The drawing experience

What it feels like to draw on a drawing tablet

Overview

The easiest way to understand drawing on a tablet is to compare it with pen and paper.

A pen display works like pen and paper because you can directly see what you are drawing. Your eyes are looking at the same place where the stroke appears.

With a pen tablet, things are very different. Your hand draws in one place, but you look somewhere else to see the result. So using a pen tablet works fundamentally differently from pen and paper.

Getting strokes right the first time

Because it is clearer what the pen is doing on a pen display, many people say they "get the stroke right the first time."

With a pen tablet, people often feel they need to make the stroke multiple times to get it right. They also use Undo more often to remove errant strokes.

I generally agree. When I want to finish a drawing faster, especially when I already know what I want to draw, I work faster with a pen display and need Undo far less often.

Dealing with your hands

With a pen display, things are natural. You see the pen in the same place the stroke is being drawn - just like when you use pen and paper.

And just like pen-and-paper, your own hand and the pen will block your eyes from seeing the display. The easy solution to this is to reposition your eyes or take advantage of the canvas zoom and rotation features of your drawing app.

With a pen tablet, you look at a monitor while drawing somewhere else with your hand. Fundamentally, this is no different from using a mouse. In that sense, it is convenient because your hands never block the screen.

Adjustment period

Because a pen display works like pen and paper, almost everyone can start using one immediately. The interaction is intuitive, especially now that so many people have used devices like iPads.

For pen tablets, things get more complicated. I would say 80% of people get comfortable immediately or within a few minutes. Another 10% take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. The remaining 10% never really adjust. For them, a pen display is the better choice.

Unfortunately, without trying a pen tablet, it is hard to know whether you fall into that 10%.

Matching aspect ratios

With a pen display, the active area and the screen have the same size. That means the pen draws exactly where you see it draw.

With a pen tablet, the active area where you draw is separate from the monitor where you see your strokes. Unless you configure it correctly in the driver, this can distort your strokes. For example, a circle on the tablet may appear as an oval on the screen. This is easy to fix in the driver. More here: Active area aspect ratio.