Nothing new yet...

... but I'm working on it, honest.

But I thought I'd take a moment to do a brief meditation on the differences between my usual medium (pencils) and the tablet that I'm using for the purposes of this blog.

If there's one mantra going through my head when I draw, it's something I read in one of the books I used to get this far: "Even Jack Kirby needed an eraser." And I love my erasers. Whether for correcting lines or texturing, erasers rule my world. The inventor of the gummy eraser, in particular, is on my shortlist of nominees for sainthood, should the Vatican ever get around to asking me.

So when I draw a bad line in Inkscape, my first instinct is to hit ctrl-Z to undo it.

That way, I've realized, lies madness. Instead, it's a question of moving nodes and grabbing bezier curve handles in order to get the line just so.

Here's a quick example: An attempted drawing of an eye via my "old" way (drawing lines as best I can and undoing when dissatisfied:



And here's the same pic with attention paid to the curves and nodes:



I know, this is kindergarten stuff to anyone who's been doing this sort of thing for any length of time, but it's new to me. I'm just documenting my process of mental adjustment here.

Still not quite where I want to be...

But I can see it from here.

Thought I'd try mixing it up a little, doing the initial outlines in Inkscape and doing the color and shading in the GIMP. Overall, I'd say it worked out pretty well.

Bear in mind that what I'm doing here are basically quick sketches done off the top of my head. As things progress, I'm sure I'll be delving into more complex stuff, but right now this is just me stretching new muscles. Some rather hapless spasms are to be expected.

What to fix: The bucket fill is leaving some unpleasant-looking edging between the fill area and the black lines (time to hit the GIMP forums, I suppose). Of course, I have to watch my perspective and be a little more thorough when erasing unwanted lines and overspill from the shading.

Ah, well. Time and patience. Hopefully, I'll have enough of both.

Revising upward

My current theory regarding the settings on my tablet in the xorg.conf dictates that I keep the X and Y coordinates on a 4:3 ratio, because that's how the 4.5" x 6" screen measures out. So to try and smooth things out, here's the new xorg.conf (changed sections are in boldface):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "WizardPen Tablet"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Driver "wizardpen"
Option "Device" "/dev/tablet-event"
Option "TopZ" "0"
Option "TopX" "0"
Option "TopY" "0"
Option "BottomZ" "250"
Option "BottomX" "80000"
Option "BottomY" "60000"
Option "MaxX" "80000"
Option "MaxY" "60000"
Option "MaxZ" "1024"
EndSection

I'll put something up tomorrow using these settings, and see if they help.

First pic

I loves me some comic books, and I'm just as much a sucker for a slick marketing campaign as the next guy, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that my first public attempt at drawing with the tablet is a quick portrait of Marvel Comics' own ever-lovin', blue-eyed Thing. Smile for the people, Benjy:

Okay, or don't. Ben's got a bit of a tough row to hoe, you might have noticed.

Anyway, this picture is a bit of me copping to disadvantages in that things are still looking pretty rough when I draw with the tablet. I don't know if this is the fault of the technology or the technique. But either way, I'd like to get it hammered out before attempting one of, say, Power Girl or the She-Hulk.

The system

Just to get the basic groundwork out of the way, here's what I'm dealing with on the technical side:

My computer is running Ubuntu Linux, version 7.04 (Feisty Fawn - hey, nobody consults me on these names).

The tablet is a Genius G-Pen 560, running on the WizardPen driver, version 0.5.0.

I generally prefer to use the GIMP over any other graphics program. Call it a personal bias.

Here's the relevant section of my xorg.conf file as pertains to my tablet:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "WizardPen Tablet"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Driver "wizardpen"
Option "Device" "/dev/tablet-event"
Option "TopZ" "0"
Option "TopX" "0"
Option "TopY" "0"
Option "BottomZ" "250"
Option "BottomX" "60000"
Option "BottomY" "45000"
Option "MaxX" "60000"
Option "MaxY" "45000"
Option "MaxZ" "1024"
EndSection

And that's that. Now we can get on to the (hopefully) good part.

How d'ya do.

So I got a tablet for my anniversary present. My fault, really. I'd dropped enough hints (e-mailing the specific web page to one's spouse counts as a hint, right?). Little did I realize the gap in methods between drawing with a tablet and scribbling with a pencil in a sketchpad. The realization was a bit jarring, to say the least.

But I'm determined to conquer this beast. This blog will serve as a tool to that end, and, hopefully, a document of progress.

This is, first and foremost, an art blog. I'll try to keep socio-political commentary to a dead minimum (no promises if something truly head-explodingly infuriating happens that I cannot let pass without comment), and ask that visitors do the same.

Constructive criticism, technical input, and cheap advice are always welcome. Trolls will be banned with extreme prejudice and zero tolerance. I've got enough voices in the back of my head telling me that I suck without some anonymous troublemaker adding to the chorus.


So, that's introductions made. Let's see if I can make something out of this.