That immediately counts out apps such as Procreate. I’m interested in drawing apps that create vector illustrations, not painting apps. They can get complex very quickly, so making them intuitive to use is no mean feat. Gradients are useful for realistic representation of lighting.These usually include precise colour matching. If you’re working within a corporate or for a corporate, you’ll find that you often need to adhere to brand standards. Intuitive colour management, including graduated colours. This makes it simpler to manage large images by folding away detail when you don’t need to see it. Illustrators separate image elements into separate layers. Creating and altering vectors has to become second nature very quickly, so a drawing app had better be good at that. Each vector has many properties, including control points, opacity, colour and order within layers. An illustrator will create images with thousands of vectors. An illustrator can’t afford to lose them, so does an app let you organise them properly and keep them safe? Illustrations have commercial value, sold under licence. There are many things, but I’ve focussed on the following. Many, many bruises later iStock accepted my work, and I punched the air! (If you’re interested, my profile has a link to my portfolio of illustrations and photos.) I’ve always enjoyed drawing and decided it would be fun to get published.
I’m a self-trained illustrator, who sells royalty free images on iStock. Affinity Designer, for example, is well regarded and only costs US$13.99 one-off. That might have been true once, but there are plenty of drawing apps with high customer scores in the AppStore now. That would cost US$999 for a 12.9” iPad Pro, US$349 for the Magic Keyboard and US$129 for an Apple Pencil.
Wouldn’t it be good if all that hype about the iPad and an Apple Pencil were true? Normal mortals could play too. The point is to get work done with flair, so that’s what you need to spend. What’s that add up to? Maybe US$4,400? Ouch.
The really committed will want a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 13.3” graphics tablet (US$2,599.99), because the Wacom One ($399.99) is great, but its resolution is a bit low.
That’s an iMac 27” (US$1,799) (or, horrors, a Windows box) and a Wacom tablet. Of course, you also need the hardware to make those apps sing. You do that not just for the apps, but also for access to the Adobe ecosystem. You’ll subscribe to Adobe Illustrator (US$251.88 annually) or even the Adobe All Apps plan (US$599.88 annually).
If you want the full set-up, you need to spend money that will put most people off.
Maybe you are a professional illustrator, or a committed hobbyist, or someone who wants to give their slide presentations an artistic sparkle. I have no links to the developers of any of the apps mentioned.