Drawing tablet

[jackamus]

15 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

But don't be surprised if you will meet markw at the ArtRage Forums too.

E.g. an original painting, as a unique piece of art you can hold in hands.

Exactly! I did give that some thought too about whether or not to get rid of my analogue painting materials. In order to try and keep some similarity between digital and analogue I'll meet it half-way. I'll paint on a tablet but print onto canvas!

[iconoclast]

12 minutes ago, jackamus said:

I'll paint on a tablet but print onto canvas!

That's not a bad idea. But it will not be the same anyway, I'm afraid. But that might be individual.

Another point is that many people out there don't respect art that was created on a computer, because they think that the computer did the most work. Even the creative work.

[jackamus]

I'm not an artist in the commercial sense. I've been painting for 30 years and during that time I've probably only had about 20 actual commissions. All my other paintings were for fiends or relatives or just for myself. I paint for fun and if someone wants a digital one then I will be happy to do it. 3 of my paintings were made into jigsaws and it wouldn't matter to them how I created it.

[Capt. Krayon]

I am torn between Huion 16 and XP Pen Pro for the hardware, My real issue has now become the applications and learning curves

that are compatible with the two. Huion has the edge because it is the only one that says it will function with D2

Your thoughts, please. I'm still dazed and confused. As requested a larger image of my work done with a mouse.

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, 504Krayons said:

Huion has the edge because it is the only one that says it will function with D2

If by D2 you mean AD2 (i.e. Affinity Designer version 2) then I have to say I’ve never personally noticed a problem with my humble XP-Pen Deco 03 in any of the Affinity apps, and I don’t recall seeing any reports of such things here. Having said that, Huion and XP-Pen are both good choices for those who want to avoid paying premium prices.

[Capt. Krayon]

Yes, I do mean AD2. I'm just a lazy typist. As you can imagine at my age income and price is an issue.

The Learning curve of the software is an even bigger issue at my age.

The XP Pen products are a bit cheaper and they both seem to function equally well.

Many thanks for your input, I am closing in on a final decision.

[jackamus]

I'm 84 and I sold all my acrylc painting equipment and thought I would go digital. So I bought a an X-Pen and I plan on using 'Artrage'.

I haven't actually started to use it yet as I have a number of other projects that I need to finish first. I'm hoping that I don't have too much of a learning curve to go through as at my age I want to see a decent result before I kick the bucket!

[Capt. Krayon]

I feel your pain, sir. I, like you am closer to the finish line than the start Line.

I wish you well.🙂

 

[Komatös]

@jackamus and @504Krayons

You are only old when the doctor refers you to a paleontologist! 🤣

[jackamus]

I reckon that a good challenge is a great way to add some extra time to life.

[jackamus]

11 minutes ago, Komatös said:

@jackamus and @504Krayons

You are only old when the doctor refers you to a paleontologist! 🤣

Is that what they mean when I get called an 'Old fossil'?

[nickbatz]

On 4/6/2023 at 10:10 AM, Old Bruce said:

There are massively expensive Wacom Drawing tablets that are a display + tablet. They are called Wacom Cintiq. I have lusted after one ever since they were first introduced, but I could never ever justify the expense.

Be aware that you will have problems with Colour Profiles for the tablet's display plus your computer's display. And perhaps problems with setting up the tablet's display as Extended or Mirrored, depending on the OS you use.

 

1. My first adventure was a drawing tablet without a screen, i.e. you draw on it while watching the screen, as if the pen were a mouse. I can't say how much I absolutely loathed it.

The guy on the company's forum suggested that I spend a few days just getting used to it, not trying to use it right away.

Are you f-ing serious?! Needless to say, I returned that POS very quickly.

2. Second adventure: trying to get an iPad with the Apple Pencil to function as a drawing tablet for Affinity Photo running on my Mac.

The lag made it totally unusable, so I returned that too. But it did show me that a drawing tablet with a screen requires no "learning curve" - you just use it. (I forget the different terms for ones with and without screens - I stand corrected in advance.)

3. So I ended up going with the Wacom Cintiq 16, and if I remember right it was about $500 - not one of the massively expensive models, but it's still great. macOS has no problem at all with multiple monitors at different resolutions. I have three connected, counting the Wacom, set up as extended (mirrored wouldn't work, because either my main 32" monitor would be 1080p or the Wacom would be displaying 3008 x 1692, which is way too small for a human on a 16" monitor).

The color profiles, true, but that doesn't matter to me personally because I use the Wacom as an auxiliary tool, not the primary one. If I need to draw something, trace a very fine line, that kind of thing - that's when I go through the dance of creating a new view in Affinity Photo and moving it to the Wacom. (That's a subtle nudge to Affinity - I've been begging for a way to save the views you have set up with the file. )

Wacom's sales pitch for the Cintiq 16 is that it's ideal for students and tossers, or something similar.  In general it's not great marketing strategy to sell your own products short - it's not at all an amateur tool - but I'm guessing some high-up fool there didn't want to hurt the sales of their massively expensive tablets.

***

If voting made any difference it wouldn't be allowed!

You still think that's clever a year later? The dangers we're facing in the US are existential for the whole world, if not the whole species, and the only way to prevent an unmitigated disaster is for everyone not just to vote, but to do everything you can to get other people to vote!

I wish that were hyperbole.

[Capt. Krayon]

I am acutely aware of the colour profile issues and will end up recalibrating my whole system front to back to achieve

my final look. This is a topic that is glossed over by just about everyone. So I guess colour doesn't matter anymore.

All I want is an economical tool with a short learning curve to continue on my creative journey. The last thing I need to do

is purchase the equivalent of a Sony video Disc.😐

 

 

[nickbatz]

1 minute ago, 504Krayons said:

So I guess colour doesn't matter anymore.

 

 

To whom doesn't it matter?

[Capt. Krayon]

It is glossed over mostly by the reviewers. I have only seen one review of the differences between models.! would hope it would be 

covered in earnest in the operational manual. I have found a lot of users are quite happy to go along with the default setting

 

 

[R C-R]

@504Krayons, no big deal but just a note about posting replies for best readability: you do not need to, nor should you as a rule, hit the Return key just to start a new line. Just do that when you want to start a new paragraph.

So for example in your last post "covered in earnest..." would be on the same line as "... it would be" unless the viewer's browser window was too small for it all to fit on the same line.

[Capt. Krayon]

Thanks for the info.I'll try to remember. Cheers😊

[nickbatz]

1 hour ago, Capt. Krayon said:

It is glossed over mostly by the reviewers. I have only seen one review of the differences between models.! would hope it would be 

covered in earnest in the operational manual. I have found a lot of users are quite happy to go along with the default setting

 

 

Ah, got it.

Yeah, I can see why that would be important for photographers.

But I'm an artist rather than a photographer, and I typically make several small proof prints along the way anyway. For my main monitor I just use the profile from Samsung. While it inevitably displays some colors beyond my printer's/paper's gamut - typically deep blues - it's as calibrated as it's going to get (with the exception of the white temperature).

And my argument has always been that any further calibration you could do is dwarfed by the difference between a screen and a printer's output. Plus there's soft proofing.

[Capt. Krayon]

nickbatz  My illustrative work is mainly rendered in Vectors rather than Photo Pixels. I like the cleaner look of Vector images. 

[nickbatz]

17 hours ago, Capt. Krayon said:

nickbatz  My illustrative work is mainly rendered in Vectors rather than Photo Pixels. I like the cleaner look of Vector images. 

 

Nice!

What I do is totally different from that (I work with transformed fragments of images I take with an iPhone), but the things we're saying about colors apply equally.

[Ron P.]

23 hours ago, nickbatz said:

3. So I ended up going with the Wacom Cintiq 16, and if I remember right it was about $500 - not one of the massively expensive models,

😮😮 How long ago did you buy it? Currently they cost $1,599 (US). The Wacom Cintiq tablets are the expensive models, always have been.

I'm not a pro (don't rely on it for income), and I'm still getting by with my Intuos 3 small. It costs me about $400 years ago. Wacom tablets are not inexpensive, and for a reason. They're very reliable, and of good quality.

 

[R C-R]

51 minutes ago, Ron P. said:

Currently they cost $1,599 (US).

From what I can tell from the Wacom web store, that is the cost of the "pro" model. There another non-pro(?) version available for ~$800.

[iconoclast]

I bought my Wacom Cintiq 16 (not Pro) about a year ago as a Black-Friday-, Cyber-Monday-special-offer or so for about 400 €. There might be better versions, but it satisfies my needs at the moment.

[nickbatz]

4 hours ago, Ron P. said:

😮😮 How long ago did you buy it? Currently they cost $1,599 (US). The Wacom Cintiq tablets are the expensive models, always have been.

I'm not a pro (don't rely on it for income), and I'm still getting by with my Intuos 3 small. It costs me about $400 years ago. Wacom tablets are not inexpensive, and for a reason. They're very reliable, and of good quality.

 

 

As RC-R and iconoclast say, it's about $800 now. I bought it about a year ago, and thinking about it, it may have been a refurbished one. But it was from Wacom and came with a guarantee.

And yes, I'm very happy with it.

***

I just remembered another ridiculous issue with the display-less tablet I returned: the cursor would jump to a different position when I lowered the pen to the surface!

The short time I spent with that execrable piece of crap was actually a little depressing, mainly because the Internet told me I needed to get used to it. Well, I had no interest in doing that, and returning it felt just a little bit too good.

But the Wacom is as good as that thing was horrible.