Archive for May, 2010

Pen practice

It's like a dark, uh, splotchy thing.

Tweaking my pen settings. Dialed it in so that little-to-no pressure starts at 1-2%, and I can still run the gamut of values without pressing super hard to get full opacity. This abstract thing grew out of repeated pen tests as I was messing with the settings, and, well, I kinda like it. Also moderately happy with the pen response now, for  a change.

But I am reminded that my decade-old tablet still performs better than this out of the box, and that takes the shine right off everything.

Intuos4, still a jerk

You’d think I’d exhaust all the possible complaints I could have with a piece of hardware I purchased almost a year ago, but no. Still angry. Recently I pulled up the driver diagnostic window while the pen was just touching the surface and noticed this:

You damned numbers.

31%? I am using 1/3 of the available pressure just by resting the pen on the surface?

Now to be fair, I just reset it to the defaults, and the grip pen is not light by any stretch of the imagination; an HB pencil this is not. But seriously? Thirty one percent of the pressure can be registered by the weight of the pen alone?

Maybe this makes sense in some technical way. Maybe I am just leaping at every chance to complain about my disappointing piece of $400 hardware.

My feeling, though, is that this is far too high for when you’re not actively applying pressure. Think of it this way: The Intuos4 can register 2048 levels of pressure. That means that at the default setting, the pen registers level 635 when you’re not even pressing down. Were I a scientist, I would say something scientific about the data at this point, like, “dang”.

Can this be combated with the pen settings? Probably. In fact, I think that’s my new “settings goal” for the tablet. Maybe I can finally dial it in to something I don’t want to bludgeon with an ox shank.

Project Duff Offer Getter 28

"Ssssalad fffingers."

Yes, it’s a little terrifying, but at least I can tell that it’s terrifying. Should’ve redone that front hand, but oh well. This is the last entry of Project Duff Offer Getter, and the whole point was developing comfort in drawing, not creating finished work. I’m pretty bummed that I blew it on the last night by falling asleep before drawing (new rule — draw when you get home from work, not before bed), so finishing this isn’t the joy I expected it to be.

But I definitely feel more comfortable knocking out hands and other anatomy quickly. Now I can concentrate on accuracy. I managed to halve the amount of time it normally took me to block out hands, and (in my opinion) they turned out much more fluid than the ones I pored over.

Overall, I feel better than I did at the beginning, but there’s still plenty of practice for me to do before I’m happy. Gonna try to continue the dailies whether I’m posting them or not. It helps so much.

As promised, I’m going to make a compilation of all the drawings back to back so I can trace my progress. I should have that up tomorrow evening.

Whoops. Heh.

Yesterday was supposed to be my last official daily for my PDOG exercise, but I kinda blew it. Also note that this requires you to define “kinda” as “totally” for the duration of this paragraph.

I won’t bore you with the details*. I’ll post the final PDOG entry tonight after work, then I’ll throw a collage of the whole 28-day run together so we can see if I actually improved at all.

^{*I like to save up my boring and then really go to town every few weeks.}

Project Duff Offer Getter 27

"Rrawr! Whuf. Something"

It’s late.