TABLET SKETCHING DIFFICULTY

I just recently purchased an Asus eee slate computer and have been experimenting with Sketchbook Pro. Immediately what I noticed was how muc different it is from drawing on paper. There isn’t that ‘tooth’ on the screen, like on a piece of paper. The plastic nib on the pen just slides across the screen, somewhat too easily.

I’m finding it difficult to get nice long strokes. My sketches look chicken scratchy. Is this just something that comes with practice and experience? Or are there different nibs and pens you can buy, maybe like a felt nib that creates more resistance and control.

Also, what canvas size and resolution are most people using in SBP? I set mine to 8.5 x 11, 300dpi, but when zoomed out all the way, my lines don’t look nice at all. Maybe I just need to play with my stroke width and pressure sensitivity. Any tips would be helpful. Thanks!

It takes time, a lot of time. Try buying their “felt” tip nib which has more resistance.

Do the felt tips wear down fairly quickly?

I wonder if you could put on a kind of Anti-glare screen protector that might have a little bit of tooth to it.

It takes time, a lot of time.

Agreed. Practice, practice, practice.

I’ve been using a Wacom for years, still learning new tricks. It is so much faster and more efficient than paper ever was for me.

To really get the hang of it, I stopped using a mouse for an entire month… whether it was dragging files from one folder to another, editing a word document, playing a youtube video, etc, I used the pen. I wasn’t even sketching for that month, just using the pen.

At the end of the month, I opened up a blank canvas in Photoshop, and instantly knew what I was doing.

Long strokes… just like paper, sketch from the shoulder. There are hot keys that allow you to rotate the canvas in the program, as for right handers it can be difficult to make the top right to lower left sweeping arcs and such.

300dpi / 8.5" x 11" … unless I’m doing a sketch for a presentation or poster, then I go 300dpi / 11" x 17".

If your lines don’t look amazing when you zoom out, it could just be your monitor, video card, and/or resolution. Another thing I learned, when zooming in and out in graphic programs, pay attention to the zoom %. 25%, 40%, 50%, 75%, 80%, 90%, they will all be crisp. As soon as you see 33.33%, 78.5%, then things get choppy.