Following ‘Behind The Scenes: Part 3’ (HERE), a few people asked me
more about how I draw laying down. So, here is part 4 to explain it in more
detail…
The beauty for me of most, but not all, drawing tablets, is
that you look at the computer screen whilst you’re drawing instead of at the
tablet itself. As you move the stylus, the cursor shows up on the screen and you
get used to it in much the same way as when you watch what you’re typing
online.
This enables me to lay a little propped up, or even flat,
depending on how my Dysautonomia is behaving on any given day. I plug the
drawing tablet in and lay it on my stomach, ready to draw!
TOOLS:
Overbed table: I have an adjustable overbed table which is
on wheels so can be positioned wherever I need it and can tilt the laptop to
any angle necessary. The only thing that I ever have a problem with whilst
using this, is that my darling spaniel loves to go under the bed and click the
button on the wheels that locks them!
Drawing tablet: The drawing tablet that I use is a Wacom Intuos Pro, and I absolutely love it! You can program the buttons and dial on the left hand side (shown at the top in this pic) with whichever functions you choose. My buttons are programmed to: 1) Touch on/off*, 2) Settings 3) Shift, 4) Ctrl, 5) Alt and 6) Pan/Scroll. The dial button in the middle can be clicked to change between zoom, scroll and rotate, and once one of those is selected, you can then turn the dial to zoom in or out, scroll up or down, or rotate the page left or right.
*When the “Touch” function is selected, it allows you to treat the tablet as a touch screen, pinching to zoom in or out and also to turn the page slightly.
Stylus: The stylus comes with the drawing tablet, and has a
selection of different nibs with it. Like most people, I have my favourite nib
that I stick with, and the rest are left largely untouched. I favour the felt
nib, which tends to have a softer feel on the tablet. The little metal ring
that you can see in the middle of the nibs pot is to remove a nib from the
stylus and replace it with a different one.
There are two buttons on the side of the stylus, which can be set to your requirements just like the buttons on the tablet. I have mine set to erase, which is really handy, so that you don’t need to keep clicking on the erase tool in your drawing program.
Laptop & Photoshop.
Spaniel: I would struggle to draw without having this
gorgeous little face next to me. It’s his favourite spot to lay whilst I’m
drawing, and I melt every time I look up. Unfortunately it does tend to result
in a fair amount of procrastination, as I can’t not cuddle him when he’s
looking like that, can I?!
