Sertting up the short cut keys on your Wacom Device

Hey Guys!

I just recently bought a new drawing board for my computer and actually sat down and watched their quick start tutorials, which is pretty impressive for me. Anyhoo, I stumbled upon a really interesting solution to the "this doesn't act like a real pen" problem that some people experience when they first switch to digital. You can go in system preferences and set up how the pen acts within a specific program. This means that you can work within photoshop or even painter and have custom settings as far as quick set buttons are concerned.

Adjusting your Wacom’s settings
In your system preferences/start menu you should see a ‘Wacom’ folder, and inside, a ‘Wacom Tablet Properties’ program. This utility helps you tweak the special buttons on your tablet, pen pressure, and a lot of other stuff. The most important setting here (and the only one I’m going to talk about) is the ‘Tip Feel’.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I like pen tip to have a firm feel. This means that I have to press harder to get the same line thickness than at the default settings. I find that being able to keep a constant medium to hard pressure helps me make smoother lines. The software has a handy little preview of how hard you’re pressing so use that as a benchmark to find the best setting.

you can also select the the shortcut buttons for the pen (I happen to like the pen top button to be [x] because this allows you to switch back and forth between foreground and background colors.

Drawing Tips

(I stole this off the tutorial and thought it was a helpful hint)
Before I started using a Wacom I imagined that it would magically transform me into a good artist. Not so! In many ways the Wacom is more difficult to control than traditional drawing tools (it’s saving grace is the Undo function). So unfortunately even if you follow this tutorial perfectly I can’t guarantee you’ll be drawing scrolls like Jeff does. Even so, here are some tips for getting better as a Wacom artist.

1. Practice! Plain old drawing is great, but also try some Wacom training drills. One that I’ve used is trying to draw perfectly spaced even lines from thin to thick. Then try it thick to thin, then thin, thick, thin. Try concentric curves, squares – anything that requires you to keep line thickness and spacing consistent is good.
2. Zoom in. Your Wacom’s tablet area is proportionate to your screen, not your zoom setting. For that detailed linework go ahead and zoom in to reduce shakiness.
3. Be Decisive. Quickly drawn lines are naturally straighter, so don’t be bashful.