It’s all pretty simple to be honest.

I have just upgraded from the 8th Gen Apple iPad that I started on for no other reason that I was limited in capacity as to how many layers I could work on within larger canvasses. I found this 18 month old pre-owned iPad Air 5th Gen a couple of months ago and it’s perfect. It’s only the smaller storage size of 64GB but I tend to offload finished work to external SSD’s anyway and I’m not animating or working on huge video files so this is ample for what I do. I found a pre-owned Apple Pencil 2 at CEX in Margate and traded in my old 8th Gen and Apple Pencil 1 so think it only cost me a couple hundred pounds to upgrade. Absolutely delighted with it.

It sits really nicely on a converted drawing board that I can tilt to find just the right drawing position depending on how I feel and what I am doing. My friend took a couple of pieces of ply and sandwiched them together for me with a cut out and I added some non-slip mat to hold it all in place.

In terms of software, I largely use Procreate. I do have Fresco and Photoshop but feels like a learning curve I don’t have the energy for right now so sticking to what I know. I haven’t experimented much with buying brush sets and packs as still working my way through what comes pre-bundled but I have bought the Max Packs Watercolour brush set. Really want to experiment more with this and as a way of becoming more proficient I am going to experiment more with traditional watercolour too. I honestly think have a basic grounding in one helps you understand the nuances of the other.

I also carry an A5 plain paper sketchbook and a Lamy Safari fountain pen for when I get the itch to draw traditionally or if my iPad is out of charge.

I have a whole range of pens, markers, pencils, paints and watercolours as well as different flavour pads and papers to experiment with but I find myself doing that less at the moment. Time and energy are my constraints and working with just the iPad and a sketchbook simplifies things for me.