How did you move from paper to tablet? (for those who have done so)

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#1

Wow, uh I haven’t visited this board in awhile. Have all the old members retired or did they move to another forum? Anyway I’ll go ahead ask my question.

I’m trying to come up with new artwork but 1.) I have to buy a new scanner if I plan on transferring my art to computer, and 2.) I don’t like the transfer process I have to go through (ie. contrast and level) to make my art look as clean as possible on PC. I’d love to work on Graphire/Painter/PS exclusively, but the process is so awkward and so far my work has never looked as good as it does using paper. Has anyone had success working on tablet exclusively? How did you do it, and can you offer any advice to a guy like me who’s too used to drawing on paper only? Thanks in advance.

#2

I don’t know if this helps but some of my friends find the tablet’s surface too smooth so they wrapped their tablets with a piece of paper to have that paper-ish rough texture to simulate that pencil drawing feeling. Weird…

#3

hey thats a good tip twelve. I think tablets should only be use for coloring. It can’t replace the control you have on natural media when drawing.

#4

What about OCs? You’d preffer a tablet over a mouse when OCing…

#5

Twelve, or anyone, do you know how to set up your graphire so that it maps more like a mouse? So I can move to the left, then when I run out, I can just lift the stylus to the midde the move to the left more. I’m guessing I can’t do this:(

#6

If this is possible it would pwn.

#7

Why would you want it to map like a mouse? Everything about a tablet is better than a mouse. Shit I even use it for surfing the net sometimes.

#8

I agree with SFMC, why would you want to do that?

However, if you absolutely have to, you can in fact set any Wacom tablet to work that way. You should have a “Tablet” icon in your control panel. Under that is a section called Mapping. In there, you can change it from Tablet Mode to Mouse Mode, and it will work as you want.

If you have a very recent tablet, it might be located in a different area, but they all have this function in one form or another.

#9

Wow, I’ve tried out Twelve’s suggestion, and it’s woeking out GREAT. Still not as good as pencil/paper imo, but with some practice I may get used to tablet drawing.

I guess I started a new piece, I’ll show you guys the results when it’s done (in a week or so maybe).