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Monday, July 23, 2012

My Favorite Ipad Accesory for Painting

'Purple Delight'           12x12       pastel               ©Karen Margulis  SOLD
 My printer is out of ink. It's been out of color ink for months so I haven't been printing any reference photos. ( I am trying to decide if I want a new printer before investing in $80 worth of ink and I need to make a decision soon!)  I usually print reference photos on regular inkjet paper four to a page.  This saves money and gives me a usable reference. Since I haven't been able to print new photos I have turned to my ipad to display my photos.  I have the latest ipad with the retina display and the photos do look life-like and full of light. Great to paint from!  But I wanted to be sure that the stand I used was stable and in the right position for viewing. Here is what I am using:


My Griffin A-Frame iPad Stand showing my reference photo

I have a cover that makes into a stand but it doesn't stand the ipad up tall enough for me to see well while painting. It also doesn't feel very secure and I wanted a stand that was rock solid.  I found the perfect stand. It is a Griffin A-Frame Tabletop stand. It is an aluminum a-frame stand that is lightweight yet extremely sturdy. No worrying about the stand collapsing or being knocked over. It has a rubber bumper which holds the ipad in place in both landscape and vertical formats. It holds the ipad upright at the perfect viewing angle for painting and can be laid flat for a good browsing angle. 

Using the Griffin stand for a painting
If you are going to use your ipad for displaying reference photos be sure to change the settings for the display to stay on. If your ipad keeps going to sleep it will be frustrating! If you would like to read more about using the ipad as a reference photo viewer check out my post here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I've considered buying an Ipad for the same use. Those printer inks are so expensive! A 10" digital picture viewer is another alternative for viewing reference material. It will zoom for detail and will stay on the same picture indefinitely. The only hassle I've found so far is transferring my photos into it using media cards.

Karen said...

Another great idea! Thanks for sharing. I like the ipad for the ease of getting a photo on it. I usually email the photo I want to paint to myself and then open in the ipad and save it to my photo gallery.