Hardware for art

[TheLion]

Hello,

 

Our students are currently using old laptops and a trackpad to do their drawings in art which must be really difficult.

 

What do you all provide art with?

 

I have explored; Chromebook with stylus but we use Photoshop so can't do that. A nice 2 in 1 laptop with stylus are about £1,000 each - probably wont get approved. If i get a external wacom digitiser I don't think that will help either because you can't really see where you put the pen on.

 

There might be something else out there I don't know about.

[synaesthesia]

The external digitizers are ideal; it's a different way of working and it's been an industry standard way of doing computer based art for years, only recently being superceded partially by tablets/touchscreens etc. We have a small suite of all in one PC's and they've all been used fine for art with nothing other than a mouse although they do have a Wacom (just one) to use if they so wish.

[dhicks]

I have explored; Chromebook with stylus but we use Photoshop so can't do that.

 

What are the pupils trying to do - I assume you're aiming to have them draw straight on to the screen as they would with paper? If drawing straight into Photoshop is a requirement then you could try remote access to a Windows desktop from a Chromebook, although I'm guessing you wouldn't get any pressure-sensitivity values sent through from the stylus, just the mouse x,y positions. You can get reasonable Chromebooks with stylus capability for around £300, although the screen / digitizer resolution isn't as high as more expensive devices, and you typically have to buy the stylus as an additional item. I haven't tried the latest iPad / Apple Pencil combination, although I understand it's pretty good, and the Photoshop app works well with Photoshop on a Mac / PC for this kind of functionality. I'm not sure how well that works out in a classroom setup, mind, with multiple users using individual devices, and I'm not sure what an iPad + Apple Pencil comes to these days. Also, in my experience, styluses tend to wander off from devices a bit too easily in a classroom setting, the teacher will need to really be on top of keeping track of what bits of equipment are where.

 

Depending on what style of drawing they are doing, my guess is that the best solution (from both a drawing experience and cost) is to draw black-and-white outlines of images on paper, use a camera to capture those outlines and then have Photoshop / Illustrator / etc trace that outline ready to colour on the computer. I've done similar work for someone doing illustrations for a book, and we've found that the best solution so far - it's easier to draw on paper, top-end solutions are getting close to replicating the experience and details but are probably too expensive for a classroom setup. All you need to take photos is any sort of camera - you could put a cheap Android phone on a stand and have it sync photos to a read-only Google Drive folder or similar for pupils to pick up, or get a flatbed scanner for higher resolution images.

[elsiegee40]

In the sixth form, my son used a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet that connected to his laptop by USB. We ended up buying him one for Christmas that was heavily used through university as well.