Grr...

OK, so, I recently acquired (for the nice price of $80, no less) a shiny new toy: a Bamboo Pen Tablet Small Wacom drawing tablet. It has been a great thing--handwriting recognition by CellWriter and the sheer awesome that is non-RSI-prone[citation needed] tablet navigation have been amazing.

I have had thoughts of starting a low-frequency webcomic for quite a while now. However, I dislike the idea of having any physical copies of the updates to that, and thus have held off on following the thought-path that would end in an actual webcomic, due to my lack of ability to draw with a mouse.

The graphics tablet changes that, however, as I now can sketch directly into my computer. (Interesting aside: I suspect that the reason I have no difficulties drawing naturally with the tablet--as many bloggers have stated as a primary issue with tablets, for one reason or another--is that I am not a trained artist. Also, I am used to disconnecting the usual source of feedback [in this case, the image located at tool's tip] from the source of input [the tool's tip] in exchange for a new source of feedback [the image on the screen])

I have, in the past, demonstrated an ability (however limited, and, admittedly, my drawing strength lies mainly in rigid objects and engineering sketches) to draw faces and bodies with relative ease, likely due to my freshman-year high-school art teacher's lecture on the mathematics underlying those parts of a figure. I have even drawn one character I see playing a lead role in the as-yet hypothetical webcomic and posted her image on my deviantART account here.

However, I--as is likely clear--fail at drawing hands. I blame my lack of mathematical model for the proportions of the human hand combined with both my inevitable self-analysis and perfectionism as well as our (humanity's) innate familiarity with (and subsequent resistance to illusions of) our hands--our primary effectors of the world, through which we loose our creative energies upon our environs.

At this point, I have turned to praying to Google (ref. Church of Google) for aides, as well as modeling my own hands and drawing hands in The GIMP (which is more than tolerable with a tablet) ad nauseum for practice, because my characters must have hands...

Suggestions are welcome, either here or over at dA.

---

Comments