Getting Used To A Drawing Tablet

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I have just acquired a new Wacom Cintiq 22 HD tablet. I though I would get used to it quickly, I was wrong. It took me few hours to get some results.

graphire-tablets
I remember my first tablet. It was a Wacom Graphire 2. It has the colourful Macintosh look. It's a classic tablet that you draw with your pen on it, and look at the screen to see the results. It took me about a week to get used to it! As soon as your brain will be coordinated with your hand, it will be fine. So, don't panic. It is just a matter of time. These tablet are tricky to handle at start, but at least when you draw, your hand doesn't cover your sketch.

A little trick that helped me a lot. I taped a printing paper on the tablet to get back the feel of sketching on paper. It was not really sexy but it works. The plastic nib was sliding too much on the plastic tablet for me. Be prepared to get some extra nibs. Paper is kind of abrasive, especially if you draw multiple hours per day.

TIP 59 First steps on a new tablet?
Relax, you'll get used to it.

You can't draw fully horizontal on that tablet. So my hand needed some training to recalibrate. It gave me an awkward feel that I couldn't master my own body. I felt a bit disoriented. However, a bit of practice solved this.

To practice some more I sketched a sneaker.

My main focus was recovering the full usage of my pen. The result actually make a stiff design. Slowly, I aim to regain the fluidity.

How about you guys first experience on a new tablet?
Feel free to leave some comment.

Small update sharing a good news. Few hours after I published the above article on Tumblr, I was glad to discover that Wacom is now following my activities at choutac.tumblr.com. 🙂