Switched from a mouse to a drawing tablet for line art last month

I used to do all my digital line art with a mouse. It took forever and my wrist hurt after an hour of work. Last month I picked up a basic Wacom Intuos for $80 on sale. The first few days felt clumsy, like drawing with a brick. But after a week of practice, my line work got way cleaner and faster. Now I can finish a full character sketch in 30 minutes instead of two hours. Has anyone else had a rough start when switching to a tablet?

3 comments

3 Comments

bell.taylor5d ago

Spent my first few hours with a tablet drawing the wobbliest stick figures you've ever seen, felt like I forgot how to hold a pencil entirely. The worst part was trying to sign my name and it looking like a toddler's scribble, had to take a break and laugh at myself. But yeah, once your brain clicks that the screen and the tablet pad are the same space, it's night and day better.

jessicaw545d ago

You've got the right idea about the eye-hand coordination clicking eventually, but it's not exactly that the screen and pad are the same space. Your hand moves on the pad while your eyes track the cursor on the screen, so your brain has to learn that the pad's surface maps directly to the monitor. Once you stop looking at your hand and just watch the screen, that's when the magic happens and it starts feeling natural.

spencer1995d ago

Is it really THAT deep though?