Digital Art

In a previous post, I had wondered about my desire (ability) to ink in all of my illustrations by hand.  It's permanent and I could seriously mess up an otherwise lovely image with one bad move.  So, for a graduation gift John got me a Bamboo pen and tablet.  It is the coolest thing ever.  I get to use a pen instead of a mouse to draw on the computer, so I can have all the effects of a hand drawing without the permanence of ink.  Here's some examples of what I've done with it so far:

Before

After

Before

After

Pretty cool, right?  (As always, you can click on the image for a larger view)  You can check out the
Bamboo for yourself if you want to.  As predicted, I needed a lot of "oops" room, especially on the Eiffel Tower.  I wasn't quite sure what to do in a few spots, so I did and redid (and redid) a few different attempts.  Had it been a real pen and not my digital one I would have been stuck with the first, unfortunate attempt.

The Bamboo does take a bit of getting used to, though.  One thing that is especially hard for my brain to communicate to my hand is that the tablet writing space is basically a shrunken computer screen.  So in order to draw, I either have to draw much small than I think I should or I have to enlarge the image I'm drawing over.  But with practice, it has gotten a lot easier!

Thanks, John, for an awesome (and useful!) gift!