Mike Maihack
patreon
Mountain Girl
🕑 Added 2022-09-15 23:10:47 +0000 UTCHi, all! A little more new art for you this week. :)
XP-pen was kind enough to send me one of their tablets to try out--specifically this Artist 12--and the above is one of the more "polished" sketches I drew with it.
Once I found a computer to connect it to (the XP-pen driver interferes with my Wacom one so I ended up using my son's laptop) I found this to be a nice little tablet to draw on! Very easy to connect with just a single USB-C cable, super light-weight and doesn't get too hot. The only real leaning curve was myself since sitting back on a sofa isn't really my go-to drawing method these days. I guess I prefer being hunched over a desk with either a keyboard or watercolors at the ready.
Still, I liked this waaaaay better than drawing on my iPad mostly because I had a bunch of shortcut keys I could use. You can set those buttons on the side to whatever you want for any program (in this case, Clip Studio Paint) plus I had a laptop for all the extra ones I like to use. The pen has a nice sensitivity to it as well. It won't be replacing my 22" Cintiq if I'm at home, but I can see me traveling with it and even taking it to school visits. Or maybe if I just want to hang out with the family downstairs and put on some vinyl records (which was the case for this piece).
Anyhoo, that's my quick review! As for the art, I was primarily mindlessly sketching with a vague idea of creating something that could work as a dark teal silhouette against a bright pink background. I uploaded a couple of time-lapses if you wanted to watch some of that mindless sketching in action.
- Mountain Girl (quick 60-sec time-lapse)
- Mountain Girl (full 6-min time-lapse)
Have a great rest of the week, everyone!
Comments
Mike Maihack
Yeah it's getting tougher and tougher to defend Macs these days. Every new OS update seems to bring on new problems. The Artist 12 I shared above is pretty small! About the size of my old Wacom Intuos (which I never use anymore).
Mike Maihack
Size is the main reason, yes. I like being able to see and move around my page more freely. My cintiq is a touch more sensitive and has less parallax imo. Beyond that, it's mainly more natural for me. I like that it sits permanently on my desk like a drawing board. I work with one hand drawing and my other never leaving a keyboard so I can keep a creative flow going without any excess thought. Losing my ability to quickly toggle between every shortcut key cuts into that flow.
Spiffy Voxel
I have one of XP-Pen's regular graphic tablets, it replaced a Wacom Bamboo One which I *loved* but was no longer supported and increasingly hard to get working with each new version of macOS. I was sorely tempted by their Artist range, but the cost and lack of desk space here for it meant I had to park that idea for now.
Joshua Smeaton
Is the size the main reason you prefer the Cintiq or something else? I have a Cintiq that I never use because it takes sooo many cables to get to work.
