting

Finding that I’m really enjoying sketching and painting these little guys. The fact that I’ve amassed so many reference photos from the Calgary Zoo meerkat enclosure means there will likely be more on the way. This was painted in Photoshop CC on the Wacom Cintiq 24HD display

Posted on January 11, 2014January 13, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

iPad Painting with the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus

As anyone who creates digital art for a living will tell you, it’s difficult to do without a Wacom tablet or display. Beginning with the Graphire and the first generation Intuos tablets in the late nineties, I’ve used almost all versions and evolutions of Wacom products. Currently, the one I use on a daily basis is the Cintiq 24HD display. When I want to get out of the office, which usually just means moving to other parts of the house, I’m drawing and painting on the Cintiq 13HD.

Many people have asked me if I’ll be getting one of the new Cintiq Companion displays, but having just purchased a top of the line laptop to supplement my desktop PC, I don’t need another computer. I make my living with my artwork and have daily editorial cartoon deadlines. I can’t afford any downtime, so having another full system that I can work on if my main computer needs repair is very important to me. As I work at home and spend 90 percent of my time here, a fully functional portable Cintiq Companion would be wasted on me, so the 13HD and a laptop suits me just fine.

From time to time, however, I do enjoy the portability of drawing and painting on my iPad. I bought my first gen iPad about three months after it came out in 2010 and I used it almost every day. I began with finger painting, and then I probably spent a couple of hundred dollars in the first year, trying to find a stylus that would work well for drawing and painting. Eventually, I settled on the Wacom Bamboo Stylus and it worked very well for its intended use. Having tried many different drawing apps, I found that the ProCreate app suited my drawing style best and it’s the one I use above all others to this day.

I like to rest my hand on the screen, so I cut the thumb, index, and middle fingers from a light glove and wear that while drawing and painting on the iPad. I worked around the lack of pressure sensitivity by manually varying the opacity in the app. A similar method is to add a new layer and vary the opacity of that as well. A little awkward, but I managed to create some iPad drawings and paintings that I was pleased with, even if they took longer than they would have on my PC with a drawing tablet or display.

Recently, Wacom introduced their Intuos Creative Stylus for the iPad and I was intrigued. It connects via Bluetooth, has pressure sensitivity, programmable buttons like their other tablet and display pens, and palm rejection capability, which means you can rest your hand on the screen without your palm creating any digital pen marks. The key word here is ‘capability.’

As my first gen iPad had been proving unreliable and twitchy over the last year, I finally retired it and bought the new iPad Mini with Retina display, preferring the smaller size to the iPad Air. The Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus arrived last week and I was eager to put it through its paces.

The first thing I was impressed with is that it comes in a very nice case. With space for five spare nibs (it comes with two spares) and battery included, you feel you’ve purchased quality. My Cintiq 13HD came with a very nice case for the stylus as well and it gives me peace of mind that these portable styli are well protected while they’re being carted around.

Through trial and error and a little research, I found out some important technical info that will make your life a lot easier when using this pen.

First, the stylus takes an AAAA battery (that’s 4 As). It comes with one of them, so it’s ready to use. But I happened to be out running errands the day mine arrived so I wanted to see how hard it was to find replacements. Fortunately I found a set of two at The Source, a small franchised electronics store. A package of two batteries set me back $12. Our grocery store battery display didn’t have AAAA batteries, so you might have to look to find them. The Wacom site says a battery will last you 150 hours. I spent a few hours painting with the stylus and the battery still reads 100% in the ProCreate app, so I’ve no reason to doubt the claim.

Second, I have a wireless keyboard that connects to my iPad via Bluetooth and you connect it in the iOS settings. You can’t do that with the Intuos Creative Stylus, since it doesn’t even show up there. The stylus connects to your iPad inside of the supported apps (click here and scroll down for the list). In ProCreate for example, there’s a dropdown menu that shows a device option and sure enough, the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus is one of the choices. The connection was very stable and putting it away in the case seems to shut the pen off so it doesn’t waste the battery.

I didn’t bother to try any of the other drawing apps, so let’s just talk about ProCreate and this stylus. I haven’t done any iPad painting in a while so I was very impressed with the recent updates ProCreate has made to their app. They’ve got great blend mode options for layers, adjustments for color, sharpness, blur, multiple transformation tools and their brush engine allows for a LOT of customization. ProCreate is a very robust app and I see no reason to change my preference. It didn’t crash once while painting my funny looking rat, so it’s very stable.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t get the palm rejection to work well in ProCreate, so I ended up wearing the makeshift glove again which doesn’t really bug me. It was only later that I found out that it isn’t the stylus that doesn’t support palm rejection, it’s the app. Again, refer to the list of which features work with which apps.

The pressure sensitivity on this stylus works like a dream! With the programmable buttons, ProCreate allows you to choose which task you want each button to perform. I set one button to activate the color picker, and the other button to Undo. You don’t even need to have the pen in contact with the tablet to get these to work, either.

Bottom line, this stylus works as advertised. While the price may seem steep to some ($99.95 from Wacom), I’m a big believer that you get what you pay for and my experience with Wacom devices is that they last and work well for a long time. I’m being careful not to drop this stylus, though, as it’s still a precise electronic device.

A couple of final thoughts. It would be unreasonable to expect this stylus to perform as well as a Cintiq display. I can make quicker brush strokes, enjoy much more precise pressure sensitivity and paint with larger documents with higher resolution on my professional displays than I would expect to on the iPad. This stylus does not turn your iPad into a Cintiq Companion display. Also, keep in mind that Wacom created the stylus, not the apps with which it is used, so if there’s something that doesn’t work the way you might expect it to, it’s likely the app, not the pen.

I’m very pleased with the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus and I expect to use it often for sketching and rougher paintings. Beginning the rat painting you see at the top on the iPad was quite enjoyable and the image will eventually become a much larger, much more detailed rendering using Photoshop and my Cintiq 24HD display.

I would recommend both the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus and the ProCreate app without reservation, but as always, the tools are only as good as the artist using them. For best results with your artwork, keep learning, follow the work of other artists, and draw and paint as often as you can.