Chewing Pencils

A few people have asked me recently about the electronic tablet I use to produce my work. I’ve said a few times now that I rarely, if ever, produce work using traditional media these days. It’s all 100% digital using my tablet, computer and software.

The tablet I use is a Wacom Intuos2 9×12 (website) that plugs into the USB port of my machine. It has been the most reliable piece of hardware I have ever owned. In the five years that I’ve had it, there has not been one issue with it’s functionality - quite simply, it has been great!

But for the first little while I didn’t use it that much. One of the main reasons I purchased it was on the recommendation of another cartoonist who said I would save heaps of time and produce better work anyway. I’d visited his place and had a bit of a play and though it was pretty cool. I bought one for about $700, got it home and suddenly realized that I didn’t have a clue how to use it to produce my work at all!

So, it became nothing more than a toy for the next two years or so. However bit by bit, I began to not only learn how to use it properly, but began to learn how to get used to drawing with my hand while my eyes were looking elsewhere. This is perhaps the strangest part of the process for those that watch me work - my eyes are fixed on the screen and never look at my hand for the duration of my drawing. It’s a skill that has taken a while to master, but one that has become a bit like riding a bike. And realistically, if you’re any good at using a mouse, then you’re already halfway there…

Anyway, for the next year or so, all I would use the tablet for was to add colour to areas that I couldn’t use the paint bucket tool for and to fix up any wayward line work. The tablet is pressure sensitive (pressing harder gives a thicker line) but my software couldn’t handle this function well and any image I did produce using the tablet always had that jagged, computer generated look. It wasn’t until I got hold of Macromedia Flash that things started to change.

The Macromedia software had amazing capabilities when it came to using a pressure sensitive tablet. I spent ages messing around with different strokes and effects and, for the first time, sold a piece that I had produced entirely on the computer. However, Flash was never designed to produce static cartoons. It is an animation package and creates vector art - neither of which suited me at all. After a bit more research I decided it was time to give my software a complete overhaul. Enter Corel Painter.

Funnily enough, the tablet came bundled with a version of Painter Classic which I had never bothered to look at. After playing around with it for about 30 minutes, I suddenly realized what I had been missing out on. I was hooked, upgraded to the latest version of Painter and haven’t looked back. All of my work is now produced using a combination of Painter and PhotoPaint and, of course, my tablet.

If you have a really intricate style (ie a nuts and bolts type of artist) you may fine the electronic tablet a bit difficult to work with. Having said that, if you take a look at the galleries on both the Wacom and Corel websites, you’ll be blown away by what some people have been able to achieve. I have found that it suits my minimal style quite well and I can produce a nice looking cartoon in about 45 minutes. I’m getting right into the water colour effects at the moment, so my stylus becomes a paint brush - without all the messy clean up! I can switch between the water colour effect and the pen effect (which I do my line work with) instantly, which in itself saves me at least an hour on each piece of work.

For me, using an electronic tablet saves me time and fuss. When I finally got around to learning how to use it properly (which included getting the right software), I found it simple to use and easy to produce great results. I can’t imagine NOT using it now to produce cartoons and would recommend any aspiring cartoonist or illustrator to get their hands on one as soon as the budget allows. You won’t regret it!