We asked a professional designer what's on her wish list. Check out these fantastic gift ideas for the artist in your life, from high-end drawing tablets to stylus replacement tips that simulate the feel of drawing on paper.

We asked professional graphic designer and contributor to PCMag, Shelby Tupper, what are some of the best gifts an artist can receive this year. She came up with these enviable ideas for every artist on your shopping list.

It won’t be long before the season of twinkling LEDs and gift-giving frenzy is upon us. If you're looking to get a head start, checkout this list of gifts that are sure to inspire any digital artist or designer in your life.

1. You Can’t Miss With This Digital Canvas

Apple’s stylish 10.9-inch iPad Air with a Liquid Retina display and blazing-fast M1 Chip is the dream gift for creators of any kind—and creating art is just a fraction of what it offers. A wealth of mainstream and niche apps let you do lifelike painting, photo retouching, animation, computational and generative art, symmetry and mandala creation, coloring books, virtual reality painting, and plenty more.

Though not included with the iPad Air, the 2nd Gen Apple Pencil is the ideal input device for it. As Apple says, “Dream it up. Jot it down.” There are loads of reasons to get one as the iPad’s steady companion. It snaps magnetically to the iPad along its anti-roll, flat edge for pairing, charging, and storing, and it has a touch surface for added functionality. It’s weighted just right and has realistic pressure and tilt sensitivity. To top it off, you can have a message for your giftee engraved on it for no extra cost. 

3. Pencils, Calligraphy Nibs, Smudge Sticks, and Thousands of Paint Brushes in Your Pocket

You might want to accessorize you Apple Pencil with some extra tips and covers. You’ll find several alternatives to the Pencil’s hard plastic tip, each offering a range of surface effects—including muffling the tap-tap-tapping of tip against glass. For that, and for adding various levels of control-enhancing friction, we recommend silicone tip covers and softer plastic screw-in replacements (the upgrade option mentioned below). The silicone tip covers offer the most drag and make the Pencil feel spongy and viscous, almost like you're really pushing through paint. The tips are inexpensive enough to make for a stocking stuffer, but beware, they're also small and easy to lose.

Upgrade option: For a more definitive interaction against the iPad glass, Soft and Hard tips(Opens in a new window) can be screwed into the Pencil, totally replacing the existing tip. Both are great additions to a rewarding painting or drawing experience.

4. When More Friction Is a Good Thing

A downside to drawing on the iPad is the lack of friction between the hard plastic Pencil tip and the shiny, slick glass. This combination limits a fair amount of controlled precision that artists enjoy when using pencil and paper or brush and canvas. Adhesive films help mitigate the challenge, but they can reduce visibility, distort color, and magnify the RGB pixels, making your screen appear grainy and less clear. One of the least-intrusive friction-enhancing films is made by Paperlike. This long-lasting matte screen protector has a tooth that mimics paper, offering a natural resistance that is satisfying to draw on. While the negative effect to screen quality is minimal, it's slightly noticeable—perhaps a reasonable trade-off for most projects. In addition, the film protects your screen from scratches and reduces glare with its nanodot technology.

An iPad is a hefty investment, so it’s smart to buy a cover that will protect it from inadvertent bangs and drops. Better yet is a cover with a built-in keyboard. Both of Apple’s offerings, the Magic Keyboard and Smart Folio with Keyboard, are excellent. But if you’re looking for something a little different, you should check out the Typecase Touch Case. In addition to being a case and full 78-key keyboard, it's also a 360-degree clamshell stand that contorts to several convenient positions. It has a touch pad with right and left click and a brilliant and customizable, ten-color rainbow backlit keypad, which you can turn off to save power. The Touch Case also comes in 12 metallic colors, including the six iPad Air colors. Most appealing, though, is the price, at less than $65.

Upgrade options: You also can't go wrong with Apple's Smart Keyboard Folio or Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, though both have a premium price tag.

For the Adobe Illustrator professional in your life, a one-year subscription to Astute Graphics’ Illustrator plug-ins will be a prize. This amazing suite of 21 time-saving plug-ins will give the gift of time, and is sure to ignite special effects wonder and creativity. Wherever there's an undetected hole in Illustrator’s feature set, the clever folks at the UK-based Astute Graphics step in and plug it. In addition to four included plug-ins, the Astute toolbox has highly customizable, all-vector, live tools that reform, texturize, stipple, enable Photoshop-style color adjustment, randomize, inspect and repair objects and text, space fill, manipulate points and curves, and enhance the native Pen Tool—among others. They have become an absolute necessity in my shop. The subscription includes all updates, new tools as they are developed, video and blog tutorials, tech support, and freebies.

Personal and professional development is one way to stay relevant and informed while you're upping your game collecting new skills. With a yearlong subscription to LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com), you can choose from a library of 18,000 first-rate, high-quality courses in a wide spectrum of business, tech, and creative subjects. Courses are taught by experts and certified instructors and include exercise files and quizzes; with some you can even earn a professional certificate of achievement. Artistic types will find all sorts of goodies, from instruction in Photoshop to broader courses about figure drawing, urban sketching, portraiture, monster drawing, animation, comic book design, and using Wacom tablets. 

Budget option: For a more organic and less costly experience, you might consider the online learning platform Skillshare (about $165 annually) instead. It's great for creative and craft-based topics.

These affordable mobile phone clip-on lens attachments from Mocalaca work with the front and back cameras of most mobile devices, including the iPad. The lenses augment the phone or tablet's existing wide and telephoto lenses and include the following: 2x optical; telephoto; kaleidoscope; soft, sparkle, and radial blur filters; a 0.63x wide angle; a worthy macro; and a motion blur emulator. You even get a case to hold everything together.

Upgrade option: For a slightly more serious creative effects lens, consider Lensbaby’s Mobile Sweet Spot Lens with adjustable focus. I’ve been using the company’s suite of DSLR creative lenses for years and I love them.

9. Desktop Painting, Drawing, and Doodling

The pinnacle of tablets for artists is arguably the Wacom Cintiq 16, which is essentially a monitor for your computer that supports touch and stylus input so you can draw on it. Compared with other tablets used by artists, having the display in front of you, right where you draw, is invaluable because it eliminates the weird feeling of looking at your monitor to see the cursor. The Wacom Cintiq is compatible with both macOS and Windows computers and includes a stylus.

Upgrade option: The Cintiq also comes in a larger, 22-inch size for $1,199.95, and like the Wacom Cintiq 16, it comes with a stylus.

10. Get the Right Angle Every Time

A memory foam base holds this sturdy stand solidly on even or uneven surfaces like your lap, on your desk, or in bed. With 14 angles between 9 and 75 degrees—and options for vertical or horizontal tablet placement—the Prop 'n Go Slim iPad stand is a winner. As a bonus, it fits most other tablets, ebook readers, and phones.

Looking to grow your creative skills? Check out these online resources for teaching yourself Photoshop and ten beyond-basic tips for becoming a better photographer.

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Shelby Putnam Tupper is founder and creative director of Shelby Designs Inc., a small-but-mighty, full-service, customer-obsessed design consultancy. She graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut with a BS in biology and a minor in French. She did post-graduate work at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where she received honors in the field of Medical & Scientific Illustration. She grew her entrepreneurial and design legs during her tenure at Harrison Design Group in San Francisco. Since its founding, Shelby Designs has received more than 100 local, national and international awards, has had their work published in books and top trade journals and exhibited in shows at The Palace of Fine Arts, The Masonic Auditorium and The SF Center for the Book. Outside the office, Shelby is a faceted artisan intoxicated by pre-1900s scientific illustration, engraving and typography. She also enjoys fiddling with her golden mean calipers and the number 1.618, and tinkers with computational graphics and Voronoi diagrams. She makes dimensional art from the pressroom’s recycled trimmings and fires up her torches to create jewelry from glass and steel. Shelby was born and raised in Oakland, where she lives with her husband, son and daughter, four cats, a gecko—and a tortoise named Darwin.

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