Perfecting your artistic technique using a stylus is about to get a whole lot more refined. With the introduction of iOS 8, your screen will be sensitive to the relative width of whatever's running across its surface. That's great news for folks who prefer Paper and other drawing apps to, well, paper.


Over on Co.Design, Mark Wilson notes how Pencil—the wooden stylus used for making creative magic on Paper's digital sketchbook—will soon respond to the width of your stroke, allowing for a more realistic user experience.


A new feature called Surface Pressure mimics the way you would wield a traditional drawing tool, allowing for subtlety and shading to spreading thick swathes of "ink." It looks really, really fun to use:

This update is all thanks to a new feature in iOS 8 that slipped under the radar: Screens will now recognize exactly how big the object touching them really is. It's an intuitive step forward for the software, and it gives existing hardware a brand new life. It could also have big implications for other apps aiming to utilize a wide range of reactive gestures, from bold lines to endless shades of grey. [Co.Design]