An attempted break to draw

For the last month or so, I’ve found myself easily swayed (mostly by the Giant Bombcast) into buying new, full-price games. Some quick thoughts on those:

• Stellaris: It started so promising, then the mid-game hit and progress slowed to a crawl for me. It also seem to have performance issues when in combat, which seems bizarrely unoptimized for this type of game.
• Doom: I’m a huge fan of Doom 1 and 2, so hearing there was a new, good Doom intrigued me. It started out kind of underwhelming and reminded me too much of Doom 3 – though I could be mis-remembering Doom 3. I briefly debated getting a refund on Steam, but trudged on. The first Hell level was an awakening; suddenly it all clicked for me and I had a blast until the end. id continues to wow me with these reboots / retellings (Wolfenstein especially).
• Overwatch: Supremely overhyped in my opinion. Yes the art direction is fantastic and the gameplay feels good most of the time, but there just isn’t enough there to justify the slightly discounted PC full price ($40) for me, which is possibly an indication of how spoiled I’ve become. Of course Blizzard has a history of going above and beyond in their post-release support, so it will get there soon.

I rarely buy brand new games as PC gaming’s price drops are typically right around the corner if you just wait, so this little spending spree was uncharacteristic of my frugality. With Overwatch, I felt betrayed by the recommendation after getting dunked on by a team of Reinhardts. Combined with a fairly disappointing Google I/O, and the discouraging conclusion of the democratic primaries and its chorus of “I told you so; time to fall in line”, I felt I needed to take a break from gaming, social media, and my voracious appetite for learning about and acquiring the Latest and Greatest™.

Old habits die hard though, and I focused my research laser toward drawing tablets for PC; a simpler, slower market. I had looked into them about 10 years ago, but I never made the plunge because of cost and lack of desk space. But now that I’ve made it (desk-wise anyway), the world of drawing tablets became my Saturday night oyster to crack if only to see if pearls were possible.

I looked at the cheap and decent-seeming Hurion tablets, but needing to charge a pen in the year of our lord 2016 seemed like too much effort. So I quickly moved on to the Wacom Intuos line, a name I was familiar with, but not too fond of from my prior research. Their beginner line looked pretty good spec and price wise, but I felt like I needed to try big one: an Intuos Pro medium ($300). Once I saw that there was a modern, free, and open-source drawing program, I booked it to the nearest Best Buy and purchased one.

Overall, I found the Intuos Pro to be disappointing. Yes, hovering over buttons with your finger to see what the buttons did was a nice touch, and learning the pen pressures felt natural; but I had issues with the mini-USB connector being loose, and that circle touchpad was really sensitive in a really bad way, at least in Krita.

And I know I prefaced this purchase decision by explaining my urge to the try the big one, but the size of it was overkill to me. I didn’t need or want to move my hand a lot because I could just zoom in for detailing or zoom out for outlining. Perhaps I wasn’t doing it right, but after a couple hours, I decided to take it back and get an Intuos Art small ($99).

I’m not seeing many issues with this one. No eraser on the pen, but it’s a really sleek, light tablet that feels good man.

That’s all well and good, but of course I haven’t drawn or painted in a good long time, and when I did it was beginner at best. So along with this quest for a drawing device I looked into learning resources, starting with David Revoy’s excellent write-ups and guides for Krita. From there I’ve started reading Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton and practicing with sketch work.

It’s a really nice change of pace compared to my usual computer usage. So far, I’ve found it really easy to hunker down and just draw all day. Maybe it’s the puzzle-solving aspect of it, but it’s been surprisingly rewarding thus far, mostly for its ability to keep me focused. I’m anxious to move on to inking, but I know my sketches should actually be completed before going overboard on that step.

But as I’ve toiled away on basic figures, my need to know if I’m missing something started to sneak in, directing me to look at the online art communities for guidance. There may not be a more extremely divided online community out there except politics. You have the super-creepy-amatuer megasite Deviant Art, the highly quality but ultra critical conceptart.org, and Tumblr where giving users a sent folder is somehow a technical impossibility.

I am intimidated by the pros and invigorated by the amateurs. I hope to stick with this and produce something I can be proud of, but if history is any indication (oh hi, website), I’m likely to give up before long.