My tablet screen went dark in the middle of a commission last Tuesday

I was about four hours into a portrait piece for a client in Seattle when my drawing tablet just went black. No warning, no flicker, just dead right there on my desk. I tried unplugging it, plugging it back in, restarting my computer three times, nothing worked. The client was expecting a progress check by 5 PM that day and I had nothing to show them. I ended up having to email them and explain the situation, which felt terrible. Luckily I had backed up the file to cloud storage about an hour before the crash, so the work wasn't lost. I'm now looking at getting a backup tablet just to avoid this kind of panic again. Has anyone else had a screen fail in the middle of a project and found a good way to recover quickly?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavinperez1mo ago

Asked my buddy Mark about this exact thing since he does freelance illustration too. His tablet died mid-project last year during a tight deadline and he just stared at the wall for like twenty minutes before he could even think straight. He ended up buying a cheap used tablet off Facebook Marketplace that same week and keeps it in his desk drawer as a spare now. @skylerc86 makes a good point about checking the power supply though, Mark never did figure out if it was overheating or a bad outlet but the spare still saved his butt once or twice.

skylerc861mo ago

Not sure a backup tablet is the real fix here. A cloud backup already saved your work and a second tablet sitting on your desk won't stop the first one from dying again. Sounds more like an electrical issue or maybe the tablet just got too hot. Check your power strip and make sure nothing else is overloaded on that circuit. Also give the tablet a break every couple hours so it can cool down. Spending money on a spare tablet before figuring out why it failed seems like a waste.