I’m digital artist, Aaron Rutten
And in this tutorial, I’ll teach you the basics of working with a drawing tablet.
For you beginners, I’ll cover some of the basics of how a tablet works.
And for you experienced artists,
I’ll share some tips that will help you make the most of your tablet.
I’ll discuss drawing on 3 different kinds of tablets:
A basic drawing tablet without a screen like the Wacom Intuos,
a large tablet with a built-in display that you can draw directly onto
like the Wacom Cintiq,
and finally an all-in-one drawing tablet with a built-in computer
like the Wacom MobileStudio Pro.
I’m aware that not everyone has a Wacom tablet,
but many of these tips will be useful regardless of which tablet you are using.
I’ll assume that you have already installed your tablet drivers
before plugging the tablet into your computer.
If you need help installing the drivers or if your tablet is not recognizing your pen
visit the manufacturer’s website for tech support.
I’ll also assume that you have installed a free or paid art application
that can recognize a drawing tablet and pen pressure.
I’ll start by discussing how to use a basic tablet
that plugs into a USB port on your desktop or laptop computer,
such as the Wacom Intuos.
This type of tablet does not have a built-in display,
so you’ll have to look up at your computer monitor to see what you are drawing.
At first, that may sound difficult,
but you don’t look down at your hand while using a mouse and you do just fine, right?
It may take a few weeks or even months of practice,
but most people are able to adjust to drawing on a tablet while looking up at a monitor.
In addition to drawing on the tablet with the pen, you can use the pen
to navigate on your computer instead of using a mouse.
Although, the pen works a bit differently than a mouse:
Hover the pen slightly above the surface of your tablet
until the cursor moves, but do not touch the pen to the tablet.
The pen points with your mouse cursor,
it does not nudge the cursor around like your mouse would.
Instead, you are pointing to the location on your tablet
where you want your cursor to point to on your monitor.
Your cursor is aligned with the tip of your pen,
and the tablet surface is aligned with your monitor.
So if I want my cursor in the top-left corner of my monitor,
I’ll move the tip of my pen to the top-left of my tablet.
If you are using multiple monitors
and your tablet is moving the cursor on the wrong screen,
see Mapping in the tablet properties control panel.
If you are using a display tablet, look under Functions > Display Toggle.
The Display Toggle button may need to be pressed
to make the cursor active on the correct screen.
If your tablet is smaller or narrower than your computer monitor,
which it very likely is, that’s OK.
With practice, you’ll quickly adapt to the difference in scale or aspect ratio.
Some tablets can even compensate for a mismatched aspect ratio
but at the expense of reducing the active drawing area.
Here are some more ways you can control your computer with your pen and tablet:
Tap your pen to the tablet surface to perform a mouse click.
Tap and hold your pen down to drag windows and other elements
(This is equivalent to a sustained left mouse click).
If we look in the Wacom tablet properties,
Right-Click can be performed with a button assigned to your pen.
Most pens have at least one button, but if yours does not,
you can assign Right-click to an Express Key instead.
Next, look in the Options at the bottom of the panel.
Here you’ll find two modes for Right-Clicking:
You can either hover the pen and press the button, which is what I prefer.
Or you can hold the button down first and then tap the pen to Right-Click.
After Right-Clicking, continue to hover the pen to select an option.
Only touch the pen to the surface when you are ready to click on a menu item.
Next, let’s use an art application to test drawing with a brush
to ensure pressure is working correctly.
Most art software can support pen pressure.
Just be sure that pen pressure is enabled
because some applications like Photoshop may require you to activate it first.
Try to find a brush that can sense pen pressure to control the brush size.
Ink pens usually do the trick.
Press very lightly and then use firmer pressure until you see a change.
You may need to calibrate your pen to respond to the amount of pressure you use
in the Wacom Tablet Properties.
To find this, look in your control panel
or search your computer for Wacom Tablet Properties.
If you’re using a brand of tablet other than Wacom,
you should have a tablet control panel with very similar options.
I press hard with my pen while drawing, so I set mine a notch toward firm.
You can test the pressure in this control panel,
or jump back to your art app and try some more test strokes.
You may also be able to control the sensitivity of the pen in your art application as well.
The setting in Wacom Tablet Properties is global and affects all applications,
whereas calibrating pen pressure within an application only affects that application.
It may take some back and forth, but try to find a setting that feels natural to you.
It will take some time to get used to drawing with the pen,
so you can always come back to this setting later and fine tune it.
You might also test a soft, semi-opaque brush such as an Airbrush
because the pen pressure can also control the Opacity of the paint.
There are many brush properties that can be controlled with pen input,
such as texture, paint thickness, paint color and more.
Drawing naturally on a tablet takes practice,
as well as an understanding of proper drawing technique.
This drawing tablet tutorial only focuses on the basics of using the hardware,
but I have hundreds of videos you can watch
that go into more detail about specific drawing techniques.
While it’s better to have a larger tablet,
you can still make great art on a small tablet as well,
it just won’t be as comfortable.
Positioning is also very important to drawing naturally on a tablet.
In this setup, I’m resting my tablet on my desk,
but you could also use a keyboard tray.
The Wacom Intuos tablet is rather small,
so it feels more comfortable off to the side a bit.
There are artists out there who disagree with me on this,
but in my opinion,
it’s best to have your tablet and your body aligned horizontally with your monitor.
Meaning the tablet is not rotated at an angle
and neither are you.
And the tablet should be somewhat centered in front of your monitor
rather than off too far to the side.
It is possible to adapt to drawing on a tablet
that is not at the same angle as your screen and positioned far off to one side,
but it takes more effort for your brain to compensate for that adjustment.
It will be much more difficult to trace pencil with ink for example.
In the case of small tablets,
you have no choice but to throw off your coordination
to make it more comfortable on your body.
But larger tablets should be right in front of you
just like a sketchbook or canvas would be.
I feel it’s better to get the tablet to match the screen as closely as possible
and then you won’t have to worry about the additional strain on your hand-eye coordination.
We all have different ways of working and different desk configurations,
so you may have to deviate from the best practices a bit to make it work.
But you should work toward building an ergonomic drawing environment.
Unlike with traditional media, you can rest your hand on a drawing tablet
because only the tip of your pen can make a mark on the canvas.
And best of all, your fingers and palm can rub against the tablet
without causing any smudges.
Although, some tablets like this Intuos Pro Small
can sense multi-touch input,
which can be used to zoom, pan, and rotate your artwork,
and perform other types of commands.
There are a few exceptions where apps will allow you to paint with your finger,
so if you’re worried about the touch being triggered accidentally,
you can toggle it on and off with a switch on the exterior of your tablet.
And you can customize Multi-Touch within the Wacom Tablet Properties.
Many tablets are ambidextrous and can be used by left or right-handed artists.
You can set the handedness in the Wacom Tablet Properties.
It’s worth exploring this control panel
to become familiar with the different ways you can customize your tablet.
More or less options may be shown
depending on the tablets and pens you have connected.
If you have more than one Wacom device connected,
you'll be able to customize each tablet and each pen independently.
Some art applications, such as Corel Painter,
will even allow you to select a different brush with each pen
and those pens will retain the settings.
So I can have one pen for a pencil, one for a paint brush and one for a blender.
Wacom tablets that come with the Pro Pen can support multiple pens.
You can also create profiles for all applications, or each application individually.
This will allow you to utilize different pen and tablet settings for each application.
Now let’s take a look at another type of drawing tablet.
Display tablets, such as the Wacom Cintiq or the Wacom One,
are drawing tablets with a built-in screen you can draw directly onto.
Drawing on a screen feels as natural as drawing on paper.
The Drawing and Navigation principles
are the same as what I showed you earlier in this lesson.
And just like the previous style of tablet,
you can rest your hand on the screen without making a mark.
If the tablet supports touch,
you can easily toggle it on and off with a button or switch.
Before working on a display tablet,
you may need to calibrate the position of your pen if the cursor appears offset.
This makes sure the mouse cursor aligns with the tip of your pen.
You can set the Calibration in the Wacom Tablet Properties.
Make sure you are centered in front of your screen
and keep your pen upright or perpendicular to the flat surface of your screen
to avoid offsetting the alignment.
An optical effect called parallax may also cause your cursor to look like
it is not aligned with the tip of your pen when it actually is.
Some display tablets have more parallax than others,
so you may never be able to get the cursor and pen tip perfectly aligned,
but you can get it close.
Don’t stress over this too much
because you’ll probably be looking at your brush cursor while painting
more than your pen tip.
And the last type of tablet we’ll talk about
is the all-in-one, such as the Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16.
There’s not much to say about tablet computers,
they are basically a display tablet with a computer inside.
One of the key differences between a tablet computer and a display tablet
is that the tablet computer may be able to sense the orientation of the screen.
This can be useful for tilting your canvas to make watercolor paint drip in Rebelle.
Another way to rotate your display is to change the screen orientation.
This can be useful when drawing in portrait mode.
You can enable and disable this feature with a switch on the exterior of the tablet
Now let’s explore some extra features that your tablet may have.
If your pen has an eraser, you can flip it over
and that should select the eraser tool in your art software.
This eraser can be disabled or programmed to another function like blending.
This allows me to toggle between two different brushes with a single pen.
And the eraser may even be pressure and tilt sensitive just like the pen tip,
which means that you can use it for drawing,
if you want to reduce the amount of wear on your pen nibs.
If your tablet supports multi-touch, you can use it to navigate your computer.
You can use both the touch and the pen while working, but only one at a time.
There are some global gestures you can use and customize in the Wacom Tablet Properties,
but many art apps provide their own gestures as well.
Here are some universal gestures:
Tap with one finger to perform a left mouse click.
A Right-Click can be done either by tapping and holding with one finger,
or by tapping with two fingers, depending on the app.
Tap with one finger and drag to move objects and scroll.
Drag with two fingers to pan the view of your canvas.
Pinch to zoom in.
And spread your fingers apart to zoom out.
And with two fingers on the tablet, rotate your fingers
to rotate the view of your canvas like you would a piece of paper.
There are several techniques for using multi-touch.
One method is to put your pen down and then use your primary hand to gesture.
Although this can be disruptive to your flow.
Another way would be to use your free hand that isn’t occupied by the pen.
Be sure to keep your pen away from the tablet
because even hovering the pen can cause multi-touch to malfunction.
Using your secondary hand for multi-touch also makes you unable to use it
for keyboard shortcuts or express keys.
And finally, you can use the same hand that you are holding the pen with.
But it’s very likely that your pen will interrupt multi-touch every so often
since it’s so close to the screen.
The advantage to this technique is that you have another hand free for other things.
[Chomping sound]
Express Keys are buttons on your tablet that can perform just about any command.
They are most useful when assigned to commonly used functions
such as Undo and Redo, hiding the application interface,
and panning the view of your canvas, just to name a few.
The more Express Keys you have, the more shortcuts you can access at once.
There are also on-screen buttons you can program in the Wacom Tablet Properties
to add menus and submenus of commands.
Set these to an Express Key to trigger them.
You can even customize the Express Keys for specific apps and all other apps using profiles.
Next, let’s talk about brush expressions.
We’ve used the Pressure expression
to control the size and opacity of a brush earlier in this tutorial,
but you can also use expressions to do other things.
You can tilt your pen to widen your brush dab.
This can simulate shading with the side of a pencil.
Tilt can also detect the Bearing or direction that the pen is pointing.
You can use this to angle the medium that comes out of your brush.
Here’s an example of how this expression can be used to paint fur.
Without tilt, the fur would all be going in a single direction.
If your pen supports the Rotation expression,
you can also rotate the barrel of your pen to change the angle of a flat brush tip.
The Wacom Art Pen is the only pen I know of that supports Rotation.
This can feel more natural than using Tilt to angle flat brushes.
Your digital art software must also support these expressions.
While many drawing tablets have a smooth or slippery surface,
some drawing tablets like the Intuos Pro have some “tooth”
or a slight feeling of paper grain.
This texture feels more natural to draw on
because a bit of friction is what you’d expect when drawing with a pen on paper
or applying a brush to a canvas.
This does cause the pen tips or nibs to wear down,
but that’s better than the tablet surface.
Your tablet probably came with some replacement nibs.
You may have overlooked them in your drawing tablet box.
But most likely they are concealed in the pen stand,
pen case,
pen sleeve,
the pen itself,
or maybe even the tablet.
Additional nibs can be ordered online
and there are even felt tip nibs
and other types of specialty nibs that can give your pen a different feel.
You can keep your nibs from wearing down too quickly if you use proper techniques.
Check out my video on that subject if you want to learn more.
Let’s move on to discuss the wireless features of some drawing tablets.
Rather than a wired USB connection which is the standard,
some of the tablets without a screen can be connected to a computer wirelessly through Bluetooth.
Though the wireless connection is convenient,
a USB connection is faster and more reliable
because it is not susceptible to the lag caused by wireless interference
or the signal getting blocked.
That brings us to the end of this video.
By now you should have a good idea of how to draw on just about any drawing tablet.
The next step is to get familiar with some art software.
Check out my reviews of some of the best free and paid art apps.
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.