Digital painting has always been an important part of me. Technology in general interests me on many levels, and when drawing tables were at the beginning of becoming popular, I bought Wacom tablet for myself. I was still a school student back than, and had to save up to actually buy one! I must say, it has been one of the most wise and worthy investments my younger self made. The other one is my first DSLR about which I’ll talk in a different post.
So here it is, my trusted tool for digital painting — a Wacom Intuos 3 Large Tablet. Keep in mind that they have changed naming, and there are newer tablets with a similar name. Mine is 15 years old, and it still works! More than that, I still have the original pen nib. It hasn’t worn out to this day. Sure, I took a few years off and haven’t done too much digital work in that time, but I used to draw day and night on it! That’s the true quality product in my opinion. I also have a set of original replacement nibs, so I hope this tablet will continue to serve me in the future. Its ratio is 4:3, because that’s what most of the screens were back then. However, I’d like to also point out that Wacom still makes drivers that support this tablet and somehow maps it well onto 9:16 screen, that’s some dedication!
Anyway, my desk setup is also pretty straightforward. My keyboard used to stand on a shelf that would roll out from underneath the table, and I loved that setup. Unfortunately, that desk was destroyed in a move from California. I still feel sad about it! I wasn’t able to find a suitable replacement, so I had to make some changes. My current arrangement takes up more space, but still works. I usually have the keyboard in front of me for typing and day to day things. When I need to use Wacom tablet, I stack the keyboard on top of it. Then, shift the whole thing to the right, and finally move the keyboard to the left. It takes a bit of shifting, but generally it works. So that’s where the magic happens!
Here are several of my digital artworks from years ago and some newer ones can be found in my blog. All of these were painted in Adobe Photoshop, and to this day I use Photoshop CS6 as my main digital painting tool. It’s the most familiar to me and my favorite graphic editor; which is why I bought a stand alone version in case I wouldn’t be able to afford Adobe CC. I must thank my younger self again for being so future-oriented 🙂
