Pixiq

Mastering the Wacom Pen

The Wacom tablet is a MUST HAVE for anyone who seriously wants to do retouching or digital painting. It’s the difference between creating art with a pen or a potato and I am serious when I say that if I didn’t have my tablet and pen, I would not do digital retouching at all. It would be like trying to make a living fishing with a shovel.

That being said, many people struggle to develop the hand / eye coordination needed to use a pen unconsciously.  Some people give up, in my opinion, because they don’t give themselves enough practice time to get used to it. In this article I will share with you some great practice exercises that will help you get used to using the pen. The first exercise uses Photoshop.

Hold the pen like you would a pencil or a pen. I put my tablet on my lap but some people prefer to put it next to their keyboard. The pen works just like a pencil or a pen. Pretend the tablet is a piece of paper and rest the heel of your hand upon it with the tip of the pen ¾ of an inch or so away from touching the tablet.

When you drag the heel of your hand you will notice the cursor follows the tip of the pen.  If you lift your hand from the tablet and then put it down again in a different location, the cursor will “find” the tip of the pen perfectly every time. You don’t have to drag the cursor across the screen like you do when you are using a mouse. To select something, tap on it. To scroll menus, press and draw. A click is a tap. A double click is a tap tap. It’s easy!

Start the drawing exercise by making a new canvas: Hold the pen over the tablet, move the heel of your hand to guide the cursor over the File menu item. Press and hold the tip of the pen on the word File and draw down to New. Release the pen. Press and scroll across the options within the window and type in the size and resolution you want (I made mine 8x8 inches @ 300). Tap OK.

 Put the heel of your hand on the right side of the tablet. The cursor will jump to meet you there. Open the Brush Window and choose a small round brush just by tapping on it. Set the brush options to Mode / Normal, Opacity / 100%, Flow / 100%. Choose a color from the Swatch Window by tapping on the one you want to use. Spend some time writing notes to yourself and doodling. When you are feeling bold, choose different brushes, different opacities etc and let yourself have some fun. The canvas can be refilled with white by selecting Edit / Fill and choosing the options for Foreground Color / Normal / 100%. You can start over as many times as you want.

You will notice that you can layer colors and paint right over things –it’s impossible to make a mistake that can’t be fixed! I would suggest that a new user of the Wacom tablet practice this for at least 15 minutes per day until you develop a sense of where the tip of the pen is going to be on the screen before you tap, and also gain control over making basic hand movements for writing notes and doodling. At this level, you’re ready for most of the retouching and editing you might do in Photoshop.

The next practice session is done in Painter. This practice will help you understand how to shape color into objects and understand how different brushes blend colors together in different ways.

Start by making a “blob” on a new canvas. It doesn’t matter what brush you use as long as it's one that applies color.

Now, choose a brush to move the color around. Again, it doesn’t matter which brush you choose (because next time you do this I suggest you choose a different brush so you get more practice with the variety available to you in Painter). If you want to start easy, choose the Blender Category / Smear Variant.

Begin shaping the blob of paint into an object or a small scene by pulling and pushing the color around on the canvas. I’m going to start making grass and flowers. If you go over the same stroke several times you are able to pull the color further out. Notice also that Painter considers the white canvas a color, too, so you can use it to pull white into the blob. Relax and have fun making different shapes. It doesn’t matter if it looks good to you or not, especially to begin with – you ARE practicing, right? You might start out using a large brush (35) to pull the sides of the color out and push white up from the bottom to change the shape of the paint.

Working with both white and green, I’ve further refined the shapes to look more like grass.

Finally, I finished it up using smaller brushes.

Next time, choose a different brush to apply the color and a different one to shape it.

Hint: Keep a notebook handy to write down the brushes you like the best and add comments about what you might try them on when you work on a real painting. Example: Acrylic / Captured Bristle – try it next time you’re painting hair.

And, finally, when you are feeling really brave, add more than one color and practice shaping and blending at the same time. You will learn how far you can blend before neutralizing both of the colors as well as how you can create distinct or diffused edges between them.

If you practice using your Wacom pen every day, these simple and fun exercises will quickly guide you into using it with complete confidence. Don’t wait to practice on your first job – make your job easier by knowing how to control the pen BEFORE you start learning what to do with it.

Thank you and have fun!

Jane

Jane Conner-ziser is an internationally recognized portrait retouching artist, painter and instructor living in Ormond Beach, Florida. Her background is in fine arts. She has been actively involved in professional photography and art for over 25 years. Contact Jane at www.JaneConner-ziser.com