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Drawing Tablets, and beyond

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Cool Tools for
Digital Artists!
If you're currently using a mouse to do your digital image editing or painting, you might be interested in a better way: using a drawing tablet. It reduces the strain on your wrist, feels more like a real pen, and gives additional control capabilities with the built-in pressure-sensitive sensor. Some also detect angles.

Drawing tablets will add pressure-sensitive input, which some programs such as Project Dogwaffle can use with brushes in order to let you control certain features such as their size, the paint spray opacity, or in some cases even the angle of tilt or rotation, etc...

It all depends on and varies with the software and the type of tablets too. Some tablets  offer optional features through special pens such as the 6D Pen from Wacom. Some tablets also offer shortcut buttons and touchpads or sliders. You can spend anywhere from $30 to $900 on tablets of many different features, makes and sizes.

If it's in your budget, then we recommend the top quality professional tablets by Wacom, the 'Mercedes-Benz of tablet makers', but there are a few others which are nice too.  Have a close look and read the reviews on Amazon for the Huion 1600PLUS tablet, for instance.
trabelt pressure can affect size or opacity of a brush image
Did you know?
The pressure applied to a pen while painting and drawing can, when enabled, affect the size of the brush image, or opacity, or both.  But it's not only possible through a tablet pen... brush settings also look at speed of the movement, and angular direction, and can also randomly change it...   some software (such as Dogwaffle's PD Artist and PD Howler) can simulate pressure at start or end of a brush stroke, even during the brush stroke, with post-processed resizing. You can do some of these effects even with a mouse. Try for example the finer settings in the Curve tool. There's more.

What you see here was done WITHOUT a drawing tablet >>>>>>



But still, here are a few options:

Here are some tablets we really like. Hopefully they're in your budget range!


Monoprice - one of the lower-cost options, and very good qualities too.

We've used some of their drawing tablet models over the years and have heard good feedback also from other users. Yes, this is worth your time and money. It may not be the only one you'll ever have, but could/should be one of them.

They don't do just drawing tablets, you might want to explore other products there too, perhaps a screen with drawable pressure detection?


WACOM - any of the Intuos line - this is the top of the line professional product. Fancy.

Budget alert: If you're working for a company, and your boss has the budget, go for it. If you're a starving artist, need one on your own terms,  try lower-cost alternatives, to see if you really like working with tablet pens in the first place. You don't know until you've tried it for a few weeks. It takes some learning and getting used to, how to hold it, vertically not sideways, how to 'left-click' vs. 'right-click' vs. double-click, even triple-click... and you might still use a mouse with it.

Some models have an extra wireless mouse you place on it. 

But soon enough you'll wonder how you ever managed without a digital pen instead of a mouse. At the least when trying to trace outlines or shapes from another picture you lay down.

If you want something fancy, look for the 6D Pen, feels like a Copic marker, detects extra angular info when you turn, twist and roll...  not all software knows what to do with it, but some of it can be seen in Dogwaffle's bristle brushes (try high values for Salt & Pepper mode to see them turn with you).

Wacom also makes devices that are the tablet inside the screen, such as the Cintiq. Those work great too.


HUION - example: using PD Particles with Huion 1600PLUS


Very good options for tiny budgets but also some higher end great quality models for professionals. This artist uses a Huion tablet too (another model) and loves it! ......  Dakorillion



GAOMON

Another great option, very low budget but great quality too. And they have several higher-end alternatives, including display surfaces with pressure input, and light tables. Check it out here: http://www.gaomon.net/

We tried the 6 x 5 Inches Soft Drawing Graphics Tablet Flex Pen Tablet and liked it.



Microsoft Surface

It's a tablet in the screen at the same time as it is the computer in it too. Even more, it's a laptop.... Nicely compact, but there is one catch: It doesn't use the WinTab interface that Project Dogwaffle needs. However, you can find the WinTab driver as an additional download and installation from Microsoft's websites. Start here to look for it for your specific version of MS Surface:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/deploy-the-latest-firmware-and-drivers-for-surface-devices


There are others, new manufacturers, or old brands re-released under new names too. Search the web, compare features, try.