Playing around in GIMP with brushes and opacity and MY NEW BIRTHDAY PRESENT: A WACOM BAMBOO TABLET PEN TABLET!!! Inspired by something I found on Reddit (of course).

I love this effing thing. Aside from the cool-factor of just being new and shiny and black and having that new-electronics smell, it’s helping me greatly in my drawing, sketching, and faux-painting. The pen tool feels good in my hand, while the smaller size tablet area keeps me from having to swing my arm in huge arcs. There’s a learning curve involved with using the pen tool and I still need my mouse at times for quick zooming in/out. I’ve been slowly learning all the Illustrator keyboard shortcuts and that’s increasing my productivity. In short, I’m still learning how to work with this thing.

The one issue I had was that installing the driver was a pain that involved re-installing my USB drivers and then multiple installs of the newest Wacom tablet drivers from the Wacom site (the one’s on the CD were outdated, but it was my computer’s fault, not Wacom’s. Still having a problem with Inkscape not recognizing the tablet, but it works great in GIMP and Adobe Illustrator CS4.

Expect more art in the future on HokeBlarg, but I think I’ll be posting some good writing stuff shortly.

-Chris