Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?
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I find myself doing more and more digital "art", mainly free-hand map making but I'd like to also get better at doing more traditional art (especially to illustrate my D&D setting). But doing so using a mouse is...painful and imprecise.
To that end, I'm thinking about purchasing a WACOM-style tablet that I could connect to a computer and use for more natural drawing. Anyone have any experience with such things? Are there particular models/brands/styles that work well? Any applications that are well-suited to pen-based drawing (ideally not Adobe, as that's super duper expensive).
I saw this one https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays/wacom-one and it seemed to be the right sort of thing. But I know very little about it.
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@Benjamin-Hall I've got some cheap Wacom for my sister years ago, she didn't use it much so we borrowed it to a friend who was getting into semi-pro drawing. They've never returned it so I guess it works well enough.
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I had the chance to play around with a dedicated Wacom tablet without a display. That was quite difficult to use - there seems to be somewhat of a learning curve to using that. So getting one with a display (like the one you've linked) is probably the way to go.
In that respect, I've only had access to various Surface laptops. They apparently also use (used?) Wacom's sensor technology. Some thoughts
- Stylus / stylus tips and the display coating make some difference. I've had some combinations that felt very slippery, which wasn't great. Recommend getting a stylus that can swap tips and a set of different tips. If at all possible, go somewhere they have one physically and try it out. (Might be difficult with a dedicated drawing tablet, though, since those are a bit more specialized devices.)
- On a Surface Go, one of the cheaper 3rd party styluses makes some wavy/bumpy patterns when dragged in a line. Not very obvious, and doesn't affect e.g., written text too much.
- Touch screen in combination with pen has been a mixed bag, but I think I prefer it overall. The ability to quickly move about and zoom in/out (e.g. left hand, drawing/writing with right) is helpful. Glitchy hand-resting detection is the counter point here.
Not an artist, so YMMV. Tried Sketchbook (Autodesk), and had fun. For being Autodesk, it was reasonably affordable. Think there are free / evaluation versions available. I've used the pen with other software, e.g., Inkscape, Gimp, OneNote. Assuming the Wacom device shows up as a standard display + pen device in Windows, I'd assume all of those would work as well. Think it even worked in Blender, though the utility there was a bit more questionable.
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Drawing on a tablet looking at the screen takes a while to get used to. I bought my WACOM tablet to draw concept art for videogames but not only I greately overestimated my drawing abilities, I still haven't worked out the plot for my videogame so after drawing the protagonist I just stopped drawing anything for now.
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@cvi said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
Think it even worked in Blender, though the utility there was a bit more questionable.
Blender does have some operations, mostly in the image editing mode, I think, that are optionally sensitive to tablet stylus pressure, if you have a tablet. I don't, so I don't know how well they work.
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I wish I had something relevant to add, but the only Wacom tablets I've had were an old PS2/serial port one I used with Adobe CS2, and a USB one from a garage sale that I never used
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I had/have a small USB wired one that came with a stylus and a mouse, neither of which needed power. I liked it but never used it enough to get very proficient. My artist friends swore by them, though.
I've heard good things about the Affinity applications; I need to try them one of these days. I'm still using Adobe's CS6 programs on a perpetual license.
My own mapping work is usually vectors instead of bitmaps, so I don't find the mouse that limiting. (More like CAD work than drawing.)
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@Benjamin-Hall I was going to tell you to not even waste your time with a non-screen model. I have a Wacom Intuos 3 (somewhere...). While it's great at what it does, it's positively impossible to use without seeing what you're drawing where you're drawing it. I can't believe it cost as much then as this model with a screen does now (their Cintiq line with built-in screens used to be $1700 or so).
Only other concern is how thick the screen is. I eventually bought an HP tablet (that quickly died but beside the point...) where you could write on the screen. The problem with that was 4mm gap between the pen and the pointer due to the thickness of the screen. It's something that would've been immediately apparent if we had any computer stores to demo products.
Honestly, I went back to pens, paper, and a flatbed scanner for my art.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
Any applications that are well-suited to pen-based drawing (ideally not Adobe, as that's super duper expensive).
There's no way to beat Krita on price because it's free and open source:
https://krita.org/en/features/highlights/
Not sure if it supports all WACOM features, but last I checked the WACOM drivers could map pad buttons to just about any shortcut and Krita does recognize the stylus drawing pressure / eraser button.
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The wife's been using (non-display) graphics tablets for years - Pentagram originally and now a Wacom Intuos - and she says she's happy with it. Her biggest complaint is that it's got a ton of functionality that she's
to learn, so occasionally she switches something on that she doesn't know how to switch off. I believe that all of the buttons and the rest are configurable.WRT to software, I'm told Krita is both good and free, so you might want to check that out.
EDIT:
'd by @JBert
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@GOG said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
The wife's been using (non-display) graphics tablets for years - Pentagram originally and now a Wacom Intuos - and she says she's happy with it. Her biggest complaint is that it's got a ton of functionality that she's
to learn, so occasionally she switches something on that she doesn't know how to switch off. I believe that all of the buttons and the rest are configurable.WRT to software, I'm told Krita is both good and free, so you might want to check that out.
EDIT:
'd by @JBertWe plumped for a top-end Samsung tablet with WACOM digitizer for the girl's drawing machine. Seems alright so far? But I really had better get some commissions out of it... not sure whether to go for a classic Dagon Rising or what.
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All you folks rallying against displayless-tablets must have endless frustrations using a mouse, too. Unless you’ve found some way to keep it pressed against the screen at all times, of course.
Wacom is the ideal choice for everyone who hates having both money and independent thought; it pairs excellently with photoshop in that sense. Otherwise, you can get the same thing with even more features for hundreds less.
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@kazitor said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
All you folks rallying against displayless-tablets must have endless frustrations using a mouse, too.
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@kazitor said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
All you folks rallying against displayless-tablets must have endless frustrations using a mouse, too. Unless you’ve found some way to keep it pressed against the screen at all times, of course.
I do have endless frustrations trying to draw smooth curves with a mouse.
Wacom is the ideal choice for everyone who hates having both money and independent thought; it pairs excellently with photoshop in that sense. Otherwise, you can get the same thing with even more features for hundreds less.
And note I said WACOM-style tablets.
Thanks for the suggestion. But not for the hostility.
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@Zecc nice
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@Benjamin-Hall I have a Lenovo Thinkpad M14T - it does touch and pen input (through the included active pen).
Only requirement: You need a USB-C connector on your main PC / laptop.
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I've had several display-less wacom tablets over the years and generally been very happy with them. I'm not much of an artist by any means, and I'd use them only sporadically, but every time one gave out, after a while I'd come to miss it enough to get a new one.
I'd consider it more or less essential for any kind of free-hand drawing, mostly for the pressure sensitivity, and whenever the cursor's trajectory matters. Also, having the eraser on the back of the pen can be very convenient. Point-and-click/drag precision (e. g. twiddling nodes in a vector program) is much better with a mouse for me.
Not having a display is much less of a problem than one might think IMHO, though it does need some getting-used-to, and a bit of care in setting up the tablet-to-screen mapping. On the other hand, from what I've heard the display ones have their own issues, in particular parallax due to the gap (glass) between the display and pen tip, the quality of the drawing surface, potential reliability issues due the additional complexity, and you can't choose a decent screen independently of your tablet.
The drawing surface is a critical factor IME. The surface of the first Bamboo tablet I had was way too slick, which makes drawing much more difficult (IIRC I ended up roughing it up with sanding paper (!) to get a bit more grip...). Wacom also sell stick-on sheets in varying roughnesses to adapt this to your needs, though I haven't tried those.
It worked well in Photoshop when I still used it. Since then I've switched to linux at home, but was surprised to find that there's decent linux support for wacom tablets. I've used it with the GIMP (which worked well as far as I'd consider GIMP to work well) until I found Krita (mentioned above) somewhere here, which generally works great if you're ready to put up with a few quirks as usual in an open-source program. Been using it a lot the last few months, mostly to draw combat maps for our online D&D sessions, and been very happy with it.
My personal priority list for choosing a tablet would be:
- Pen / surface feel. Too slick and it's very difficult to be precise and get nice lines, too rough and bumpy and it'll turn out all jittery. This is a combination of the tablet surface and the pen tip. Intuos tablets come with two different kinds of pen tips which can considerably vary in drawing feeling.
- Size of the drawing surface. In addition to the encumbrance / precision / price trade-off, it should be adapted to your drawing technique. I draw mostly with my lower arm and wrist, and have found the M size (roughly A4) suitable for me. The smaller one felt rather constraining. With a big tablet (say wacom L size), you really need to do big gestures using your entire arm, or you'll get lost in a sea of empty space...
- Resolution, both concerning x/y and pressure sensitivity. I was surprised how much I noticed the increased pressure resolution of the Intuos Pro vs. the Intuos 5.
- Build quality. Intuos 5 was kinda crappy in this regard, the new Intuos Pro feels very solid and has held out great up to now.
- Price. IMVPO, it's well worth paying extra for what's above. I'd be less concerned about skimping on the points below.
- Display or not. I haven't used tablets with displays, but I feel that that point is massively overrated. If you do decide on having a display, make sure the display is decent, the gap between the pen and the image is as small as possible, and the drawing surface feels good to draw upon.
- Other features (touch, additional buttons, etc). To be honest, touch I always turn off first thing, because it tends to catch my resting hand or random accidental swipes across the surface. I also don't much use all the extra buttons, mostly because I'd need to figure out a suitable setup / mapping for them for every program I use the tablet with, and then get it to reliably switch that mapping when I switch programs; and after all, hey, I've got a perfectly fine mouse and keyboard right there when I need it...
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@Zenith said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
You can really see where the mouse affected the line. Some of this is pixelization artifact, which a higher-resolution digitizer, or one that utilized detected motion better, could fix. Now, the surface still does come into play here. If the friction the mouse encounters is uneven, you're going to have more distortions.
Although you could of course try one of the stickers WACOM offers, you may want to experiment with different grades of newspaper if you're just using a mouse. Older papers have slightly different composition, but the aging effects completely outweigh that.
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@Gribnit Now here's the same freehand with a pen in roughly the same time:
Both based on this:
My Wacom work was better than my mouse work but not having the physical pointer where the (virtual) ink is marking is a huge handicap.
Edit: And because I'm a colossal jerk (or bored or both):
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So I never got around to buying a tablet. Until today, when I was at an estate sale. And found a working (if old) Wacom Intuos 3 6x8 tablet with pen for $20. No screen, but it does have buttons and it does work. Also found a projector for $45; haven't tested that one yet. If it works well, I'll consider finding a way to rig it vertically for D&D display. Probably not in this apartment though. But I'm looking to move in a couple months, hopefully to rent a house instead.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
So I never got around to buying a tablet. Until today, when I was at an estate sale. And found a working (if old) Wacom Intuos 3 6x8 tablet with pen for $20. No screen, but it does have buttons and it does work. Also found a projector for $45; haven't tested that one yet. If it works well, I'll consider finding a way to rig it vertically for D&D display. Probably not in this apartment though. But I'm looking to move in a couple months, hopefully to rent a house instead.
An overhead projector with transparencies would let you do full cel/sprite animation.
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@Gribnit So would a Crayola light table that you can pick up for $25 at Walmart.
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@Zenith said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
@Gribnit So would a Crayola light table that you can pick up for $25 at Walmart.
Sure. That wouldn't ding the players verisimilitude at all, if they're robots being trained to play D&D with the spastically violent or something. Cost well cut.
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@Gribnit said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
@Zenith said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
@Gribnit So would a Crayola light table that you can pick up for $25 at Walmart.
Sure. That wouldn't ding the players verisimilitude at all, if they're robots being trained to play D&D with the spastically violent or something. Cost well cut.
@Gribnit said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
An overhead projector with transparencies would let you do full cel/sprite animation.
Are you going to do animation in real-time? Because that would be perfectly cromulent.
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@Zenith said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
@Gribnit said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
@Zenith said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
@Gribnit So would a Crayola light table that you can pick up for $25 at Walmart.
Sure. That wouldn't ding the players verisimilitude at all, if they're robots being trained to play D&D with the spastically violent or something. Cost well cut.
@Gribnit said in Thoughts/Experiences with WACOM-style drawing tablets?:
An overhead projector with transparencies would let you do full cel/sprite animation.
Are you going to do animation in real-time? Because that would be perfectly cromulent.
Yes. Shitty animation, to be precise.
