There is no contest. The ipad provides the best apps, books, (there is a kindle reader for iPad so it is a kindle too) and the best operating system by far. When I hear schools discussing the choice staffrooms, the same argument comes up, “Well, iPads are so expensive, and we can get so many more android tablets for our money.”
So you can, and with them you buy so many more headaches down the line. Android is the new Windows. A loose operating system that is changed and mucked about with at the whim of Google and the manufacturers of the hardware. One Android tablet is not like another. Each machine has it’s own quirks. They all have different capabilities and idiosyncrasies, just like windows pcs.
An ipad is an iPad is an iPad. They just work, and Apple make sure the apps that go on them work too. As with all technology, both iPad and Android tablets will have their off moments and frustrations, but you will have far fewer moments and lesser frustrations with iPad.
When it comes to illustrated children’s ebooks, iPad is the only game in town. I don’t mean singing and dancing animated app books, I mean books where the text stays still on the page waiting to be read. You can’t learn to read when the text is dancing up and down and reading itself to you – that’s entertainment.
eBooks for children with pictures in the right place, with video and interactive elements for learning are only readily available on the iPad.
If you want to get on and do stuff, get an iPad. If you want to spend your time asking for help from IT support staff, get Android. If you want to save time and money down the line and have the best apps available to you, iPad is your choice every time.
It has always amazed me that those who don’t use Apple products wonder why Apple users are so fanatical about their support for Apple products. Those who use Apple products are the kind of people who try other systems and are always amazed that anyone would want to use anything else.
My favourite author of all time, Maurice Sendak, would have been 85 today. Google are celebrating his life with an animation featuring Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. Go see – only today.
I’m always asked how I got my name. Well here you are. The story of how I got to be called Shoo in glorious technicolour! (well, glorious YouTube as it happens!)
If you missed the first episode, it’s at the bottom of this article.
This episode sees my family off to Pakistan – watch and find out more.
All drawn feehand and spontaneously with my favourite Rotring Tikky Graphic pen and coloured in with Copic Ciao markers – Yes i love them, they are so quick and easy to use. They may seem expensive if you buy a huge set, but you can refill them and add new nibs and brush tips too. Over time, they work out to be very good value.
The paper is cheap photocopy paper. What more can I tell you? ask in the the comments box below.
Here’s last week’ episode:
There has been a meme going around YouTube for a little while called “Drawing My Life”. YouTubers tell the story of their lives while drawing, usually with stickmen drawn with dry wipe markers on a whiteboard. A lot of people have asked me to do a draw my life video over the last few months.
The trouble is that most of the people who make draw my life videos are quite young and they manage to fit most of their lives into one video. Well, I’ve been around quite a few years now, so I’m going to have to do quite a few episodes!
Also, I should really try to draw with something a bit more like the rest of my channel, with pens and markers or watercolour. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, How I should go about it, how I should break my life up into episodes and what are the best bits to draw?
I think I’ve worked out the formula and, with some trepidation, I have started on what is going to be a pretty massive project. I could really do with your support if you like it. Please tweet, share, Facebook and tell al your friends on all the forms of social media you use. If you do – many thanks.
It’s going to be a bit of a history lesson too, so you may find it informative and useful in schools!
Learn to draw a Star Trek Phaser Space Pistol. I think I mention Star Wars in the middle of this video. Sorry about that. When you are concentrating on drawing, the language side of the brain gets a little muddled up!
Learn to draw a fountain pen!
This is not the easiest thing in the world to draw, but with a bit of practice I worked out the basics to get it looking right. Follow the instructions and see how you do!
This is for the British International school School in Brussels, where I visited this week. We had a lot of fun and they said they would be drawing the Eiffel Tower very soon, so this is to help them all. Good luck guys!
YouTuber, Missy Den Dulk, asked me why I use pans and not tubes when I paint watercolours. Well, the answer is quite simple. I don’t do very big pictures, so pans are just fine for me.
Tubes are great for when you need to make big washes on a larger painting, but they do need to be squeezed out onto a palette, whereas a tin of pans is ready as soon as you open it up. The tin even has built in palettes or wells.
If you are going out sketching quickly then pans in a tin are so much more convenient. I’ve also found that aquash brushes are really good for sketching out and about.
This Painting is currently for sale!
This video was requested by YouTuber, portal2canttouchtis, who asked me to show how to draw a crow. I thought I would do better than that, I’d show you how to paint one too! It took much longer than I thought it would, so I split the video into two parts. Part one shows how to draw the crow and part two shows how I painted it with a running commentary on my thought process, choosing colours and styles of applying paint.
I hope you like this. If you do, let me know and also let me know if you would like me to do something on my monday videos on the ShooRayner channel on YouTube.
Learn to draw a feather
