Wacom Archives - Page 6 of 6

Posted on December 22, 2012February 3, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne — 2 Comments

Looking back on 2012

One of the great things about regularly keeping a blog is that it’s like keeping a journal. I find that each year, I’m actually surprised at how much went on while I was drawing, colouring, and trying to keep from losing my mind.

Here’s a quick recap of the ups, downs, and other stuff that happened in 2012.

This Business of Art.

At the beginning of the year, I canceled my booth at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo because I realized I wasn’t prepared for the April event. In retrospect, and after attending as one of the hoard, it was a good call because I would have done a number of things wrong. It wasn’t the best of times for that particular event this year as they did a number of things wrong as well, a casualty of their own growing popularity. But I’m booked and ready for 2013 and I’m really looking forward to it.

It’s no secret that I enjoy working with Wacom . I had the pleasure of demoing at their booth at Photoshop World in Vegas in September, was a guest on another of their webinars in November, and recorded a few videos for them throughout the year. They’re also sending me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the second week of January, so it’s clear that Wacom has become a significant part of my life this year.

I’m fortunate to have been invited to be one of the artists represented on Insivity.com, a new site designed to inspire and motivate artists. Still in its infancy and only officially launched this week, I look forward to writing and recording some exclusive material for it. I’ll also be looking to be inspired myself, as we can all use a regular dose of that to keep moving forward.

Hardware and Software

Another Wacom highlight this year was the introduction of the Intuos5 tablets and the new Cintiq displays. Every time I think they can’t make these products better, I’m happy to be proven wrong. Both the Intuos5 medium and the Cintiq 24HD display are now tools I use every day and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

After 6 years using a great computer, it was time to bite the bullet and have a new one built this year. While the last one worked great, it was Windows XP, only had 250GB of hard drive space, and was starting to have trouble running the big files. I more than got my money’s worth from it, so no regrets. Without boring you with the details, the new computer is top of the line and a real pleasure to use.

Photoshop CS6 was launched this year and while there were no particular ‘must-haves’ in the features for me, when you record training materials, you need to be using the latest software.

What with a complete upgrade of all of my software and hardware, anything I can’t accomplish in 2013 will be a failing in my skills, not my equipment.

Speaking and Training

I’ve been speaking to schools on digital art and editorial cartooning for a number of years, but with my ever increasing workload, I’ve had to be selective about how many of these I agree to. Locally, I consider it part of my obligation to contribute to the community I’ve lived in for almost 20 years. Outside of the Bow Valley, however, there is a fee for my time and travel expenses.

I enjoyed spending an afternoon with a group of art teachers in Red Deer a couple of months ago, introducing them to the entry level Wacom tablets and hopefully inspiring them to spend more time with the technology. I found out that more of their students are requesting training in digital art. A fledgling medium has now become main stream and I thought it great that traditionally trained art teachers were so willing to embrace it for the benefit of themselves and their students.

I had hoped to have recorded my next DVD for PhotoshopCAFE by now, Painting Portraits in Photoshop, but I had to keep putting it off in favour of more pressing obligations. One of the obstacles was the technology. I needed Photoshop CS6 and a new machine to run it. Now that I no longer have that excuse, recording the DVD has been bumped up the priority list and I look forward to having it done in the first quarter of 2013.

Prints and Products

In a sad turn of events this year, Two Wolves Trading Co. closed the doors in September. It was the exclusive venue for my limited edition Totem prints and matted paper prints in Canmore. The owners, Andrea and Michelle, did a lot for promoting my work. Between their fun personalities and kindness, including that of their staff, it was a pleasure to have had my work sold in their store.

While the closing of the store did have an impact on my business, it was more disappointing to see friends close up shop. A walk downtown always involved stopping in to Two Wolves to say Hi and kid around. I still miss that. Even though my work is available at About Canada in Banff, I’ll be looking for a new venue in Canmore in the new year, but it won’t be the same.

My prints were added to the inventory at the Calgary Zoo retail store this year. Just a few paintings to start, but I plan to add fuel to that fire in the coming year.

In the meantime, I continue to sell the prints online through my own store. I recently sent an email to my web designer, Erik Bernskiold, thanking him again for the great job he did on my site. Everything works flawlessly. A sale I had earlier this month was a lot of fun and worked very well. It’s something I plan to do again sometime in the future.

One of the highlights of this year for my work was licensing five of my Totem paintings to The Mountain Corporation out of Keene, New Hampshire. Their T-shirts are everywhere around the world, from retail outlets and zoos, to big box and online stores. I was very pleased to have my work added to their catalog and I’m optimistic that these five will just be the beginning. Having received my samples just this past week, I was very impressed with the quality of both the shirts themselves and the printing.

A lot of other little moments and events throughout the year, but through it all, there were well over 300 editorial cartoons, more than a dozen illustration gigs, and 15 paintings. While going through my work this year, it’s amazing how much of it I thought I’d done LAST year or even the year before.

With the exception of one commission piece I’m still waiting for permission to post, these are the paintings I completed in 2012. Clicking on any of the names or images will take you to the original blog post.

The Pets

In order, here are the commissions I enjoyed painting this year. We’ve got Gilly the Pomeranian, Chase, the German Shepherd with the titanium tooth, Mocha the horse, and a portrait of Brisby, Australian Shepherd/Red Heeler cross.

The People

Again, in order of completion, the first is Jim, one of my closest friends, and a portrait I did as a gift for his 50th birthday. Then there’s Russell Brown in his Abe Lincoln getup, Madeline Kahn as Elizabeth from the movie, Young Frankenstein, and Martin Sheen as Tom, from the movie The Way. I’ll have an update on the last painting sometime early in the new year.

The Totems

In order of when they were completed, here are the Cougar, the Rockhopper Penguin, the Bison, the Otter, and Bald Eagle Totems.

So, all in all, pretty pleased with my body of work this year. Most of what you see above wasn’t planned out at this time last year, so it’ll be interesting to see what I end up painting in 2013. Obviously more Pets, People and Totems (oh my!), but other than that, there are no resolutions for the next year. I’ve just decided to wing it and see what happens.

To you regular readers, those who follow my work on social media and are an endless source of encouragement throughout the year, you have my sincere thanks. The only way I know if my work is making people happy is because you tell me, and it is greatly appreciated. If you are an artist yourself, I hope you have found a little inspiration here, and believe in yourself enough to find your own style of art, something that speaks to you and makes you want to create even more.

Best to you and yours in the coming year!

Posted on December 16, 2012February 3, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne — 1 Comment

Martin Sheen – The Details

Martin Sheen - Portrait Yesterday, I wrote about why I painted this portrait of Martin Sheen’s character, Tom, from the movie ‘The Way.’ Click on this link, if you’d like to read it. Today, I figured I’d write a little bit about the how, as there are always artists out there who want to know the technical details, and I’m happy to oblige.

This painting was done entirely in Photoshop CS6 Extended using a Wacom Cintiq 24″HD display. No photos were used in the painting, aside from reference. I didn’t keep track of how long it took me to complete it because I wasn’t on deadline or in a rush, so while I could easily say 20 hours, it was probably more, over a few weeks. Without a deadline, I was able to nitpick it and get it as close to perfect as my current skills will allow. At some point, however, I just have to call it done, because any changes become so minute that nobody will see them but me.

With all of my previous work, it has become my practice to start a painting at low resolution, usually around 9″X12″ at 72ppi. Then, as the painting progresses, I will keep bumping up the size and resolution. I teach this method in my PhotoshopCAFE DVD, “Animal Painting in Adobe Photoshop” and it’s the same practice I use for painting portraits of people. There used to be two reasons for doing this. First, when you’re working at low-res, you can’t get distracted by putting in too much detail because the size just won’t allow any. This forces me to well establish ‘the bones’ of a likeness before working on wrinkles, skin texture, and hair. The other reason for starting at low-res was that my computer had reached the end of it’s efficient life for this type of work and at full-size and full-res, the brushes just wouldn’t move well enough to make broad strokes across the digital canvas. A completed painting was never more than 18″X24″ at 300ppi, because at that size, I could only work on the fine details without experiencing some lag.

Recently I had a new computer built and I’m back to working on a very current, high end machine. Running 64bit Windows 7 with 64bit Photoshop, 16GB of RAM and a 4GB video card, everything is running incredibly smooth. I could have started and finished this painting at full-res, without any problems at all. BUT, I’m going to continue using my low-res to high-res workflow for the first reason I mentioned. It forces me to get the likeness right and it works well for me. That being said, I decided to push this painting to see if I could make it larger, which also allows more attention to detail. This final painting is 32″X24″ at 300ppi. At that size, the brushes were working just fine, and I could have bumped it up even more, with no issues in performance.

I’m still using the regular brushes in Photoshop and haven’t used any of the Mixer or Bristle brushes in my paintings. Those brushes are designed to simulate traditional media and I honestly don’t feel the need to do that. Digital painting is a medium all on its own, and I don’t try to make it into something it’s not. I do intend to give those other brushes a try in the coming year, however, simply to see if they’ll offer me some choices to make my work better. While I’m pleased with the quality of this painting and very much enjoyed working on it, there will always be room to improve.

Thanks for stopping by.

Posted on October 24, 2012October 24, 2012 by Patrick LaMontagne — Leave a comment

Forward Momentum

One of the best things about being a freelancer these days, whether it’s writing, photography, illustration or just being self-employed is that there is no shortage of information out there to help you. Just twenty years ago, there was no such thing as Google. The Internet didn’t begin to gain real traction with the public until the mid to late 90’s. Before that, you had to go to the library. That’s a building with books in it.

We enjoy almost instant connection today, but it used to be a lot more difficult to find information while learning a skill. If you were lucky, you might find a professional artist with whom to apprentice, but what to do if you lived in a rural area and had limited resources? Now, we have access to apps, books, trade magazines, DVDs, online courses, webinars, forums, and websites full of information, all from the comfort of our own homes.

The problem with access to all of that information is that it is far too much for any one person to take in. You may have the resources to learn all you want to, but so do your competitors, so there’s no room for complacency. Thirty years ago, for example, a newspaper would have an editorial cartoonist on staff and that’s how they’d make their living, drawing one cartoon a day (sometimes less) for that one publication, spending the whole day working on one image, and not having to worry about sales, marketing, printing, promotion or local, national, and international competition, certainly not to the extent one must do so, today.

Most daily newspapers have dismissed their cartoonists and are opting for more regional, national and international syndicated cartoons and paying significantly less than they used to. We are all familiar with this trend in every industry, so lamenting the fact is a useless exercise. Adaptation is the order of the day in every profession.

With all of that information available and so many options, it can be easy to become anxious about where to put your efforts. Ask ten freelancers which sites, organizations, and advice you should follow, and you’ll get an infinite number of answers. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover that each of those ten freelancers is following the advice of ten other people, and everybody is just winging it, hoping to get enough work to pay the mortgage.

Put simply, you have to try new things and then evaluate their worth on your own. Then you have to consider that something that worked for you yesterday might not work for you tomorrow. Your own instinct will be your best guide.

For example, I’ve been a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals since September of 2004. That’s quite a long time these days. In addition to all I’ve learned about Photoshop, I’ve made invaluable contacts in the industry, and have formed lasting relationships with many people, a number of whom I consider good friends. The investment in that membership has been very good for my career.

In recent years my skills have reached a point where I’m now in need of more advanced training and when the air gets a little thin, it’s tough to find that in any organization that must cater to a wide variety of skill levels. That, coupled with the fact that today, NAPP’s focus is almost exclusively on photography, it has become obvious that there isn’t much left there for me anymore.

The friendships and connections, I take those with me, but when my membership expires next month, I won’t be renewing it. It was a tough decision, but I based it on the question, “Had I not been a member for the past eight years, would I join the organization today?”

The answer was an easy No. It isn’t that NAPP doesn’t have value for photographers, because it clearly does. But I’m not a photographer.

While I had a good run and it was time and money well spent, I’m looking for other learning opportunities. That being said, there’s still a good chance I’ll return to Photoshop World in Las Vegas next year. Connecting with others, networking and spending time with other industry professionals is invaluable, not to mention that I always have a good time. My experience teaching at the Wacom booth in September was great and I hope to repeat it again next year. But I’ll be there on the periphery, not as an attendee.

So the message here is that continuing education as a freelancer is crucial to developing and maintaining a thriving career, but it’s up to you to find your own teachers, a task that will never end. You must constantly adapt to an environment that is changing so much faster than most can keep up with. When something is working for you, get as much from it as you can. When it stops contributing to your momentum and success, you need to cut it loose.

For now, my own path to continued education is uncertain, but I’ll keep looking to online courses, webinars, trade magazines and I’ll follow the art of other creatives, those who inspire me to be a better artist. They say when the student is ready, the teacher shows up, so I’m not worried.

While I’m waiting, I’ll just keep working. Practice makes perfect and even though I’ll never get there, I’m still aiming for it.

Posted on October 11, 2012October 11, 2012 by Patrick LaMontagne — 1 Comment

Otter Totem

This is my latest painting, the Otter Totem. Under normal circumstances, I’d publish this post on the same day that I finish the painting. In this case, however, I was a little swamped with other deadlines and it kept moving down on the priority list. But better late than never.

This Totem was done in about a week, which is the fastest I’ve ever painted one of these. While I’m sure the hours spent were close to the same as prior Totems, I had a few very late nights and early mornings, largely due to the fact that this was being used in another deadline, a painting video for Wacom. Despite the quick turnaround, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. As I’ve said many times before, I don’t pre-plan the expressions and they’re often as much a surprise to me as they are to anybody else. The personality just seems to ‘show up’ at some point during the painting and I just go with it. In this instance, the personality was there very early on and I really loved the curiously goofy face that emerged as I spent more and more time on the details.

This was also my first painting on the new Wacom Cintiq24HD and the experience of painting on this display was very enjoyable. While I’ve never had any complaints about the Intuos tablets for painting, I just felt a lot more connected to the brush strokes with my pen directly on the screen. I’ve always enjoyed digital painting and never felt that I was missing any of the tools I needed to get my best work onto the canvas. The Cintiq, however, gave me something I didn’t know I was missing and improved the experience.

As for that video for Wacom, it is part of something else that will be coming a little later on, but they posted it on their YouTube channel, which means I’m able to post it here as well. If you haven’t seen it already, it shows a high speed time lapse of the Otter Totem, from start to finish. The narrative is aimed at traditional artists who might be considering the digital medium, but haven’t yet taken the plunge.

Enjoy!

Posted on October 6, 2012October 6, 2012 by Patrick LaMontagne — 1 Comment

My Wacom Cintiq 24HD Settings

For this second blog entry on the Wacom Cintiq 24HD (read the first one here), I wanted to show all of the different settings I’ve chosen for the Express Keys, Touch Ring and Radial Menu. I’m very comfortable using these hardware features on the Intuos tablets, but had to change everything up for the Cintiq for two reasons. The first is that there are more settings to choose from. The second is that working directly on the screen changed how I do things.

These Photoshop settings are in no way being shared in order to tell you what you should do. Feel free to borrow anything you see here, of course, but I would encourage you to experiment with the settings and find ones that work best for you. There are so many possible configurations that you can almost program each of the Express Keys, Touch Rings, and Radial Menu for anything you want Photoshop to do. The feature I like best is that you can even program different settings for every piece of software you have.

My buddy Jeff Foster is an Author, Producer and VFX Artist at Sound Visions Media. My setting for brush size on the pen, which I’ll explain later, was his suggestion and it works very well. Since I’m no longer using the Touch Ring for brush size, he also suggested that the Touch Ring can be used for any keystroke operation at all, so it’s important to think differently and creatively. I still haven’t finished experimenting with my Touch Ring settings, so some of the ones I show here will likely change.

Because there are so many settings to explain, I’ll just get right to it. Here are some photos that show you what the buttons I’ll be talking about look like on the actual hardware. I got these images directly from the Wacom site, so if you want to know even more about the Cintiq 24HD than what I’ve shown here, just click on any of the images and you’ll be instantly transported to their website. It’s like magic, don’t you know?

As you can see from the image at the beginning of this post and the ones above and below, there are five Express Keys and a Touch Ring, with three settings each, on either side of the display. Additionally, there are three buttons above the display for features I’ll explain later. On the top edge of the display, which you can’t see here, there are a series of buttons like you would find on any monitor, to adjust your display color, brightness and contrast settings. Incidentally, I like to work with my monitor brightness a lot lower than most people. I have my Contrast set to 50, my Brightness to 13, and my Backlight to 0 (Zero). You might think that a little odd, but it works very well for me. My monitors have always been set to low brightness and my eyes don’t get strained as easily from long hours in front of a display.

Let’s talk about those three little buttons at the top right above the display. From left to right, there is one that has a lower case letter i, one that looks like a keyboard, and one that looks like a wrench. The i is for information, and when you press that, you get the image that you see below. It fills the display, regardless of the software you’re using, BUT the settings you see displayed will be the ones you have set for that particular piece of software, or the default settings. What you see here are my settings for Photoshop. This is a great feature because you might forget what you have a button set for and this will show you in real time. We’ll zoom in on all of these in a minute.

The second button will bring up the on-screen keyboard, which is pretty self-explanatory. Sometimes you just want to type in a layer name, or press a number, and you don’t want to have to go fishing for your actual keyboard, especially since it might be under your Cintiq.

Finally, there is the button with the wrench on it, which will bring up your Wacom Tablet Properties. I just think this is very clever to include this as a hardware button because sometimes you just want to make a quick change to your settings, and you don’t want to leave your software or go searching for it in your menus. Press the button, it will bring up the panel you see here, make your change, close it and go right back to work.

Now let’s take a closer look at how I have my Express Keys, Touch Rings and Radial Menu set up. I won’t show you how to make these changes, because that will require a whole new post. If you want some help, I recorded a couple of videos for the Intuos5 and those will show you how to change your settings, even on the Cintiq. Here are a couple of links, one for the Express Keys and Touch Ring and another for the Radial Menu.

Let’s take a look at the Express Keys and Touch Ring Properties. As you can see below, the three buttons for the Touch Ring are currently set to Zoom, Brush Size, and None. Rather than use the default Zoom, however, I have mine set to Ctrl- and Ctrl+ (Cmd- and + on the Mac) shortcut for Zoom. The reason is that will zoom in and out in increments that keeps my painting sharp and crisp. Some of the other increments in between can make images a little blurred and I don’t like that. So my zoom isn’t a smooth transition, it goes in steps.

Brush Size is self-explanatory, although I now have that on my pen, so I’ll be finding another use for this spot, I think. The third one is normally set for Rotate, as in rotating the canvas, but I have it set to None simply because I was recently recording a video and didn’t want to accidentally zoom in while recording if my finger touched the ring, so I set this to none and left it there while I recorded. Again, I’ll be finding another use for this one, too.

For the Express Keys on the left of the display, I have them set as follows:

1) Undo – Ctrl-Alt-Z. (Cmd-Option-Z on the Mac). When I’m painting, I pretty much keep a finger on this most of the time and it allows multiple undos.

2) Color Picker – This is not a normal keyboard shortcut, so I had to create one, which is fairly easy to do in Photoshop.

3) Shift – a Modifier Key that will give many tools more options.

4) Ctrl – (Cmd) another modifier key.

5) Pan/Scroll – In Photoshop, this is the Hand Tool and it will allow you to move around the canvas.

On the right side of the display, the Touch Ring again is still set for the default settings. I know I’ll find a use for it, I just have to get creative and even more efficient.

For the Express Keys, they’re set as follows:

1) Gamut Check – Ctrl-Y (Cmd Y). I draw and paint in sRGB, but I’m always aware that my editorial cartoons are printed in CMYK and some of my paintings and illustrations may be printed that way as well. My color picker is set so I can only choose colors that are ‘in gamut’, which means when converted to CMYK, they won’t shift. But sometimes when I make a Levels or other Color adjustment, it will shift colors too far, so I’m always checking Gamut to make sure everything looks as it should. Newspapers do not have universal color settings. Some publications have downright hideous printing, so I try to find a happy medium to please everybody. Yeah, I know…good luck with that.

2) Hide – Ctrl-H (Cmd-H) When I’m working with selections, this hides the little ‘marching ants’ that define a selection, because I hate looking at the moving dotted lines when I’m painting.

3) Radial Menu – This is Wacom’s way of giving you even more choices. It’s an onscreen heads-up display that gives you an opportunity to program your own menus and submenus. I’ll show you my Radial Menu settings in a minute.

4) Fit Screen – Ctrl-0 (Cmd-0) Zooming in and out of a painting or drawing, often I just want the image to reset to fit screen.

5) Display Toggle – I have multiple displays, my other one is above the Cintiq. When I want to access the other display, I press this button and my pen can move the cursor to my other screen, which makes the top half of the Cintiq display work just like a traditional Wacom tablet. It’s a great feature.

My Pen Settings are as follows:

Erase – This button is a waste for me and I can’t even think of a reason to use it for something else, either. I’m sure other people do use it, but I never have.

The button on the pen is actually two buttons. Originally, it’s set for a Left Mouse and Right Mouse configuration, but as mentioned previously, my friend Jeff gave me a reason to consider other options. For the left Mouse Button, the one furthest from the tip, I have it set to the keystroke configuration you see in the image. What this allows me to do, when I have the Brush selected in Photoshop, is change brush size very fluidly. I press the button, move the pen left or right and I can see the brush size change on the screen. This was one of those, “I wish I’d known this sooner!” moments, because I would have had my Intuos tablet set to this as well.

The Right Mouse button, the one closest to the tip, is set to Alt (Option on the Mac). When I have the brush selected in Photoshop, this toggles the Eyedropper Tool for easy selection of color in a painting. I use this constantly for better blending and color transitions in my work. So now I can change brush size and select color quickly and easily right from the pen. It’s a very enjoyable way to paint.

And finally, here are my Radial Menu settings.

When you press the Radial Menu button, you get the circle on the right, which is fully customizable. If you wanted to, you could make every one of those pie pieces into a submenu. I currently only have three. When you click on each of those submenus, you get the images on the left. Each submenu can not only have a full selection of pie pieces, but those can be submenus as well. I’m no math wizard, but that gives you a LOT of choices for custom configuration.

Obviously I don’t need to explain every one of them, but I’ll give you some thoughts on what some of the more unique ones do.

Blend Modes Submenu – I use four Photoshop Actions for Blend Modes all the time in my drawing and painting. OK, that one that reads ‘Cartoon Websize’ is an Action for something else, but I had nowhere else to put it and I use it every day. But the rest are for Blend Modes, I assure you. If you don’t know about Blend Modes in Photoshop, my buddy Scott Valentine just wrote a great new book that explains them very well. I’ll have a review of the book very soon, but if you want to check it out, here’s the link. The Hidden Power of Blend Modes in Adobe Photoshop.

Flip Canvas – Often when I’m painting, I want to shift my perspective, so I’ll flip the image I’m working on horizontally. You’d be surprised how helpful this can be, especially when it comes to likeness in portraits. Sometimes I’ll just know that something doesn’t look right but I can’t put my finger on it. By flipping the canvas, the problem will almost always become immediately apparent. Your brain gets lazy and this will often give your perception a bit of a slap.

So there you have it. These are my settings on the Cintiq 24HD…for now. I fully expect to make little changes and tweaks as I get more used to the display, but these settings are working very well for me at present. There really is no excuse for not being able to customize this display to work exactly the way you want it to. Yes, it will take some time to get it perfect, but it’s worth it. Wacom has not only provided hardware that will allow you to create the best drawing and painting experience possible, but the software takes it even further.

Don’t be afraid of making changes. There is a default button in the Wacom Tablet Properties. If you mess it up too much, you can always start again. When you do get the settings you want, however, back them up! I can’t stress this enough. Computers aren’t perfect, software can conflict with other software, and stuff happens. There is a Wacom Tablet Preferences Utility included with the software. It will allow you to save and restore your preferences should the unthinkable happen. Just as you should back up your images and files, you should also back up your preferences.

If you have any issues, Wacom’s technical support is very helpful. And finally, if you just have any questions, I’m happy to help, too. Thanks for stopping by and hopefully this helped you see some possibilities you might not have considered, whether you’re using Wacom’s Intuos tablets or their Cintiq displays.

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Patrick LaMontagne — 2 Comments

What I like best about the Wacom Cintiq 24HD

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got the new Wacom Cintiq 24HD Display. There are two versions of this device, and people keep asking me if I got ‘the Touch,’ meaning the one that has touch features along with pen input. The answer is ‘No,’ and the reason is because even though I like touch features on my iPad and phone, I don’t feel the need for it on my main display. I know a lot of people want that, so it’s great that this display is available with and without the option. Keep in mind, there is also a significant cost difference between the two.

I’ve had my eye on the new Cintiq since it was launched earlier this year. Many of the new features that Wacom included finally pushed me over the edge to get one. Rarely do I develop an infatuation for new and shiny tech. I waited two months before I got my first-gen iPad, just to be sure it was going to be useful and not just a toy. Having used it every day since, I wasn’t disappointed. That being said, it’s two years old and I’ll only replace it for a newer version when it stops working well. I’ve never owned an iPhone and can’t think of any piece of technology I would line up for.

Now you might be thinking, why am I talking about Apple stuff, I thought this was about Wacom. The reason is that I want to be clear up front that I’m not a gadget person who gets something just because it’s new and trendy. If it’s not useful, I’m not interested. So with years under my belt with the Intuos line of tablets and being very pleased with those, why did I suddenly feel the need to get the high performance sports car of Wacom tablets?

I’ve never had a problem doing all of my detailed painted work on the Intuos tablets. They’re solid, they work well, they last forever and they get the job done. The size wasn’t an issue, working off the screen wasn’t an issue, resolution and pressure sensitivity worked well. The simple answer is that it was time. This is the top of the line professional tablet and I want my work to be the best it can be. From all I’ve heard from colleagues and other reviewers, their endorsement of what this display does for their workflow and better use of their time was enough for me to feel I needed to make the jump.

I’ve had the Cintiq 24HD for almost two weeks now. Normally I’d write a review for something new a lot sooner than this, but I’ve been swamped with work, which as a freelancer is not a bad thing at all. The upside of waiting this long for the review is that I’ve used it a lot. There is nothing that I do in my scope of work that I now haven’t done on the Cintiq. Daily editorial cartoons, illustrations, writing, and a brand new Totem painting from start to finish, I’ve really put it through its paces, and I am incredibly impressed.

There is just too much to talk about to do this in one post, so I’ll be spreading it out over two or three. For this one, I just wanted to talk about the features that impressed me most. I’ve never been one to do those ‘let’s unpack it’ reviews. There are plenty of those out there. As for the technical specs, you can see all of that as well as videos and other images on Wacom’s website. I just want to tell you how this will impact my own work and why I like the display so much. I made note of things that made me raise my eyebrows over the last couple of weeks. A few of these things even made me say, “oh cool!” out loud. They are in no particular order of importance.

1) With a dual monitor system, I used to have my Photoshop palettes on a separate monitor. The Cintiq is so big and has so many Express Keys along with the Radial Menu, that I don’t need that anymore. I can do everything on this big screen. But I still like my second monitor, so I have it positioned above the Cintiq, and I can keep all of my other windows, browser, music player open on that display. By pressing one of the Express keys to ‘Toggle Display’, I can temporarily jump to the other monitor, and the Cintiq becomes just like a traditional Wacom tablet.

LOVE the new monitor configuration for reference photos! Just feels so natural to look up from my ‘drafting table’ to see the pics.

2) They put a USB port right on the display itself. Might seem like a small thing, but I frequently take images with me or grab them from a USB key. This is just convenient.

3) Wacom put a Tablet Properties button on the device itself. This is great because it gives you quick options to open the properties, make changes, then get back to work. It’s important to experiment with the Tablet Properties and more than a few times, I found myself thinking, “I should be able to program an Express Key to (insert operation, tool selection, or toggle here.) They made it easier to do that. I’ll detail all of my new settings in another post.

4) Pulling the device down over the edge of your desk, means forcing yourself to avoid using your keyboard. This is a good thing!

5) More buttons! I really like the fact that with Express Keys on both sides of the screen, plus two (count ‘em, TWO) touch rings, you get plenty of options on how to customize your Cintiq so it works perfectly for the way you work. A word of caution, however. Computers aren’t perfect and sometimes program conflicts or an accidental pressing of the Default button in the Wacom Tablet Properties can erase all of your settings, so be sure to backup your settings with the Wacom Tablet Preference Utility. I learned that lesson the hard way last week.

6) The display was so easy to set up. OK, I did have to wait for my wife to get home from work so she could help me bring it up two flights of stairs from the garage to my office. It’s 63lbs out of the box, quite large, and awkward to carry. I wasn’t about to risk any damage by trying to do it myself. Once I got it on my desk (oh, it’s staying there, now), the instructions were simple and straightforward. It was very much like setting up any new display. I use the Eye-One Color Calibrator and it was just as simple to calibrate the Cintiq as it is for any other type of monitor.

7) The Cintiq is just a joy to work on. The base is so well designed that I can’t think of any way to improve upon it. As shown in the images here, it locks in place when it’s fully upright, so it can be used like a standard display (a BIG standard display) or it can be used flat in the upright position. As someone who sits all day long while I work, I have contemplated getting one of those very expensive adjustable desks that allows a person to work standing up once in awhile. I no longer have to think about that, because the Cintiq lets me do that when I need a break from the chair. I did that a number of times in the past couple of weeks and loved having the option.

8) Word of caution. This thing is BIG. I have a great coffee cup that I got at Costco (three of them, actually) made by Contigo. You can see it to the left of the display in the photos. It seals completely and to take a drink, you have to press a button on the back to open it. It’s great because it not only keeps coffee hot for well over an hour, but it if you drop the cup or knock it over, it doesn’t spill. Because I start work very early in the morning and work in low light as often as possible, my office is usually near dark. In the first week of using the Cintiq, I knocked over my coffee cup three times when I went to adjust the display with the handles on the sides. It’s just so big!

And finally, it’s solid! There is nothing about this display that feels cheaply made. The enjoyment I’m having drawing and painting on the screen is difficult to explain. Working on little hairs with the pen at the same point of contact as my brush strokes just feels so much more natural.I’ve often dealt with back pain off and on over the years, usually stress related from working hunched over too much. As I said, I was so busy with deadlines that I’ve spent a LOT of time on this device. One thing I noticed, a great surprise, is that I had no significant neck or back pain as a result. Sure, tight shoulders and strain just from sitting so long and working, you’ll get that in any job when you’re working long hours, but nothing that didn’t go away with rest and nothing that I had to take an Advil for.

So, yes, I’m enjoying the Cintiq 24HD a great deal, and I’m sure I’ll continue to discover things that make me say, “Oh, cool,” and I’ll be sure to share them. Next time, I’ll talk about having to change all of Express Key, Touch Ring and Radial Menu settings. When you’re working directly on the screen, it’s a whole new ballgame.

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Patrick LaMontagne — 3 Comments

Wacom’s Bamboo Splash Tablet and ArtRage Studio

Wacom just released a new entry level tablet, the Bamboo Splash, and I had an opportunity to put it through its paces.

The Bamboo Splash tablet is designed for the amateur or beginner digital artist. It’s perfect for kids and teenagers, allowing them to experiment with digital art without having to spend a bundle to do so. Best of all, even though it lacks the bells and whistles of the more advanced tablets, it doesn’t sacrifice much in performance.

As I draw syndicated editorial cartoons almost every day, I wanted to see if I could still get real work done using the Bamboo Splash, rather than with the medium sized Intuos5 that I use every day.

The Wacom Intuos5 is a professional tablet. With the programmable Express Keys, the Touch Ring, high end pen, and the onscreen customizable features, not to mention the larger size, it’s unfair to compare the two tablets as they are designed for different skill levels. As I’ve been doing this for a living for many years, I’ll admit that the Bamboo Splash isn’t tablet enough for my daily needs, but then again, it isn’t meant for me.

The Bamboo Splash tablet was simple to set up. Plug it in; install the drivers from the CD, restart the computer and it was working flawlessly. Visiting the preferences utility, I found that very little aside from ‘Tip Feel’ was changeable. For a beginner, that’s ideal. It’s ready to go, out of the box, nothing confusing.

Put simply, it’s a great device. The Bamboo Splash has 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is plenty. While a number of people may wonder about the size, your mind figures it out fast. I work on a larger tablet every day, mapped to two screens. I keep all of my Photoshop tools on one screen and draw on the other. That means I’m really only using half the tablet for drawing.

When using the Bamboo Splash, I didn’t change my screen mapping, so I was only drawing on half of the smaller tablet, too. After a few minutes, I didn’t even think about it. My mind just figured out that brush and pen strokes required less movement.

This cartoon (with the political commentary left out) was drawn and painted entirely with the Bamboo Splash in Photoshop and it worked very well. While I did keep reaching for the Express Keys and Touch Ring of the Intuos5 out of habit, once I got used to their absence and reverted to using keyboard shortcuts or drop down menus in Photoshop, I was able to work smoothly and still got my cartoon out to my newspapers on time.

Trying to draw with a mouse is an exercise in futility. You really do need a Wacom tablet to draw with a computer. While the Intuos5 tablets and Cintiq devices will represent more of a financial investment, you’re not risking too much with the Bamboo Splash. The tablet comes in at well under $100. Best of all, it comes with two very nice pieces of creative software. One is Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro and the other is ArtRage Studio.

I spent some time with ArtRage, and it was very enjoyable to use. While it’s not designed to be a professional illustration and painting tool like Photoshop or Painter, it offers a lot to anybody wanting to try their hand at digital art. With pencils, crayons, chalk, oils, watercolors and a number of other tools, there’s very little to limit your creativity. It even supports layers and blend modes, and has a number of other fun tools and settings to mess around with.

Pairing ArtRage Studio with the Bamboo Splash was a great idea, because they’re both designed to allow you to create digital art, without a steep learning curve. You can start working with both right away and if you’re like me, preferring to figure it out as you go along, you’ll be able to get pretty far without having to look through the manual.

When you do want more info, the ArtRage website has plenty of tutorials. You can also upgrade the software to ArtRage Studio Pro and they have iPhone and iPad drawing apps as well. If you do want to try out the mobile apps, I’d recommend the Wacom Bamboo Stylus as a drawing device to go with them.

Here’s a video I recorded for Wacom’s ‘See What You Can Do’ campaign, designed to share a little bit of my thoughts on digital painting, and to show some of the drawing and painting tools available in ArtRage Studio.