How to simulate a large graphics tablet

For those that are thinking about upgrading their graphics tablet, yet are unsure about what size that would suit their needs best, there's a simple way of emulating the feeling of drawing on a larger tablet. If you already own a Wacom, the Mapping function, which comes with the tablet software, allows you to do this. By mapping your tablet to a smaller portion of your computer screen, it gives a similar effect as drawing on a section of a larger tablet. All that’s needed is a bit of maths.

1. Tablet measurements. Find the dimensions of the Active Area of your current tablet and of the larger tablet that you want to simulate. This can usually be found in the spec sheets for the tablet.
   
   
2. Resolution. Note down your screen resolution. (You can find your screen resolution by right-clicking on an empty area on the desktop, choose Properties and then Settings.)
   
   
3. Mapped resolution. The resolution of the mapped area (in pixels) can be found simply through the ratio of the smaller tablet to the larger tablet.
   
   Mapped width in pixels = (Width of current tablet) / (Width of simulated tablet) x (Screen width in pixels)
   
   Just substitute Width for Height to find the mapped height in pixels.
   
   So for example, I have an Intuos3 A5 Wide (271 x 159 mm) and I'd like to simulate the Intuos4 XL (488 x 305 mm). My screen resolution is 1680 x 1050 pixels. By plugging in the numbers I find that the screen area that my A5 Wide should be mapped to is 932 x 547 pixels.
   
   
4. Change Tablet Properties. Now, open up Wacom Tablet Properties and select the Mapping tab. Under Screen Area select Portion… and you’ll get a pop-up. In the Enter Coordinates field, put in the new dimensions. You can then choose what portion of the screen to use by moving the red box in the little screen diagram.

I used this method to compare the feeling of drawing on my current tablet, the Intuos3 A5 Wide, to drawing at the size of an Intuos4 Large and an Intuos4 XL tablet.
The Intuos4 Large is not that much bigger than an Intuos3 A5 Wide and as predicted, drawing at the Intuos4 Large size really didn't feel all that much different from the A5 Wide. The Intuos4 XL on the other hand is a different story.
These doodles were drawn at my screen resolution (1680 x 1050) with no zoom using the XL-mapping, L-mapping and no mapping respectively. It might not be obvious, but I felt much more in control of the lines with the XL-mapping. My hands did have to make larger movements which could be tiring in the long run, but you can always zoom out if you want less precision.

I've never found pencilling and sketching on the computer particularly enjoyable, probably because of the lack of control compared to sketching on paper. After having felt what it's like to draw on a much bigger tablet I think it might be worth investing in an upgrade though. It would be great to have the Free Transform tool and Cut & Paste functions at hand, and setting up perspective guides is ten times easier in Photoshop than on paper.

Removing blue lines

The big reason behind using blue lines, apart from helping you see on the paper is that it can be easily removed in Photoshop. The same goes for red and green (RGB), but I just happen to like blue better. The blue pencil that I've fallen in love with is Uni-ball's 0.5 mm soft blue mechanical pencil. Sadly they're not sold in the UK as far as I know, but they're available online from stores like JetPens.

1. Start out by scanning your drawing in colour. I believe that most scanners scan in RGB mode by default. What this means is that the colour in your drawing is split into three channels, Red, Green and Blue.
2. In this case my pencils are blue so what I do is select the Blue channel. All the blue then disappears from the visible image, but it's still there. If your underdrawing was red, you'd click the red channel instead, and similarily for green.
3. In order to get rid of the colour permanently I go to Image>Mode>Grayscale.
4. Finally I adjust the Levels (Image>Adjustments>Levels, or Ctrl+L) to enhance the contrast of the lines. What I've found to work best is to move the rightmost lever a little bit to the left (this gets rid of the greyness of the paper) and the middle lever a bit to the right(which darkens the lines).
   

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JetPens - Shop

Mysterious wind

A common "trick" for creating dynamic images is to introduce flowing elements, such as long hair, ribbons, bits and pieces of clothing, flower petals etc. Even in a boring indoor conversation you can liven things up and create atmosphere by drawing these elements as if moved by some mysterious force. It's can be a form of abstraction, but people rarely complain.



Drawings of something happening is usually a lot more interesting than something static, even if the only thing happening is hair flowing in the wind.

Check out more of CLAMP's work for masters of hair manipulation.

Impact panel

An impact panel should convey a strong sense of action. To this end, speed lines are used often, but there are other ways to make a panel more dynamic.

This is the original hand-inked panel for an impact panel I drew recently.
Curved speed lines have been drawn to show the direction of the action of the hand and small explosion-like lines have been drawn around the area of impact. A big sound effect conveys the strength of the impact.
Small pieces of debris have been added as extra dynamic elements. A common trick when drawing impact and action panels is to arrange pieces of debris or other flying elements in a way that follows the direction of the action in the panel. Here the debris originates from the punch, so the direction of action is outwards from the hand.


While there is a sense of impact is present in the original inks, I further improvements were made digitally. Focus lines were added in Manga Studio and more pieces of debris were drawn long the direction of the focus lines.
For those who are interested in small details, in the original inks a piece of debris has one square side perpendicular to the impact lines (the big one underneath the 'A'). I felt that instead of helping the action, the perpendicular side hemmed the flow, so I changed the shape of the debris in the panel below.

A big thing that needed more work was the sound effect. A simple outline is neither particularly dynamic nor contains any weight or impact, so it needed to be filled. Instead of using solid black I chose to once again follow the focus lines of the panel, making the sound effect a part of the action.

Coloured leads

There's a fantastic device in the world of leaded pencils. Actually, it's probably not that fantastic, but it did seem like just what I needed when I found out about it.

Messy lines can be quite troublesome sometimes. After a while of searching for the right shapes, it becomes difficult to tell which lines are the right ones any more. Either that, or the pencils tend to end up somewhere between roughs and finished drawings. It becomes difficult to refine the lines since there is too much clutter. Of course, it's possible to rub out the lines and redraw them, but it tends to be time-consuming and sometimes lines don't rub out completely.
This can become a problem when moving on to inks, since there will be times when guesses will have to be made on positions of unresolved lines.


Coloured leads can be used to lay down a rough draft layer before the standard pencils. In a sense, it's similar to having a light box to draw over your roughs, or using digital layers to create different stages of roughs. The coloured rough is easy to make out from normal pencils so the drawing becomes cleaner, which leaves more room for adding significant detail like folds.



Here I've used a pink pencil to draw in the construction lines for the pose before fleshing out the character (and there's little evil/sadistic me giving critique).

There is more detail and design elements in this drawing, so I've used the pink lead to draw most of the character and a rough design for the outfit. The normal pencil is used to refine details in the design and clear up some line/shape issues. If I decide to ink this drawing, I will have nice and clean lines to work with, which means less guessing about to find lost edges.


The brand which I'm using at the moment is Uniball's Color series. The leads come in a variety of colours at 0.5 and 0.7 mm. Pilot also does a series, the Pilot Eno, but they only do 0.7, which I personally find too thick. To date, I still haven't found any colour lead brand that does 0.3, but I'm guessing that there are material limitations to it.