Art Dumpage! Show your art ^^

[luminarious]

Luckily, I was given my Wacom Bamboo for birthday. It cost about 110€ at the time..

I can draw a bit, but it'll be some time before I master it..

[Jake]

I'm glad that I bought a tablet despite being so young and bad at drawing, because it made improving my digital art a lot easier

I'd extend that, and say that owning a tablet just makes improving your drawing skills in general easier. The only real way to improve as an artist is to practice, and using a tablet to practice is a lot easier and a lot less hassle than using pens or pencils with no undo function, no easily-varying brush sizes, no ready access to millions of colours, etc. - so you're probably more likely to practice simple sketching with a tablet than without.

Now, they have some downsides, not least amongst them that you can't really sketch on a tablet while sitting in a park or at the station or whatever, but there's nothing stopping you owning a sketchpad and pencils as well.

(On the more abstract side, tablet use quite possibly helps with hand/eye coordination more than regular drawing, since the place you're moving your hand and the place the lines are coming out aren't the same.)





(And yeah: there are exceptions, but the generally safe rule of thumb is to get a Wacom, because they know what they're doing. )

[Sapphire Dragon]

An avatar my brother wanted me to do, hes a yuri fan.

[Cybeat]

@Jake: There's one tablet you can use anywhere you go (I don't know if it's truly a tablet). It's a DS homebrew application called "Colors!". It works just like a real tablet, with the sensitivity and the colors and everything, but the difference is that you draw on the screen. This little program is what got me into anime art and wanting to use a tablet. Yeah, not too long ago.

Since I don't have a real tablet, I researched and found out that you can turn your computer into a touch screen computer, using a Wii controller, a bluetooth adapter, and anything infra red, which is supposed to be the stylus. I'm going to give this a try later.

[Mikan]

I don't know if I really grew much drawing skill-wise by using the tablet.
It took me a long while to get used to it (probably about a year), but once I got used to it, I was back to drawing the same old stuff, except this time on the computer. I find drawing on the computer pretty limited... for example, you can't rotate the paper in photoshop to draw something (and using oC or painter is absolutely out of the question. :/), the screen isn't big enough sometimes (18"x24" poster? my screen isn't that big), and you're really stuck using one type of media -- the computer -- as opposed to real paper and real ink and real watercolors.

I was also drawing with my mouse without too many problems before the tablet..
I guess there are some things that aren't as easy with a mouse, but given you practice with either, you can draw well with either.
It's not the tool that makes the drawing, but a strong vision of the final result you want to attain.
You can see some of my pre-tablet work here: http://kodama.unixdaemons.com/

[Sapphire Dragon]

Have you tried using painter instead? You might like it more, you can rotate the picture on that program and has a much more natural feel to the brushes.

[monele]

I also think that, sadly, a tablet won't make someone better at drawing. It'll just help with what you can already do. The best proof of this is seeing sketches from good artists : they look *great*.. and that's before they even touch the tablet ^^;...

Now all this talking about tablets has made me do the unthinkable... use mine! Be ashamed!

(side note : Paint Tool SAI can also rotate the canvas... I use it often if I sketch with it)

[Jake]

(and using oC or painter is absolutely out of the question. :/)

Why, exactly?

I was also drawing with my mouse without too many problems before the tablet..
I guess there are some things that aren't as easy with a mouse, but given you practice with either, you can draw well with either.

Drawing with a mouse is far more likely to give you RSI than drawing with a tablet stylus, and for that reason alone I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Mice are getting better, but you'll still need to be doing fairly precise controlled movements, which are exactly the kind of motions which are damaging.

[Cybeat]

Have you tried using painter instead? You might like it more, you can rotate the picture on that program and has a much more natural feel to the brushes.

Nope, but I know about it. It costs, right?

[Hime]

Also, for a 12 year old...yeah that's a lot of money. I've never had more than $100 at a time until I was 16, and I was the type of person who wouldn't buy much but do just about anything for money lol. It's great that you were able to afford it and saw it as a way to improve, I just don't think everyone has quite that much money to blow on something they probably don't see as a necessity.

Well, it's true that it depends on the person's financial situation and that my allowance was bigger than a normal 12-year-old kid's (40€/month, which it still is), but you can't say I really blew the money on it since I had to save all the money I got for several months. My allowance was good, but it was big because it was basically all that I got in many ways. But I don't know, perhaps I can't appreciate money and waste it on useless things.

282$ is a big amount of money, but as I said, it wasn't the cheapest model either - I decided to get a fine one since I had to save for it anyway. I've seen models from Wacom that have been around 50 euros, which is less than 100 dollars, around 75 I think, and it's not like those are unusable or anything, they just aren't as fancy as this one.

[honoreixix]

Since I don't have a real tablet, I researched and found out that you can turn your computer into a touch screen computer, using a Wii controller, a bluetooth adapter, and anything infra red, which is supposed to be the stylus. I'm going to give this a try later.

this sounds interesting, tell me if it works ok? XD

i hope it does...

[Jake]

@Jake: There's one tablet you can use anywhere you go (I don't know if it's truly a tablet). It's a DS homebrew application called "Colors!". It works just like a real tablet, with the sensitivity and the colors and everything, but the difference is that you draw on the screen. This little program is what got me into anime art and wanting to use a tablet. Yeah, not too long ago.

Well, you can also get 'Tablet PCs' which have a Wacom-style tablet built into the monitor, which also allow you to go wherever you like and draw. But I wasn't really talking about those, or the DS; one isn't a mainstream option because most people can't get homebrew apps running on their DS, and the other isn't a mainstream option because tablet PCs are even more expensive than regular tablets.

Not to mention that they're also not actually all that great for art; the screen is thick so that you can't damage it with the stylus easily, but that also introduces a disconnect between where the stylus is and where the software cursor is. You can calibrate it, but then it only works well from one precise angle, and not if you rotate the tablet.

[Cybeat]

I don't know if it's not great for art, but there are some nice art done with the DS. Check here: http://colors.brombra.net/tagged.php?page=1&t=85

[Hatomikazuki]

Backgrounds art dump...I really need to work on drawing backgrounds...*dead*

[LVUER]

Hm, $282 is A LOT of money for someone who does not have faith in their artwork. Before someones skill improves, I'd be willing to assume, as with all skills, faith has not developed properly. You typically wouldn't see the worth in the investment until there is enough skill to work on. Also, for a 12 year old...yeah that's a lot of money. I've never had more than $100 at a time until I was 16, and I was the type of person who wouldn't buy much but do just about anything for money lol. It's great that you were able to afford it and saw it as a way to improve, I just don't think everyone has quite that much money to blow on something they probably don't see as a necessity. It's simply more practical to invest when there's enough of a foundation where you can say "hey, I've come this far, I'm obviously not going to just stop." But hey, that's just me.

I have faith in my skill, but still $282 is a lot of money for me, even now after I'm working. Buying a $81 scanner already drain my budget.