Does Anyone Have Any Tips When It Comes to using A Tablet?

Like the title says, does anybody have any tips for controlling a tablet? Would using a beat game like OSU work? Is there a good way to learn better hand eye coordination?

I always recommend using your tablet pen as your regular mouse for random browsing. Point and click games would work just as well! I even played first person shooter games with my drawing tablet in the past.

The most important part is to allow yourself time to get used to it. It can take a few weeks to a few months before your brain adjusts and it starts to feel natural. Just don't stop using it, and you'll see improvement relatively quickly.

Allow yourself time to get used to it! Get busy, make messes - the more you play the quicker you'll get it.

The best possible advice I can give you for getting through the tablet-monitor drawing disconnect is to carefully position your tablet to be parallel with your monitor, do not have it off to the side or at an angle. Make sure it is directly in front of your monitor and straight, this will help your hand do what your eye is telling it to without the cursor going all wonky.

Also, If you're drawing and you reach a point where you would usually rotate your sketchbook to get a better stroke, instead of turning the tablet, look for an option in your software to rotate the canvas.

Cheers! <3

Sanne, do you have any point and click games to recommend? Also, the first person shooter games with a tablet sounds like a nightmare. What was it like? Ooh, I'll try random browsing. That might work.

Wolfypaints, does putting your tablet parallel to your monitor help you learn the tablet enough to put it flat on the table? I'm curious because I want to try and develop that. Also, rotating the canvas sounds like good advice. I should try that. Do you think games is a good way to develop hand-eye coordination?

Don't Starve is a fun game for that!

I'll be honest, it wasn't the greatest lol. But I played on a private server with a friend against bots, so it wasn't that terrible and I had a lot of fun doing it. ;)

What I mean is, set it up like the image below where your tablet is flat on the table, parallel to the monitor. Don't turn or tilt the tablet to get stronger marks, turn your canvas instead. I use a very small keyboard so I can overlap it on the top (non active area) of the tablet. Lining your tablet up with your monitor should help you get the hang of the hand-eye disconnect.

As for your second question. Personally, I would stick to practicing by drawing, but ultimately you have to do what is fun for you, otherwise you might burn yourself out. I hear of artists and designers all the time who do away with having a mouse at their computer entirely and only use the pen. Whatever you decide to do to practice just make sure that it's FUN!





credit: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article30/ergonomic-of-graphics-tablets

Using your tablet as your everyday mouse, as Sanne suggested is a great way to get accustomed to using a stylus and tablet. Using it to draw is even better as Wolfypants suggested. If you find drawing on a blank screen too daunting or frustrating, I'd like to suggest grabbing a scanned drawing or some line art (a pencil drawing of yours if you have one) and "inking" it. Otherwise doing some tracing over any digital line art should help you get a sense of how to move your hand to put lines where you want them.

Using a tablet is mostly a muscle-memory task, so after awhile using one becomes more sub-conscious, so just find a way that you enjoy to simply use it and you should find it gets easier with time.

One thing I want to add, if you are using a computer set-up with multiple monitors, if you are able, try restricting the stylus to a single screen. I'm only really familiar with Wacom tablets, but I -assume?- other brands will have a similar options to restrict the cursor to one screen. If the tablet is mapped to multiple screens it will make the stylus very sensitive, shooting the cursor about with small movements, since each monitor only gets a part of the tablet's surface (2 monitors means each gets mapped to half of the tablet and so on). Mapping it to one monitor means it should match up closer to the whole surface of the tablet, making a little less wild to use.

Find a good hand position!
Just like when drawing with pencils on a paper you need to be able to freely move your hand without convulsing any part of your body and especially your arm. Even when you got a comfortable position for a pencil, work on the position with the tablet because the stylus is different from your other pens.
Also the surface is differently thus the tactile feedback is too. This leads to a different feeling of control over the lines. But there only making a mess of colors and brushes like Wolfpaint suggested.

Draw fast and learn to use stabilizers.
A fast swing over the tablet usually gets your really smooth and dynamic lines. Drawing slow usually creates little bumps in the lines. This is also the case on paper but it's far worse with any tablet I've drawn on.
Stabilizers try to smooth out/correct your lines while your drawing. This seem like cheating a bit at first, but it really helps so much. Many programs contain them with a controllable amount of stabilization, so you need to find out how much correction you want for wich step.
I personnally use something like 20% for outlines and very little to nothing while sketching but that's different for every digital artist I know.

Good luck :)

Good osu graphics tablets are actually the cheaper ones, because there is less latency. (General opinion)
Not sure if you still need an advice, but XPPen's drawing tablets are very cheap. They perform just as well as a Wacom, but much cheaper.
https://www.xp-pen.com/forum-2450.html
I use a XPPen Star G640 drawing tablet. Runs OSU well. No problems at all.