5 Reasons an Artist Needs a Tablet

Another week gone by so fast! This week was mostly another admin and marketing week. I worked on putting together my Ontario Town Square Mural proposal. I reworked my artist resume/CV , put together a portfolio, and requested professional references from my clients. Next week I will work on the mural design itself.

Now on to the fun part: I invested in a tablet! When I told my boyfriend I was thinking of getting one he said “Why do you need a tablet? You already have a phone and a laptop?”

I had to convince myself also so here’s why I need one:

•  For web-based publishing on the go: to update my personal website, write blog posts, work on email marketing campaigns, update product listings. These are things that I can’t do directly on my phone because the screen is way too small and my fatigued eyes don’t appreciate it.

• Administrative tasks – updating artist statements, CV/resume, excel spreadsheets and records, write proposals, etc. It’s not so easy to type important data on a tiny little screen.

• To showcase my portfolio to potential clients. Not everyone has great eyesight for small pictures. It's better to show all my projects on a bigger screen so I can zoom in on the details.

• To process credit card transactions via Square app and other card readers.  In the past I used my phone but think about it, do you really want strangers’ fingers touching the screen on your phone? Germ-o-phobes will appreciate the option to use a stylus or another device that doesn’t touch your face. 

• For entertainment and fun of course!  To watch Netflix, YouTube videos, read articles, etc. My day job requires me to travel to conferences and trust me I was always envious of the other people on the plane with tablets. 

Of course there are many more reasons to justify buying a tablet: printing shipping labels, working while you're traveling (I get nervous about damaging/losing my expensive MacBook when carrying a lot of luggage at the airport), to use as a photo reference when making art - gone are the days when you had to print photos and spend lots of money buying ink!

I wanted a device with a great screen resolution, comparable to my MacBook with Retina display, so I was debating between an iPad mini (too costly IMO and I already spent a lot on my laptop) and the Kindle Fire HD (does it serve as an e-reader only?... because I don't plan on reading e-books that often). I went to the store to compare and I fell in LOVE with the Samsung Galaxy 3 tab (8-inch/16GB). The price was good - $250 (on sale), way less than what I was expecting! For my purposes listed above, I love it! The only downside so far is my Office 365 subscription app doesn’t work with the OS but it has another app similar to Office, and the Paypal app hasn’t caught up with the Jelly Bean OS either, so I will use the browser for that. Hopefully the app developers can improve this over the next few months. Other than that I’m loving it! Here are some pictures:

I definitely recommend this tablet for artists, designers, photographers, small business owners, contractors, freelancers and even students! So if you needed a reason for getting a tablet, there you go. 

Thank you for reading. Have a great weekend.