DoctorFruitbat

Time to get the new year's resolutions started early and upload various older and more recent bits that I've done.

This has partly been triggered by me coming across this old post: kaijus-choice.tumblr.com/post/… and realizing that while I've still been drawing on and off since then, all of that completely unwarranted confidence that is essential to getting good at drawing from *checks notes* three and a half years ago?! just kind of left me; I've drawn and sketched a surprising amount since then, but it was all exercises and copying others, and I could make an A3 sheet of paper last a good couple of months. Just sitting down and letting my hand go hog wild and do what it wants just didn't come to me at all. No prizes for guessing that I never finished the comic either.

But lately I've been good, made an honest shot at Inktober and started feeling out digital art again; just uploading pieces and connecting with people has been real good for my mental health, so I want to maintain it. It also helps that Tumblr self-immolated, in a weird way, as I'm having to proactively transfer my drawings and watch lists to other sites. It would have been nice if Tumblr did this BEFORE I started doing up my page, but them's the breaks.

So if anyone happens to be reading this, you're stuck with me now, and I'm not going away this time!

50 open tabs later, I realised I was getting way too far into tablet shopping and comparison, so I said 'screw it' and went for an almost new Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch for £50.

It's the old style version before they redesigned the whole range, but I'm a bit mystified by the dimensions; Wacom say the active area is the same size on the old and new models, but the new tablet is slightly bigger overall. Yet you can clearly see just from looking that the active area covers more of the new tablet's surface than on the old one (or at least there's a much smaller border on the new one). How does that work, exactly?

Despite being an enormous procrastinator, I've made a determined effort to draw and to present what I do for severe public savagings, so yay for me. But as you can see, my upload options are limited to a spectacularly poor Android, one seemingly designed to shit the bed in everything you ask of it, and whatever lighting the sun can throw at me that day. It's worth pointing out that the UK is going through Monsoon season right now.

I could buy a scanner, but being a digitally minded man, I'd quite like to get a tablet and draw straight into Photoshop. Assuming I have a budget of less than £100, would you recommend a scanner or tablet, and if so would you have any recommendations?

My ultra budget option would be a uDraw tablet, which are about twelve quid second hand, have a workable set of third party Windows drivers available and are probably as good a choice as any while I'm practising, even if I move on to something better. It's also my most cost effective option, since I don't have much spending money at the moment, but will do in a couple of months. Thoughts?