This is not about poser..but i use Poser for reference of human drawing...which i draw/paint in Corel Painter. Anyone have any tips on how to accurately draw with stylus and graphics tablet? Let me explain myself. When drawing on real paper with a real pencil or pen, you draw directly on top of where the image will be. But with a tablet, you draw on the tablet and theimage is in the computer screen . two separate things. they are disconnected. So, i'm trying to create smooth circular things like a face. And seems i shake too much OR if i speed up the stroke to try to make a circular line..it doesn't always hit the direction i want. In real paper, it's simple i can do it. But it's hard to do with a tablet

practice :)

That's the only way I've ever managed to improve with one and I still suck at it

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use the pen tool (paths) in photoshop.

well I use a Wacom and would not trade it for anything in the world, well maybe a bigger one ;}

David J Harmon
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I have a Wacom Intuous 3   6x8 and I primarily use it as a coffee coaster.  I can't get the hang of drawing on a tablet while looking at the screen.  It should be like working a mouse but it's not.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

do you have a mouse with it? I started drawing with a mouse in the 80s. One thing you could do is write your name, then write it again and again. plus their is other things you could do.

David J Harmon
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Buy a touch scrren monitor, and tip it facing up?

hmm never used one,

has anyone out their have a Mac, and can you tell what  input device your using???

David J Harmon
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practice practice practice! That's the only thing that works for me.
Fopr starters, put images into photoshop, fade 50% or so, create a new layer and practice fast tracing, or sketching over, so you get the eye hand coordination. Eventually You'll get the hang of it.  It is a little easier with a larger tablet. I use a 9x12
I [heart] my wacom :D

Also, with practice you'll learn how to turn the tablet so it accomodates the natural flow of your hand... So you make circles and face ovals instead of drunken ellipses ;)

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your right, I've done stuff just a mouse would not even touch.

David J Harmon
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the plastic covering of the tablet is slick, so try putting down a piece of paper on top of it, this will slow down the pen and may help with accuracy also Wacom makes one that lets you draw right on the screen but it is kinda expensive i went to a digital imaging seminar and the keynote speaker said people who use drawing tablets are more productive! lol

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1474896

For practice:
Put your reference image in one layer
Set that layer's opacity to 50% or so
Paint in a second layer as you see fit

The monitor/tablet combinations are VERY VERY EXPENSIVE, even though they're quite cool.
http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/index.cfm

This is something that simply takes lots and lots and lots of practice, there's no overnight "presto, you can draw!" tutorial.  It's also a major disadvantage of drawing on a tablet that you generally can't turn it as easily as you can turn a piece of paper - most people cannot draw smooth lines in all orientations regardless of how much practice you have.

Shaky lines can be cleaned up fairly easily with eraser tool, with things like the Smudge tool, or various filters like Liquefy (or corel equivalent).

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I'd die without a tablet... but then again, I've been using one for around 10 years.
I too started with drawing jittery neurotic looking stick figures with it.

One place that I really like for practice is a an online sketching game, similar to pictionary: http://www.isketch.net/

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What a clever idea for a web based game, thanks.

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So, i'm trying to create smooth circular things like a face. And seems i shake too much OR if i speed up the stroke to try to make a circular line..it doesn't always hit the direction i want I would suggest using a virtual eraser to sculpt your lines.

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You are using a Wacom right ? Cause some of the other (cheaper) brands tend to have this very bad jittery response to the pen.

Also painter's brushes can be adjusted to give you smoother or more accurate line.

Something else that occurred to me is if you zoom in too closely while working large, it's easy to get hung up on the lack of perfection in your lines. These imperfections often look like astounding perfection when the final image (at the intended resolution) is completed. The flip side of this point is that you should work large and scale down the drawing after it's completed.

Download my free stuff here: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.php?page=2&userid=323368

The Wacom also has a liftable plastic layer on the surface that will allow putting something to be traced underneath.  It still takes a lot of practice to get used to drawing with one. The real power is in a program, like Corel Painter, that uses all aspects of a Wacom pen, including tilt and other functions.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon

I have never gotten on well with a tablet and I have a big, high end Wacom I "liberated" from a former employer.  I've tried countless times and each time the damn thing nearly sailed out the window.  

That said, I can tell you how to draw accurately, or at least, in the "real world" as it were.  This will sharpen up your drawing technique no end...

Learn to draw with a brush.  

Seriously, it's damn hard work but you will learn a lot about accuracy that way.  Getting used to inking pencils the old school comic book style is the single biggest favour you will ever do for your drawing skills.

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

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I have an intuos3 9x12 but I started with a really small cheap thing. I found with the small one that it helped to find exactly the right alignment of the pad on the desk. 

In your paint program, close your eyes and draw a few straight vertical lines and a few straight horizontal lines. Now look on the screen, are your lines really horizontal and vertical? Probably not. If they are a bit rotated, rotate your tablet slightly and do it again. When you find the position where your natural body movements give you what you want on screen, mark the position of the tablet on the desk with tape or something. Place it there every time and it'll cut down the learning process.

I find it easier to draw with a tablet and look at the screen then to draw on a touch screen with the stylus obsuring my work. Also the tablet can draw very differently depending on th screen magnification setting.

There was a wonderful tiny Mac app I used to use in the early nineties that averaged out the shake of my Parkinson's. I miss it desperately. They sold the name to a flow chart making app and the code to Flash... if you can obtain Flash and draw with it you will get the dumbed down version of what Smart Draw used to do supressing hand tremor and even just poor drawing ability.

Does anyone know a more user friendly software using shape recognition and tremor supression?

Tricks you can do are tracing drawings slipped under the tablet overlay sheet, scanning drawings to used a guides in your paint program, using raster shapes in your drawing program as guides, and drawing very big with slightly thicker lines and down sampling the resolution... those little newspaper cartoons are actually drawn quite large, commercial artists have always retraced and reduce scaled their drawing to make the look tighter.

A lot of digital artists just scan pencil drawings and clean them up on the computer.

Signing your name over and over is good advise. Drawing is much more "somatic" then people realize. I was a drawing teacher for many years so pardon my "presumptuos tone"

Quote - The Wacom also has a liftable plastic layer on the surface that will allow putting something to be traced underneath.  .

My Wacom Intuous 2 had a plastic flap, but my Intuous 3 doesn't. 

Even when I had the Intuous 2 that I could put something under, the actual working area was too small (I think it was 3x4) when you compare it to a 17 inch monitor.

The Intuous 3   6x8 that I have now allows you to place paper over the working area and use your pens on the paper.  However there is still that "disconnected" problem of drawing on one surface while what you are doing is appearing somewhere else.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I got a 9x12 Intuos 3 last March and I don`t know how I ever got along without it.  If I remember right there are some pratice exercises to help get used to using it on the disks that came with it. You can try changeing the pen tips and sensitivity settings to get a different feel to it. I prefer using the grey tip myself. I started with a sensitivity setting that was low so I had to push down kind of hard to get used to using it, now I have it turned up so that I barely have to touch it.  

Here's something to think about. When you're using a mouse, do you look at the mouse, or at the pointer?

Quote - Here's something to think about. When you're using a mouse, do you look at the mouse, or at the pointer?

I know it should be like using a mouse, but it isn't. It's something to do with the way the pen is held vs the way the mouse is held. I don't know, but it's just harder with a pen on a tablet.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

In art school they had us draw with markers taped to yardsticks or bricks! They also taught us to keep our eyes on the model never on the paper. I often draw with my paper in the dark and my subject lit. I am not saying this stuff to throw shade on you, just to communicate how we were taught that drawing was gestural. A conection between eye and the arm ("draw from the arm not the wrist") not from the brain to the hand... when I taught I advised people to trace drawings and photos, trace their own drawings, teach thier bodies what it feels like to draw.

took me a long time to get used to my tablet and even now i still haven't adapted to it fully. i'm afraid the only way to get better at it is practice =(

Also have you customised the tablet settings ? On a mac it's in Preferences, a whole window opens up and you can set draw speed, pen pressure , orientation of tablet to monitor etc. Little tweaks in there can make a lot of difference to your using experience. Can't tell you where to go to set all that on a windows pc though.

Quote - hmm never used one,

has anyone out their have a Mac, and can you tell what  input device your using???

Wacom Intuos 3 . 6x8. Use the pen for everything in most every app just as a pointer instead of the mouse.

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