Digital Artist is on sale now in UK newsagents. If you can’t wait for it to reach your local store, it’s also available in our online shop. This issue is packed with creative inspiration. We interview Pop Surrealist artist Camilla d’Errico, chat to Woop Studios about their range of posters, and present the best iPad apps and accessories that will help you to create great digital art anywhere.

Elsewhere in the magazine you’ll learn to design a music poster with Craig Henry, explore Divisionist colour theory with John Malcolm, paint a spring scene with Amber Hill, get to grips with Art Deco using Illustrator with Nigel Hopkins, learn how to use vanishing points with Abigail Daker, get Carlyn Beccia’s essential tips on using Painter’s Pattern pens and discover the tricks and tools you need to paint fantasy art on the iPad with Kari Christensen. We’ve also got a character design video tutorial from the awesome Andrew Jones! You won’t want to miss this issue.

Remember, if you’re a subscriber then you’ll receive the magazine earlier than your local store, and at the moment we’re offering some fantastic deals for new subscribers – three issues for £1 if you’re in the UK and six issues for free for US readers! Pick up Digital Artist 29 today to find out more.

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With the roll-out of iOS5 on the iPad and iPhone, it’s now even easier to manage your digital subscription to Digital Artist. You can now download our app for free and subscribe to digital editions on your iPad or iPhone via Newsstand.

Imagine was the first publisher to have its entire magazine portfolio as digital editions on the iPhone and iPad, and today’s launch, in association with PixelMags, means Imagine is once again at the forefront of publishing digital content on the world’s most exciting technology platforms.

If you already subscribe to Imagine’s individual apps you’ll be able to move your subscriptions into the Apple Newsstand. You can enjoy the benefits of having all your subscriptions organised in one simple location, as well as the auto renew subscriptions feature, which will free you from missing payments that would interrupt the subscriptions service. Apple Newsstand also includes the ability to search and purchase similar titles from Imagine Publishing that you may not currently subscribe to. So back-up your apps, get iOS5 on your iDevice (don’t unplug it until it’s done, remember!) and enjoy an even simpler way to access Digital Artist on the move.

To celebrate the arrival of their new line of cases for iPad 2, Happy Owl Studio has announced that they are giving one of their wonderful fans an iPad 2.  The giveaway will close on October 4th and the winner will be chosen at random and announced later that week. “Our iPad 2 line of cases are our best yet – and we are just giddy to get them out in the world” said Amy Oliveira, Happy Owl Studio Co-Founder.

To enter, fans of Happy Owl Studio must: (1) Be on the Happy Owl Studio email list; (2) Like Happy Owl Studio on Facebook; (3) Tweet the following tweet: 

Hoot! @HappyOwlStudio is giving away an #Apple #iPad2 and I just entered to win it! http://ow.ly/6tn3C #ThinkHappy!

In addition, an extra entry will be awarded for tweeting the tweet above (1 max per day).  An extra entry will also be given for retweeting any message with the hashtag #thinkhappy! (5 max per day)
.  Finally, 10 extra entries will be given to those who buy a Happy Owl Studio case before the giveaway closes.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve given away an iPad2,” said Devon Read, Happy Owl Studio CEO, “In addition to being great for social media, we really like to celebrate with our fans when good things happen!”  Previous giveaways celebrated the launch of Happy Owl Studio and the release of iPad 2.

Happy Owl Studio was founded by Devon Read, Amy Oliveira and Ryan Jordan with a mission to design, manufacture and market products that enhance the user experience of new technologies and help the user to effectively integrate emerging technology into their daily life. Based in Venice, California, Happy Owl Studio strives to consistently offer cutting-edge, innovative products that elegantly combine style and function.

Please note: This is an external competition – do not send your entries to Digital Artist!

In my recent Japan art appeals roundup I told you about PSoft’s project to collate artwork created in its beautiful Zen Brush app. PSoft is based in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, one of the areas worst affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami, but the company has rallied quickly to create its latest app, all profits from which go to the East Japan Earthquake Disaster Area Support Project. Zen Brush Art Book is a beautiful collection of artwork created in Zen Brush, a sumi-e ink painting app which is delightfully simple in its execution, fluidly lovely to use, and lends itself well to all Japanese-influenced art styles, from suibokuga (monochrome ink painting) to manga (sketches and cartoons). The initial release of the art book  app collates artwork submitted until 4th April 2011, more artwork will be included with updates. You get to see what’s possible with Zen Brush – alone or in combination with other apps – and support a good cause at the same time, all for just 99c. Check it out on the App Store.

Yes, it’s that time again – issue 19 of Digital Artist is now on sale in UK stores (including WH Smith and Tesco), in our online shop, and is beginning its journey around the world to wherever you are. As ever, subscribers get theirs first so if you struggle to find it in your local stores or it takes too long to get there, visit the subscriptions site or drop our lovely people an email.

We’ve got a great issue for you this month, starting with our gorgeous cover from Therese Larsson. Check out this guy! I want cocoa and marshmallows just looking at him. Therese’s illustration accompanies our feature, which this issue is on the magic of children’s illustration.

Elsewhere in the mag, Joe Cummings takes a look at Painter’s capabilities for producing Cezanne-inspired proto-Cubism, Karen Ingram explains how to incorporate patterns into illustrations, Matthew Watkins uses ArtRage for iPad to create an encaustic paint effect, Jack Teagle explores the art of panel rhythm in comics, Sara Biddle paints a hyperreal portrait, Marc Aspinall creates a Superflat-style piece with geometric elements, and Andy Hau creates a typographic illustration with fonts and photos. Phew! All that and we still pack in our Community and Zeitgeist pages, our Creative 101 section full of handy solutions, tips and tricks, and much more.

We’ll be out of the Digital Artist offices enjoying some UK national holidays until Tuesday 26th April 2011, which means we won’t be able to check our emails, approve Gallery images or comments on the site, check up on the forum, or visit the Digital Artist Facebook or Twitter until then. If, like us, you’ve got a long weekend, enjoy it!

Back in March 2011 we offered you the chance to win a gorgeous Etch A Sketch iPad case with our friends over at Late Late Gifts. It’s 19th April 2011 so it’s time to announce the winner, and it iiiiis (drumroll please)…

Pete L! Congratulations! Check your email for a message from me about your lovely prize.

Better luck next time the rest of you, but keep your eyes on the mag and the website as we’ve got plenty more goodies up our sleeves for the future…

Our sister magazine 3D Artist has teamed up with Twelve South to offer one lucky person a BookBook iPad case. This awesome prize is made from real leather and worth $69.99!

To be in with a chance of winning, simply digitally doodle a unique character design using your iPad and send it in to 3dartist@imagine-publishing.co.uk*. Please put ‘BookBook competition’ in the subject header, along with your full name and shipping address in the body of the message.

*Not clickable, to save them from spam. Please copy-paste the address into your email/webmail client. Good luck!

Spring has officially sprung, so it’s time to get out in the open air for a bit of sketching and painting. Being digital artists, we’re of course doing this on our iPads. To keep yours safe, sound and looking fabulous while you’re working en plein air, Digital Artist has teamed up with Late Late Gifts to offer you the chance to win a fantastic Headcase Etch a Sketch iPad case. Impress your friends with this unique iPad case designed in the shape of an Etch A Sketch. The case is made from durable and impact-resistant plastic with a retractable kick-stand that allows you to lay the iPad either flat or angled – perfect for use as an easel.

Designed to take the stress out of gift shopping, Late Late Gifts is the ultimate same day delivery gifts guide, helping you find those perfect last minute presents – and gets them delivered fast!

The site has over 200 stores to choose from and tells you what each shop sells, the cost of express delivery, and what time to order by for guaranteed delivery to avoid disappointment.

Head over to Late Late Gifts USA to learn more. Late Late Gifts also has a UK site if you’re on this side of the pond.

To be in with a chance of winning, just drop us a comment on this post telling us you’d like to be entered into the draw. We’ll pick the winner out of a hat (or possibly an Easter bonnet) on 19th April 2011. You need to be in the UK or US to enter this competition, sorry folks. Good luck!

With the iPad 2 out in the States and on its way to a worldwide release, we thought it was about time to re-examine the impact Apple’s tablet has had on the creative world. Poz Watson investigates…

“Whether they started with an absent-minded doodle on their iPhone, or bought an iPad specifically for the purpose of painting, it would be a rare person who could have predicted how ubiquitous or how powerful the iPad would become. Or at least, that it would become so this quickly. The advent of the iPad has sent a surge of enthusiasm through the creative world, bringing traditional artists into the digital arena for the first time, reuniting digital junkies with their traditional roots and forging something new and entirely different to boot; a veritable community of iPad artists. And it’s a world that is busy developing its own rules, ideals and best practices, as the recent iAMDA UK Show (iamda.org) demonstrated.”

Find out more in issue 18 of Digital Artist, on sale on 24th March 2011 in the UK and worldwide shortly thereafter.

Today Quark announced the arrival of the newest member of its QuarkXPress design software, version 9. With tons of automation features to make your workflow more fluid and optimisation for digital content creation, QuarkXPress 9 will allow designers to create rich page and digital layouts. Here’s some more from Quark:

QuarkXPress 9 sets a precedent for digital publishing by offering designers a flexible and cost-effective array of options for creating content that can be published to digital devices — e-readers, smartphones, and tablets — with one tool, and without programming code. Whether a designer needs to publish directly from QuarkXPress to the iPad®, create content for an e-book, or reach an expansive audience through the Blio™ eReader, QuarkXPress 9 can help.

•    App Studio for QuarkXPress: With App Studio for QuarkXPress, designers will have a dedicated design environment within QuarkXPress 9 for creating content for the iPad. Designers will be able to create customised apps for the iPad, distribute their apps through the Apple® App Store, and then publish richly designed, interactive content to the app. QuarkXPress 9 provides familiar tools to easily repurpose existing content or to design content specifically for the iPad that includes video/audio players, slideshows, scrollable regions, Web overlays, pop-up windows, buttons, and hyperlinks.*

•    Design for the Blio eReader: The Blio eReader is a free, multi-platform, multi-device application that presents eBooks just like the printed versions, in full colour and with all of the features of the ideal eReader. The Blio eReader can be downloaded free from www.blio.com and is also pre-installed on millions of Windows computers from Toshiba, HP, and Dell, as well as devices that run the iOS, Android, and Silverlight platforms. QuarkXPress 9 is the only page layout software with direct support for the Blio eReader, including the ability to enhance eBooks with interactive elements and a Read Logic feature that separates the print experience from the digital experience.

•    Export to ePUB: QuarkXPress 9 includes an easy option for exporting to ePUB, the free and open e-book standard developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Designers can create traditional text-based e-books and publish to e-bookstores such as Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble® NOOK®, and Amazon® Kindle®. Book publishers can also export existing QuarkXPress layouts in ePUB format. QuarkXPress 9 includes a new Reflow View that allows designers to configure the content behind their layout to prepare it for reflow-based outputs such as ePUB. Designers can also automatically create an ePUB table of contents from the Reflow View’s article structure.

Design-driven Automation
In addition to its innovative digital publishing capabilities, QuarkXPress 9 includes new features that help to automate the design process. The features are instrumental in increasing productivity and alleviating many manual, time-consuming design tasks.

•    Conditional Styles: This new feature allows designers to automatically style content based on powerful styling rules
•    Bullets and Numbering: Compatible with Microsoft Word import and export, the new Bullets and Numbering feature of QuarkXPress 9 makes it even easier to format ordered and unordered lists and complex multi-level outlines
•    Callouts: With the Callouts feature, boxes and groups move automatically with text as determined by the designer; callouts can be positioned relative to the page, spread, text box, paragraph, or character
•    ShapeMaker: A wizard for easily creating or modifying hard-to-draw shapes such as waves, polygons, stars, and spirals, ShapeMaker also allows designers to create unique corner effects
•    ImageGrid: Allows designers to import and automatically build grids of images with a variety of layout options; also supports image captioning
•    Linkster: Enables designers to unlink and relink text boxes that already contain text, to unlink stories spanning multiple pages, and to link or unlink boxes without disrupting existing text
•    Story Editor: Provides a word-processor-like view within QuarkXPress, which is most helpful when text within a layout is difficult to read and when reviewing stories that span multiple pages
•    Cloner: The smartest and most efficient way to clone design elements, Cloner allows designers to copy items or pages to multiple other pages or layouts and can be used to combine layouts or split them apart

QuarkXPress 9 will have the same pricing as QuarkXPress 8; £779/ 1349 € for a full product license and £279/ 399 € for upgrades from QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7. It will be available through authorised Quark resellers (http://bit.ly/Quarkresellers) and through the Quark Store (http://shop.quark.com/ew ). App Studio for QuarkXPress — which enables publishing to the iPad — will be available as a free update to QuarkXPress 9 users within 90 days after QuarkXPress 9 ships.

QuarkXPress 9 will ship from April 2011. But if you were just about to buy a copy of its predecessor QuarkXPress 8, don’t fear – Quark is running an offer between now and QuarkXPress 9′s shipping date. If you buy or upgrade to QuarkXPress 8, you’ll get QuarkXPress 9 free on release *.

*All customers will receive their free upgrade to QuarkXPress 9 as an electronic download version. Customers will also have the option to purchase a retail box of QuarkXPress 9 from any Quark authorized reseller but will be responsible for a shipping and handling fee of $19 US plus tax (€ 19/£19 including tax).