Everyone who draws digitally very very likely has a drawing tablet or a display tablet unless they are risking high level carpal tunnel trying to prove a point by using only their mouse and MS Paint. Also, if you are like me, you likely have a very old out phased tablet that needs to be replaced.

A digital drawing tablet (not a display drawing tablet) is a tablet with an active area, within this active area, you use your stylus (drawing tablet pen) to draw on the active area which is a 1:1 ratio to your monitor, place your pen on the top left corner and your cursor goes there, same with the top right and any point on the area. It correlates 1:1.

I have found this to be a huge problem, I love to pour over my work and look at my pen as as I draw, using a drawing tablet, this means I cannot do soas I would be staring at the tablet and not the monitor screen where the actual drawing is happening.

This means I have to look at the screen, while my drawing is happening elsewhere on the tablet. This has given me a migraine as I draw, I cannot handle this hand-eye coordination with looking at the screen and not at my hand, and I’m not the only one among my artist friends as well.

Why bring this up? Well, I feel that a lot of people do NOT have this problem, they get a drawing tablet and can draw just fine, but I feel like people should know that this is a problem that people can have with the hand-eye coordination and they should know that this is not a problem that only they themselves might have but a few other people as well.

Why not just draw traditionally? This is a good question, however in this day and age, the easiest way to output art is digitally, with the technology and cost, with traditional means it is possible but not without incurring huge costs in drawing material, its a commitment an artist on a budget will have problem stomaching if they cannot profit off it.

Get a display tablet, duh. This is a possible solution that I have considered and wish to try, and will update with a post when I can afford the $4,000+ Wacom Cintiq 10 years from now…or a month or so from now with a cheaper XP-Pen alternative.

Please let me know if you too have problems using a regular drawing tablet, do you also have migraines from the hand-eye coordination problem that affects your productivity greatly? Or do you find all tablets even display ones not intuitive?

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Here are some other articles as well:

Thoughts On Using References in Illustration/Art

The Uninformed Problem Of The Loomis Method of Drawing Heads

Art School Or Not (Singaporean Edition)

Stay safe~!
JR