I used to hate Wacom tablets until a guy at a cafe showed me his setup

I was at a coffee shop on 3rd street last month sketching on paper like always. This guy next to me pulled out a worn down Wacom Intuos and started doing these quick character designs for a comic he was working on. I told him I never got along with tablets because the hand-eye disconnect felt wrong. He just shrugged and said "try drawing circles for 10 minutes straight without looking at your hand" and let me use his pen for a bit. So I did that for maybe 5 minutes and something clicked. The lines started feeling natural instead of fighting me. I went home and bought a used one off Facebook Marketplace for 40 bucks that same week. Anyone else have a specific exercise that got them over the tablet learning curve?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_carter10d ago

Tried that circle trick after reading this and felt like an idiot for about three minutes until suddenly my hand stopped fighting the tablet. I still can't draw a straight line to save my life but at least now my circles look like actual circles instead of rejected crop circles. Pretty sure the guy at the coffee shop was just trying to get me to shut up about hating tablets.

haydenj9010d ago

Ngl my first hour with a tablet was basically me drawing angry potatoes and calling them portraits. The circle trick saved me too but now I'm stuck in a situation where I can draw perfect circles but my human anatomy looks like a pile of cooked spaghetti. Guess we all have our tablet cross to bear.

cole_hall10d ago

That circle thing really is the secret handshake for tablets. I was totally against them for years, swore by paper and pencil because it just felt right. But after spending that 10 minutes at the coffee shop just drilling circles (and feeling like a total doofus), my brain finally accepted that the cursor was an extension of my hand. Now I can't imagine going back to scanning sketches. It's wild how one tiny exercise rewires your whole approach.