A Tablet Is MUST if you are a designer!

There was time when I use to google or start shuffling up images on DeviantArt just so I could get something that might fit into the concept I have for my design or just wanted a curvy curve, curving around the canvas. I used to spend a lot of time using the Pen Tool in Illustrator or photoshop in order to get just the right thing. I always wanted to try out some means where I could actually draw it by hand and transfer it to my screen. Quite a lot of time back I use the scanner for doing such things... I made a scenery to go out on a big wall and it was a headache to make the curves right, so I used the combination of scanned artwork, the pen tool, the trace tool a lot of free symbols! and I gotta tell you this was the hardest thing to do as I usually didn't do a lot of vector back then. But it went out good after hard work for of around a month of revisions and retouching...

I bought a graphics tablet just recently, which was in my ToBuy list for over years now... The good ones cost about a months salary of an average person here in Pakistan so you know! Anyway I got one and I started off with it... First day it went okay! I plugged it in and ironically Windows Vista installed it without any errors! I was glad. I chatted a bit with friends on MSN using the pen in my own language Urdu, it was fun! I found my hand all aching up really bad pretty soon, but I continued to practice. Then I opened up Photoshop and start doodling on the canvas... No you don't wanna see what it was while trying out to draw on tablet (I will pretty soon write about drawing on a Tablet)

Anyway... I scrapped out a lot of canvases, tried out images of people, make a beard and a mustache on a lot of ladies, make a hat, probably sun glasses and wrote "most Wanted" at the bottom :p (like we use to do when we were in 8th grade). It was fun playing around just good enough to get use to how the orientation of the tablet screen works, how it is absolute --unlike regular mouse and a couple of things more. But soon enough I press up the F5 key and realized that the pressure sensitivity isn't doing its job well and photoshop is still showing that yellow triangular warning icon that says "pressure sensitive pen required". It was late so I put my vista on sleep and then put myself on sleep.

Next day, I downloaded the proper driver for Vista :) (See Windows mess up at least one thing... that's for sure!). Luckily the installation went well and I was able to use the pressure sensitivity on both photoshop and illustrator. Now the real magic starts.

Let me tell you a secret, I'm not (and never was) very good in hand drawings, a kinder garden kid might do better than me :) You see this image below? It is all hand drawn! Everything in this image is drawn using default brushed and layer effects in Illustrator and photoshop. The primary art thingy was drawn in Illustrator and then dragged onto photoshop as smart object and just a little bit more playing around with some other brushes and layer styles... Check it out... Not bad for a first time job! and I'm happy as there is nothing in it that is borrowed from anywhere!

Happy Designing to you all designers out there :)