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We enlisted 5 iPad Doodlers to test 5 top capacitive stylus models over a 3 week period. They were the oStylus from oStylus.com, the P501 from Dagi, the Zero 2 from Touch Pensys, the Pogo stylus from TenOne Design and the rubber tipped, Exspect capacitive stylus. There are distinct differences in the way each of the above examples allows you to connect with the iPad's surface. With such a variety of capitative styluses out there now, we wanted to help you in deciding which would suit your needs best. We looked primarily for accuracy and control over your mark making, as well as a smooth stroke and all round natural feel.

oStylus

Good points

• If there were a design icon in the world of styluses, this would be mine. The oStylus's unique and striking design makes you feel like a professional draughts man, even when you're doing the quickest of doodles. Built entirely from solid, anodised and sandblasted aluminium with titanium wire connecting the ring shaped contact point to the main body, the materials used make this feel like a high-end and durable tool.
• The unique design of the ring donut shaped tip allows you to see exactly what marks you're making, as you make them. This is great for accuracy and let's you feel in complete control. The flexible hinge on the contact point pivots back and forth with the movement of your hand, allowing for smooth and uninterrupted movement across the surface of the iPad. It's weight (12 grams) and handle length (14cm) really do mimic well, the feel of a paint brush. Very natural feel to it.

Not so good points

• The oStylus comes with replacement ring shaped vinyl stickers for the bottom of the donut. The metal, when in contact with the iPad's screen, feels smooth, but a little harsh. It could be interesting to see how the stylus performs when this vinyl is replaced with a thin conductive lining of foam around the bottom of the ring perhaps (The manufacture's notes state that this vinyl feels smoother by providing less resistance than foam).
• oStylus comes in a solid, box case. It feels like a pro tool and doesn't act like any old pen you'd just shove in your pocket. This means it's not the most portable.

Price: $37.50 / £23.40

Rating: 4/5

P501 stylus from Dagi

Good points

• It looks like a normal everyday fine tip marker and will fit in your top pocket just like one too.
• The Dagi has taken a different approach from the oStylus in a bid to gain pin point accuracy. It has a thin transparent plastic tip, moulded to act as a flexible hinge. The circular end appears like a target with a single red dot at it's centre. All you need to do is take aim at the iPad's canvas. Unlike the foam tipped styluses, this simple, yet affective method works great when you really need to see exactly the path of your stroke.

Not so good points

• We were a little weary of snapping the transparent tip, especially when it was left in your pocket for any amount of time. Maybe like it's felt marker pen cousins, it needs a lid?
• The tip's moulded hinge shape, felt flexible, but not flexible enough. Contact with the iPad's surface felt smooth, but a little rigid.

Price: $23.00 / £14.30

Rating: 3.5/5

Pogo stylus from TenOne

Good points

• The Pogo stylus design is incredibly simple, and materials used, very basic. The Pogo appears to be the most popular stylus according to the 100 or so iPad artists we've surveyed. Giving the Pogo stylus to friends and family, it was also the easiest for them to pick up and immediately feel as if they were drawing naturally.
• Out of all the styluses we've had our hands on, it's for me, the best example of form = function. The conductive foam tip does everything it needs to. It's flexible enough for it to feel like a brush, yet just about accurate enough when you need it to be.
• Although This is a great example of form = function, it's also not bad in the looks department either. Available in 4 anodised metal colours, it takes after the iPod Shuffles and Nanos multi-colour aesthetic. A lot has been made of these basic materials to make this a slick looking product.

Not so good points

• The iPad is a new creative tool and achieving the accuracy you get with a pen or pencil on paper, with every stroke, can be a bit of a challenge. Although the Pogo is easy to pick up and use, if you're looking for a tool that will provide you with a pin point accurate stroke everytime, then the Dagi, or oStylus will be more for you.

Rating: 5/5

Price: $14.95 / £9.30

Rubber tipped stylus from Exspect

Good points

• Back in early 2010 when I was first introduced to the concept of an iPad and using a stylus with it, I had fears that the glossy screen would feel slippery. I wondered would drawing on it be made difficult due to the lack of resistance? With these fears in mind, I bought my first capacitive stylus and envisioned a rubber tipped version eliminating any slip factor. Indeed, the rubber did the job and has been found during our review to be the most resistant of any of the materials used in a stylus tip.
• It's compact and good for navigating the iPad's user interface.

Not so good points

• A little on the resistant side, the rubber tip made it feel to me like I was constantly using an eraser rather than a brush or pen.
• If you're a little overzealous with your pressure then you'll begin to find a rubber residue left behind on your screen. In fact, the first Exspect stylus I tested actually had it's rubber tip wear down so thin, it split.

Price: $8 / £4.99 (Available from Maplin)

Rating: 2/5

Zero 2 stylus from Touch Pensys

Good points

• The Touch Pensys Zero 2's foam tipped stylus is shaped in such a way as to resemble a Sharpie, Chisel Tip marker. Cut to a finer point than say the Pogo's foam, it does allow for a degree of greater accuracy.
• The Zero 2 is great when it comes to portability, it's compact and comes with a clip that lets you snap the stylus conveniently to the side of your iPad.

Not so good points

• Although it's body has been extened from it's predicessor (The Zero 1), it still feels a little short in your hand when you're trying to make broad, bold strokes.

Price: $12.90 / £8

Rating: 3/5

At iPad Doodler, our team are planning a brand new drawing app native to the iPad as well as dabbling with developing some 'in-browser' web technology in order to allow you to embed iPad drawing right inside your web pages or Facebook, etc...

A prolific developer known as Mr. doob has produced just such a web site integrated application. It works using the new HTML 5 <canvas> tag which enables you to integrate a fully capable drawing app straight inside your web pages.

Click here to play with Mr.doodb's procedural drawing app entitled Harmony

This is a quick fire list of the top 5 iPad drawing and painting apps iPad Doodler feels are worth spending your hard earned money on. All the apps are suited to higher-end / professional level work.

• Brushes - $7.99 view on iTunes
• SketchBook Pro - $7.99 view on iTunes
• Layers Pro - $5.99 view on iTunes
• ArtStudio - $4.99 view on iTunes
• LiveSketch HD - $1.99 view on iTunes

If you've discovered any particularly note worthy drawing apps on the iPad yourself, please feel free to add the link in the comments.

For me, a worthwhile drawing app on the iPad is one that's intuitive and makes the transition from pen and paper as painless as possible. Autodesk, the creator of SketchBook Pro say it's designed to do just that.

The UI:
I have always loved the sight of a brand new, fresh sketchbook page. Something I really enjoy about SketchBook Pro on the iPad is that it's minimal, with no tools displayed on the screen itself while you draw. I get that 'excited blank page feeling' every time I open the app. This un-cluttered interface leaves you with a full screen width and height canvas on which to create a masterpiece. A small grey dot resides at the bottom of the screen, when tapped, allows you to access the entire menu of options.

SketchBook Pro has a variety of time saving shortcuts within it's interface. The colour picker is my favourite. Just tap-and-hold for 2 seconds on the canvas to call it up. Unique to SketchBook Pro on the iPad is it's alternative to the bog-standard left-right settings slider. Tap the centralised 'Brush properties' ring and it allows you to drag in different directions to alter the opacity and radius of the current brush quickly.

The quality of the Zoom function in any iPad drawing app is the difference between something being useful and it being deleted the next time I close it. SketchBook Pro, thankfully has an intuitive and pin point zoom. It's simple. As you would with any photo on the iPad; press together and part your fingers to zoom-in and back together again to zoom-out. This way of working with the canvas would seem obvious, but I've played around with quite a few apps recently that employ incredibly strange and frustrating touch combinations for their zoom functions.

Brushes:
There are 75 default brush presets with my favourites being the fine-liner and italic felt pen. I've found I tend to lean towards a niche set of brushes and end up sticking with them. There are quite a few of the 75 towards the backend of the selection that appear pretty throw-away. I'd get rid of about 1/3 of them if it'd help free up any memory for something else less gimmicky in a 'pro' app. Two bug bare's when it come to the brush tools is the the lack of pressure sensitivity available and the presence of a smudge tool.

Layers:
Unfortunately you're limited to 6 layers, but it's not been too much of an issue. Layer transformations can be made, but only with the aspect ratio intact. Layer ordering and opacity can be set, as well as a variety of blend modes including 'Multiply', 'Screen' and 'Add'.

Import/Export:
Resolution for sketches seems to be limited to the iPad’s screen size – 1024×768 pixels – small and definitely not high enough resolution to print say big 11×17 inch pages, but big enough I imagine that printing on an 8.5×11 inch piece of paper would appear acceptable.

I’d like an easier way to transfer images to my laptop or desktop and images aren’t even automatically saved to the iPad’s photo library. You are required to access the built in gallery, then export in two ways – to the iPad’s gallery as a PNG file or you can email the file to yourself as a layered PSD or as a flattened PNG file with transparency.

The price:
The price is more than descent at $7.99 (USD) for what you'd expect when the fully featured version on the desktop is priced around $100 (USD). I had agonised over investing in a tablet like the Cintiq ($2000), but thanks to apps like SketchBook Pro now available on the iPad, the choice was pretty clear.

Conclusion:
The combination of accuracy and customisation built into every SketchBook Pro tool means all in all it lives up to it's 'pro' name. Using this app, the transition from pen and paper has been a pleasure.

Rating:
8/10

Links:
• AutoDesk SketchBook Pro homepage
• http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketchbook-pro/id364253478

Kyle Lambert is an all round passionate creative force. UK based, he specialises in painting, illustration, animation and 3D motion graphics. In his own words, the iPad expands the possibilities for artists.

iPadDoodler asked Kyle a few questions to find out a little more about his influences and working methods.

iPadDooler.com: What inspires you?
Kyle: I am a big movie fan and much of the work I do is in some way inspired by my favourite movies. I usually go to the cinema with friends at the start of the week and fill my head with ideas and images that will influence my work. I also love animation, and never feel more inspired than when I am watching a Pixar masterpiece. My dream is to one day work as an illustrator for a big animation studio.

iPadDooler.com: What artists are your main influences?
Kyle: I admire many artists for different reasons. Some for their technical ability and others for their style. Coming from a traditional painting background, I often look at painters like Lucien Freud and Jenny Saville for the way they create form with brush strokes and colour. I also find myself being influenced by many of the great concept artists that work on many of the big blockbuster movies today for inspiration.

iPadDooler.com: What is your app of choice when painting on the iPad?
Kyle: I have tried a couple of apps in the time I have been painting on the iPad, but I have always felt most comfortable using the Brushes app. I used it on the iPhone previously and was impressed with what was possible, so it was a natural first choice as soon as I got myself an iPad.

The main reason I choose to use Brushes is the simplicity of the its interface. I like to work fast, and as I used to with oil painting, I prefer to use as fewer brushes as possible. Settings, options and sliders are nice to have, but often slow down the painting process.

Another thing i love about Brushes is having the ability to play back the paintings afterwards and create a video detailing how the image was created. I have found that people enjoy the process just as much as seeing the final artwork which is something I have always believed to be true. Back when I painted oil on canvas I used to photo-document my paintings as I worked.

iPadDooler.com: What is your tool of choice, stylus of finger?
Kyle: When using the iPhone I resorted to a stylus because fingers take up a large portion of the screen when drawing. When I started on the iPad I decided to try using my finger again and to this day haven't touched my iPad with a stylus. The ability to zoom in so effortlessly to add detail has meant that I haven't felt the need to use one. I also find it a lot more fun and direct when painting with your finger.

iPadDooler.com: As seen in the piece Toy Story 3, your attention to detail in the way that the light and shadows are cast is incredible. What brushes and methods do you use?

Kyle: I only really use 2 brushes. The 1st is the standard 'sketchy' brush which I use to create my sketch and block in all of the colour information. The second brush is the standard soft edged brush which I use to paint soft shaded areas in the painting. I constantly work between layers within the Brushes app which gives me the freedom to change my mind on something at any time. The techniques for painting are the same as any artist would use in any medium. A rough sketch, a tidy sketch, colouring and final detail.

iPadDooler.com: As a pioneer in the brand new world of iPad art, what do you see for it's future?
Kyle: Over time the device will become more powerful and capable which will mean the software developers will be able to add more impressive features to their apps. At the end of the day it is up to us as artists to shape the future of what this medium can be. As the artists at Pixar always say, Art pushes technology, technology inspires the art.

Thanks again to Kyle for such great insight. You can visit his iPad Doodler gallery here, as well as his own portfolio here. Catch up with Kyle's latest updates on Twitter and Facebook too.