#bc im so used to my pen display (?) tablet with the screen

[cedobols]

What kind of tools do you use when you draw in photoshop? I've been drawing on paper and I thought drawing digitally would be easier, but it's not 😆 it's hard for me to be precise, so do you have any wisdom nuggets you could share?

im a little confused by the question nonnie but ill try my best to give an answer u might find helpful ;; ill start off by saying: it doesn't matter which medium is used, drawing can always be quite challenging! so dont let that discourage you ໒(＾ᴥ＾)७ !!

if by preciseness, you mean the lines aren't coming out the way you want them to, the frustrating truth is: practise makes perfect! it usually always comes down to practice and how comfortable u are with ur own tools... if you're new to digital art then everything will definitely feel a bit wobbly and uncomfortable!

i dont actually know SHIT about photoshop but i believe that its common for artists to make use of the stabiliser setting which allows for a smoother brush stroke. I THINK the equivalent in ps is the 'Smoothing' setting.

so i defs recommend u play around with that a bit and see if anything in particular floats ya boat. otherwise, if by tools you mean stuff other than brushes: get into the habit of using multiple layers! the more the better (sometimes...)

i recommend that each character has their own layer/s. not only does this prevent future confusion (for example) in the event that i want to redraw seb's arm but find that his lineart overlaps marks, i dont have to worry about fucking up mark's lines bc they're on two different layers.

ill make a new layer for each: character lines. hair. (sometimes face details). base skin colour. clothes colouring. hair colour. eye colour. shading. extra details.

i think using multiple layers can help with precision! some artists do as many as 3-4 sketches before getting started on their final line art. i usually do 1-2 depending on how comfortable i am with the subject matter. but giving urself a base, something to use as a line guide, can defs make the drawing process more comfortable!

uhhhhhh i think thats all really ;; sorry if this isn't helpful in the slightest but truthfully .. there aren't secrets to drawing (at least not that i know of) its just about familiarising yourself with your tools and trying new things to find what works best for you! and a lot of the time your results won't look anything like what you'd imagined but thats the fun of it so jus keep doodling away ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❗️

[hattersarts]

So @XPPen sent me their new pen display tablet to review! It’s the new Innovator 16 (https://xp-pen.com/product/638.html) with a 15.6 inch display.

Full review under cut with more pics! 

First off my only regular use of this type of drawing on display is my 12.9 ipad for travel and the occasional go on a cintiq or yiynova in the past so im no expert with pen displays, I work with a wacom intuos pro on the daily.

image above shows everything they include in the box, they include a power block (and every converter) but if you have the USB space you can run it purely off your pc (2 USB and 1 HDMI port) which was so smooth and lass faffy then needing another plug. 

side note i love the travel pen holder w/ nibs, it sucks when my pen gets dusty when i chuck it in a pencil case to travel.

The screen is really nice to work with its a 1920 x 1080 pixel size with a screen 13”9 x 7”10 with makes the ppi just over 140 which didn't make me feel like I could see every single pixel on the screen. I also liked the physical size, it didn't cramp my desk nor my drawing, my UI wasn’t 5 miles across the desk. They have actual stats about the colour profile on the product page but all i can say is the colours were loooooovveellyyyyy on my eyeballs.

The tooth on the screen is great, v similar to a paper texture ipad cover, the wheel supports two settings (one on the black (virtual), one on the outer silver (mechanical) and the buttons have notches and size differences to tell them apart under your fingers. (I dont use hotkeys on tablets, too many buttons to map and my intuos's are all taped up bc i kept spilling hot drinks on them while i worked, which i ALSO accidently did with this xp pen tablet with coffee and it survived!)

next thing is the size, this thing is /THIN/ its 9mm wide yet feels super solid and that's what really struck me when i first lifted it out of the box. I'm on Win 7 (I KNOW) Clip Studio and installation was a dream I just plugged it in to my pc, downloaded & installed the drivers, restarted once and I was good to go. (they said you should remove all other drivers before you install theirs but i forgot to uninstall wacom’s and it was fine, its unfortunately incompatible with wacom’s and you cant have pen pressure on both only the xp-pen when both are installed)

There's slightly more parallax on this than the ipad but wayyy less than older display tablets that i've used and it didnt get in the way of my drawing, also no lag that affected my drawing.

main con for me is the lightest pen pressure, it doesn't pick up the pen when you drag it across the surface of the screen using only its own weight pushing down unlike my intuos, this did affect my sketching since I work very lightly. (i'm only using the stand they provided here)   (Video link to example of what i mean)

If you add a little bit of pressure it picks it up fine but it gave me the feeling like my pen was skipping the beginning of my strokes. The pen is a little lighter than the wacom one and this almost felt like it might be solved with a heavier pen? I got more used to this as I drew with it over the day and didn't affect my painting and it’s def something you could get used to over time.

I spent all day with it yesterday and rigged a somewhat ergonomic stand with the one they give you which is sturdy and travelable but not a good angle or height for long period of drawing (oh for the day tablet producers ship their products with good stands) I worked on it for about 8 hours and it never got hot.

Overall I'm really impressed with the tablet, it eliminates a lot of my past gripes with pen displays and I think if you like working with them, it's currently £449 ($499) in their stores which i think is great bang for your buck with this.

US: https://bit.ly/3eUWbax AU: https://bit.ly/3iAfiZY SEA: https://bit.ly/3gjfCdB UK: https://bit.ly/2ArL1v8 EU: https://bit.ly/2D5uZIg

[ikimaru]

Hey sunny! Im sure u get asked this alot but ive been meaning to buy a display for Christmas and ive always used wacom ones but they’re so expensive, ive been looking at xppen and huion bc its cheaper but theres so many versions that idk the difference between them and which one would work best, so i was hoping to get your opinion :)

heyy, p much the same as my response from the other day but uhh updating with new info (also it’s not like I tried every single model, just the ones they sent me lool for all the rest I gotta fill in the gaps)

differences in pen displays:

sizes, the bigger they are the more expensive, pretty self explanatory haha I’d stick around 13′’-16′’ because it’s a comfortable size while not being so big that you will have to relocate them or find room specifically for them

lamination: gloss and matte, gloss ones are cheaper and might feel weird to draw on, many buy an additional textured foil to put on them

and then other stuff like parallax and color accuracy etc which will improve in more expensive models even if just marginally in some cases

as for personal experience, the huion kamvas pro 16 works great for me /however/ the stylus is very fragile (this goes for all huion styluses with the rubbery pen grip according to reviews I’ve seen, drop it once even from a small height and you might have to buy a new one), I can’t say if rubber grip styluses of other brands are just as fragile, but that’s the kind of stylus you usually get with all (most?) pen displays anyway, by default I think they’re more fragile than the tablet without screen ones which are fully plastic (I dropped my old wacom ones so many times lmao)

as for xp-pen I’m not too sold on it bc the artist pro 24 which is one of their higher end models doesn’t feel great pen-pressure wise, at least to me.. (it feels very similar to the huion kamvas 13 ngl) it also had a little parallax which I didn’t notice as much on that huion, so I’d assume their cheaper models would be around the same /at best/, but like.. a lot of people use them so they’re probably ok, I just personally found the pen pressure smoother on a cheap wacom from 10 yrs ago hAHA the kamvas pro 16 feels very smooth to draw on tho, it’s also laminated matte by default, but yeah fragile stylus

anyway depends from what you expect from the tablet, maybe not everyone notices this difference in how the pen pressure feels as much :? but for me if it doesn’t feel as smooth as I expect I won’t enjoy drawing on it;;

[ibblescribbles-archive]

TELL US ABOUT UR TABLET PLS ID LOVE 2 HEAR

@eonsbehindus @antiseptic-anesthetic @duffyelaww thank u guys!! it’s a Gaomon PD1560 and im !!! love it sm so far! it’s a graphic tablet with an IPS screen and HD resolution and it has 10 hotkeys + 8,000+ levels of pressure sensitivity which is rlly hecking nice!! + the price was $360 and it came with two gloves, extra nibs, a stand, and a screwdriver for screwing in the stand, compared to the $1000 dollar retail price of the cheapest cintiq ^v^ i personally rlly like the size too, its got a 15.6″ screen diagonally so not really ideal for professional animators but its the same size as my laptop screen and fits on my desk nicelymmm some cons ive noticed though are def the lack of tilt recognition in the pen? its not a huge problem, just a little bit of a pain when im tilting the pen differently than how i calibrated it. also im having a bit of trouble matching up my colors, but my monitor’s colors are kind of wonky so i think that’s a problem on my end mostly. its also a little difficult to adjust to seeing as in all my years as a digital artist ive only used tablets without screens? i mean, the hot keys are actually pretty intuitive, i was worried about using them but ive gotten relatively used to them, but just the feeling of drawing on a screen itself is a little jarring. also i have no keyboard, which is fine shortcut wise bc of hotkeys, but when i need to type smthing i either have to go to my laptop on my bed or bring up the on screen keyboard on my computer, which is kind of a problem bc i name my layers to keep them organized. im probs gonna get a small wireless keyboard though so its not a huge problem!lol ty for letting me ramble, all in all its a hecking good bargain u guys, if ur wanting to get a graphics tablet and ur new to screen displays then this is the way to go!

[sovonight]

Do you like drawing on your surface pro/would you recommend it?

i actually use a surface book so that’s all i’ll be able to talk about, sorry! i hope my experiences w it can still be of some use

before i get started, surface/surface book refers to the surface book, and usual drawing tablet refers to my monoprice tablet (that i use w my desktop pc). tablet mode for the surface book is referring to when you detach and flip the screen around, so that the physical keyboard is no longer accessible

running art programs:

sai…isn’t ideal. there’re some problems w sai and the magnifying thing the surface book does to get programs to display in proper scale on its 2000x3000px resolution, and i think i had some problems w pen pressure, too

clip studio paint works fine! but i’m just personally not used to it

sai 2 (preview) works pretty well, and that’s what i usually use now

drawing - pros:

i can take the surface book almost anywhere with me, so i can draw almost anytime

i drew while waiting at an airport terminal once and then got self conscious abt drawing an old man (stan) winking flirtatiously

i sometimes choose nicer colors here than on my desktop pc, which i attribute to the environment change between the two

i….i’m having a hard time coming up with more pros, now that i think about it, but im pretty sure microsoft has done more than enough advertising to pick up the slack here

drawing - cons:

bonus neck cramps

bonus hand cramps,,

i wouldn’t recommend it just for drawing. i mainly got it so that i could run solidworks and stuff, the pen pressure screen was just a bonus

i’ve said before that drawing on it is like trying to draw w a stick of butter and i don’t take that back. it’s like..drawing with a blunt crayon, on glass, when you’re used to using 0.3mm mechanical pencil on paper. i dont doubt that one could grow used to it but i prefer my usual tablet so much that i haven’t felt the need to train myself for it

on that note, handwriting is a nightmare,, i know this isn’t “drawing” but like, the surface was partially advertised towards note-taking and my already-atrocious handwriting just gets worse if i don’t specifically concentrate (which defeats the purpose! by the time i’m done concentrating the lecture has moved way on). the pen slides really easily over the screen and it’s just..it’s an ice rink, dude. but that’s not the worst con. the worst con is, imo,

there’s no good (built-in, default) access to keyboard shortcuts. this absolutely killed me bc my whole life is keyboard shortcuts. my speed is keyboard shortcuts. the only way i’ve managed to still access shortcuts is by 1) keeping the surface book as a laptop and just.. putting the back of the screen half to the table, holding the keyboard half to my chest, and awkwardly maneuvering the keys that way, or by 2) buying a bluetooth keyboard to use when i flip the surface book around into tablet

another thing i don’t like is the incline– or lack of one. when i flip the surface book over into a tablet i usually prop the screen up at a ~30 degree angle with my pencil box to get an incline that won’t hurt my neck as much, but then the surface book heats up extra fast, followed by my pencil box and my drawing hand

have i mentioned that the surface book heats up? like, really heats up. they say it’s harmless but uh dude my hand is uncomfortably warm on there.

on the surface book it takes me like, 2x the time to draw something of the quality that i get on my usual drawing tablet. i find it difficult to do any polished work just bc drawing on the surface book still feels clumsy to me. i wouldn’t draw anything on it that i was planning to take to print– not without cleaning it up with my usual tablet

if it were my only option, sure i could use the surface book to accomplish the same things i’ve been doing with my usual tablet, it’d just take forever longer and i’d get neck cramps. (this experience kinda makes me feel like i’m not cut out for cintiqs, tbh. not at this point in my life, anyway.)

there’re some examples of what i’ve drawn using the surface book here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

which you can compare to any other digital art of mine to see the difference between me using the surface book & my usual tablet