ARCHIDISIAC

So I now have a wacom tablet (intuos 4 - small) in my possession thanks to an awesome friend. I had used one briefly when I was in school but now I can really get down to some serious business and try to master the new medium.

I suppose I expected to be able to draw just as well if not better electronically but really drawing digitally feels nothing like drawing on paper. First of all, I find the relationship between the cursor on the screen and what I draw on my pad to be really disconcerting. The whole hovering over your pad to get the cursor to move thing feels unnatural and takes some getting used to. There's something very strange about not seeing the line come out of my pencil that feels completely alien and disconnected. I also tend to hold my pencil at a slant so that really confuses me as to where the tip of my electronic pen actually hits the surface. Second, the "brush" will never be able to mimic real pencil in terms of pressure and fluidity. I find that setting the pen pressure closer to firm seems to help but I don't think there is any way to shade quite like real pencil. And finally, changing brush sizes and settings seems to get a bit cumbersome at times. I'll have to start creating presets and slowly build a library of my favorites.

But all in all, I still think the tablet will be a powerful tool and handles pretty well for a piece of technology. Coupled with all of photoshop's capabilities, we are looking at some seriously kickass stuff to come...with practice.

Anyways, this is what I started with on my first try messing around. Will continue to build on this image this week and see where it takes me.