Friday, April 1, 2011

Cintiq First Impressions...



I bought my Cintiq 21 UX exactly 2 weeks ago and have been trying to sit down with it each evening and see what I come up with. As I mentioned in the last post, it's taken me a while just to get up and running in terms of the software and hardware. But after the first week, I started actually using the thing to make some art... well, really pretty rough sketches and what you might call "oil" sketches. From now on, I'll be updating this blog regularly with my latest efforts - so be sure to come back often! :)

First off, initial impressions: drawing with the Cintiq just feels so natural! What can I say? Some artists use traditional tablets like Wacom's Intuos 4 to create some incredible art, but I myself have always found the disconnect between tablet down on your desk and your eyes up on the screen frustrating. My friends used to tell me: "Tom, with your sketchy style you should buy a tablet!" But I never did for that reason alone. But now with the Cintiq I finally can have the best of both worlds - the flexibility and beauty of digital and the hand-eye coordination of traditional media!

I bought Corel Painter 11 to complement my existing CS4 rig because I knew that I'd fall in love with the natural media brushes, paper textures etc of Painter. Photoshop rocks but Painter gives you that added texture (in both surface and brushstrokes) that in my opinion lets artists reflect their "hand" more... the "artist's hand," which shows the brushstrokes as if they were the real thing. And that's the kind of art I love the most. Let me tell you - Painter's a blast! I'll be posting new artworks that I've done in Painter, which hopefully will reflect my ever-growing handle on the program (it's a big program with a fair learning curve, but if you stick to it and don't try to learn everything at once you'll be fine). I think it'll be interesting to see what happens! For now, I'm just having a blast!

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