On today's episode of tablets with drawings on them, we are looking at the Rosetta Stone. No, stop! It's drawing tablets we're looking at, drawing tablets today. Come again? Little flat things, come with a pen, you plug them into a computer, you could draw with them… You're going to be giving people some tips on how to use one, like for beginners. Do I look like the sort of person who gives tips? Tell you what, I'll do you a solid. Why don't you let me host this episode, and you can go back to looking at your old rocks? Old rocks? And I… what is this? I did not approve this… This is a drawing tablet. They come in different sizes, from different manufacturers. And they're often chosen by new artists who are just getting their feet wet in digital art, because they tend to be cheaper, and are a great entry point .The downside to one of these is they also tend to have a steeper learning curve than say a drawing tablet with a screen. So we're here today to get you up the ladder of learning faster. I'm coming down! When did we get a budget for a ladder? I'm drawing in Photoshop here but you can use any drawing app that you like. I have a list of five really good ones that are free. You can check that out when you're done watching this video. Link that down below in the description. On your tablet, you will see some marks. These show your live area. This is the area where you can draw, and the live area maps to your computer's screen. If you tap your pen up here in the corner, your cursor will show up here in the corner on your screen. Tap down here. it'll show up down here. Of course, dragging your pen across the screen will leave a mark. That's called Drawing! Yeah. I am aware of that. If you're new to one of these, your main goal should be getting used to using it. Your first time jumping in is just not gonna feel as natural as it does when you're drawing on paper. This is an adjustment,. Everybody goes through it. So if you start drawing and you feel like you don't have full control, You Are Not Alone. It does take some time to settle in, so get ready to practice using this every single day. Your first goal should be getting used to how wide the live area of your tablet is. So take your stylus in your hand and tap on a tool or part of the screen that's in the upper left hand corner. Then move your cursor down over to the right lower corner and tap again. Then move to the lower left corner and tap again. Then to the upper right corner and tap again. The first time you do this, you probably aren't going to be moving really fast. Like I said, you are just getting used to the screen and how your pen maps to it. But I want you to do this several times: upper left, lower right, lower left, upper right. Each time you do it, I want you to try to do it a little bit faster. I want you to speed up. Your hand is going to get used to moving across that space, and understanding where it needs to be to hit the various parts of your screen. Now, once you feel comfortable moving around the screen a little bit, I want you to practice something similar, but on the canvas. First of all, let's go to the upper left hand corner of that canvas and let's draw a small circle, not too close to the edge. Then draw one in the lower right corner. Move over to the lower left and draw another one. Then in the upper right, and draw your circle again. We are going to do what we did before, but instead of speeding up, what I want you to do is try drawing another circle around the circles you've already drawn, and just move from one to the other and to the other. You're getting the hang of this! If you'd like, you can keep going and draw even larger circles around those. This is a great warm-up activity. Another thing you can try doing is practicing connecting lines between those circles. Take your pen and draw a line from the center of one of those circles to the center of another one of those circles. Pick your pen up go to another area and connect another line. As you get used to it, you can try speeding up these lines and seeing if you can draw them faster and still stay accurate This has been another edition of Things to Practice! We're not actually done practicing! I have more. If you learn through these kind of hands-on practice exercises, check out bradsartschool.com. I have a brand spanking new Digital Art for Beginners course where we get some hands-on time with homework and all sorts of projects. It's built for beginners to be an on-ramp to some of the more advanced drawing courses and tutorials out there. Check out the details on my site. Now back to the video. Okay, you want another practice tip? Okay, enough of the singing! We're moving on now. One of the great benefits to a tablet like this is pen pressure. The harder you press with your pen, the wider or darker your stroke gets, depending on the type of paint brush you're using. Bust open your favorite drawing app and grab a brush you like. The one I have here changes sizes based on how hard I press on my tablet. Now I'm gonna make it bigger than what I think I need, probably like 30 or 40 pixels. Now when I hover in Photoshop I can see how big that brush is going to be if I applied all of my pressure on my tablet. It is showing me my brush cursor on the screen. What I want to do with this, is I want to get used to drawing lightly. I'm going to start by drawing a line across the top of the page as light as I can. Then I'm going to draw another line, but this time I'm gonna apply just a little bit more pressure. And then I'm gonna do it again, this time with a little more pressure. The goal is to see how many lines I can draw before I completely max out the pressure of the pen. Now, the first time you do do this, you may only get three or four lines before you max out that brush. That's totally normal. What your goal for this exercise should be is to get as many different widths of lines across your page as possible. It's harder than it looks because sometimes as you cross the page you're just gonna naturally apply more pressure. That's okay. All practice is good practice, and you're just trying to get a feel for the pen. Oh, I know that noise! It's the question giraffe. We're gonna answer a question from someone in the audience. Help! My tablet won't work. I've installed it I have to pet pressure. I hate everything! P.S. Do you like roller coasters? You can't handle them! Yes I can! I love roller coasters! Okay, so I got your back, Dr. Octopus for life, I have installed a lot of graphics tablets over the years, and it's, it's not a hard process. Since you've already installed your tablet and it's not working properly, my first step would be to uninstall the software and then reboot your computer. I know, often when a tech person tells you to reboot, they're wasting your time. Um, sir, have you tried rebooting your router? I just want you to tell me if the network in my area is down first. But this time, you really do need to reboot your computer after installing and uninstalling. Now that your software is uninstalled, you've rebooted, hook up your tablet to your computer and reinstall the software. Then— Yes, here we go again—I want you to reboot a second time. Now test out your tablet. Still not working? Try out a few different drawing apps that you might have that have pen pressure. Again, this is where having one or two free drawing apps installed on your computer comes in really handy. Sometimes it's just one app that's having a problem, and that really will help you troubleshoot. In that case, you can Google "Krita no pen pressure" and folks can help you find your way. Sometimes it's as easy as installing another driver. Sometimes it's just playing with the settings of the app itself. Ooh, it's time for the rapid fire round! I have some more tips for getting used to your new tablet, and we're going to be going through them lightning fast. Are you ready? Too bad! One: Try ditching your mouse. Technically, this pen is just a fancy mouse. It could do everything that your mouse can do. So try just using this for everyday computing activities with your pen instead of your trackpad or your mouse. Surfing the web, checking your email, editing a document, designing ransom notes. Use that pen. Number two: Grab a photo of a sketch and try drawing over it for practice. This is a great way to get used to drawing on your tablet. You could do line art, or a sketch, whatever you want to do. Just practice with it, Number three: Undo is your friend. Well, hi, friend! If you get a line wrong, just cntl-Z it and try again. Number four: If you have two screens, you can use your tablet across both. This will also take some getting used to, and you might not want to draw when you're set up that way. But it will help you ditch your mouse. Number five: Try playing some video games with your tablet. I mean, I wouldn't recommend playing Elden Ring with this thing, but there are some games designed specifically for graphics tablets. The most popular one out there is called osu! It's a rhythm game, and it's a really great way to build eye hand coordination Number six, last tip: Put those shortcut keys to use. Many of these tablets have shortcut keys and you could go into the settings and change those keys to anything you want set it to undo change your brush size zoom in and out force quit Chrome constantly accidentally whatever okay I hoped all of this was helpful for those of you who have been using your tablets for a while what helped you learn let me know Down Below in the comments thank you all for watching and I'll talk to you in a couple of days foreign [Music]