i'm digital artist aaron rutten and in this tutorial i'll teach you the basics of working with a drawing tablet for you beginners i'll cover some of the basics of how a tablet works and for you experienced artists i'll share some tips that will help you make the most of your tablet i'll discuss drawing on three different kinds of tablets a basic drawing tablet without a screen like the wacom intuos a large tablet with a built-in display that you can draw directly onto like the wacom cintiq and finally an all-in-one drawing tablet with a built-in computer like the wacom mobile studio pro i'm aware that not everyone has a wacom tablet but many of these tips will be useful regardless of which tablet you're using i'll assume that you have already installed your tablet drivers before plugging the tablet into your computer if you need help installing the drivers or if your tablet is not recognizing your pen visit the manufacturer's website for tech support i'll also assume that you have installed a free or paid art application that can recognize a drawing tablet and pen pressure i'll start by discussing how to use a basic tablet that plugs into a usb port on your desktop or laptop computer such as the wacom intuos this type of tablet does not have a built-in display so you'll have to look up at your computer monitor to see what you're drawing at first that may sound difficult but you don't look down at your hand while using a mouse and you do just fine right it may take a few weeks or even months of practice but most people are able to adjust to drawing on a tablet while looking up at a monitor in addition to drawing on the tablet with the pen you can use the pen to navigate on your computer instead of using a mouse although the pen works a bit differently than a mouse hover the pen slightly above the surface of your tablet until the cursor moves but do not touch the pen to the tablet the pen points with your mouse cursor it does not nudge the cursor around like your mouse would instead you are pointing to the location on your tablet where you want your cursor to point to on your monitor your cursor is aligned with the tip of your pen and the tablet surface is aligned with your monitor so if i want my cursor in the top left corner of my monitor i'll move the tip of my pen to the top left of my tablet if you're using multiple monitors and your tablet is moving the cursor on the wrong screen see mapping in the tablet properties control panel if you're using a display tablet look under functions display toggle the display toggle button may need to be pressed to make the cursor active on the correct screen if your tablet is smaller or narrower than your computer monitor which it very likely is that's okay with practice you'll quickly adapt to the difference in scale or aspect ratio some tablets can even compensate for a mismatched aspect ratio but at the expense of reducing the active drawing area here are some more ways you can control your computer with your pen and tablet tap your pen to the tablet surface to perform a mouse click tap and hold your pen down to drag windows and other elements this is equivalent to a sustained left mouse click if we look in the wacom tablet properties right-click can be performed with a button assigned to your pen most pens have at least one button but if yours does not you can assign right-click to an express key instead next look in the options at the bottom of the panel here you'll find two modes for right-clicking you can either hover the pen and press the button which is what i prefer or you can hold the button down first and then tap the pen to right-click after right-clicking continue to hover the pen to select an option only touch the pen to the surface when you are ready to click on a menu item next let's use an art application to test drawing with a brush to ensure pressure is working correctly most art software can support pen pressure just be sure that pen pressure is enabled because some applications like photoshop may require you to activate it first try to find a brush that can sense pen pressure to control the brush size ink pens usually do the trick press very lightly then use firmer pressure until you see a change you may need to calibrate your pen to respond to the amount of pressure you use in the wacom tablet properties to find this look in your control panel or search your computer for wacom tablet properties if you're using a brand of tablet other than wacom you should have a tablet control panel with very similar options i press hard with my pen while drawing so i set mine a notch toward firm you can test the pressure in this control panel or jump back to your art app and try some more test strokes you may also be able to control the sensitivity of the pen in your art application as well the setting in the wacom tablet properties is global and affects all applications whereas calibrating pen pressure within an application only affects that application it may take some back and forth but try to find a setting that feels natural to you it will take some time to get used to drawing with the pen so you can always come back to this setting later and fine tune it you might also test a soft semi opaque brush such as an airbrush because the pen pressure can also control the opacity of the paint there are many brush properties that can be controlled with pen input such as texture paint thickness paint color and more drawing naturally on a tablet takes practice as well as an understanding of proper drawing technique this drawing tablet tutorial only focuses on the basics of using the hardware but i have hundreds of videos you can watch that go into more detail about specific drawing techniques while it's better to have a larger tablet you can still make great art on a small tablet as well it just won't be as comfortable positioning is also very important to drawing naturally on a tablet in this setup i'm resting my tablet on my desk but you could also use a keyboard tray the wacom intuos tablet is rather small so it feels more comfortable off to the side a bit there are artists out there who disagree with me on this but in my opinion it's best to have your tablet and your body aligned horizontally with your monitor meaning the tablet is not rotated at an angle and neither are you and the tablet should be somewhat centered in front of your monitor rather than too far off to the side it is possible to adapt to drawing on a tablet that is not at the same angle as your screen and positioned far off to one side but it takes more effort for your brain to compensate for that adjustment it will be much more difficult to trace pencil with ink for example in the case of small tablets you have no choice but to throw off your coordination to make it more comfortable on your body but larger tablets should be right in front of you just like a sketchbook or canvas would be i feel it's better to get the tablet to match the screen as closely as possible and then you won't have to worry about the additional strain on your hand-eye coordination we all have different ways of working and different desk configurations so you may have to deviate from the best practices a bit to make it work but you should work toward building an ergonomic drawing environment unlike with traditional media you can rest your hand on a drawing tablet because only the tip of your pen can make a mark on the canvas and best of all your fingers and palm can rub against the tablet without causing any smudges although some tablets like this intuos pro small can sense multi-touch input which can be used to zoom pan and rotate your artwork and perform other types of commands there are a few exceptions where apps will allow you to paint with your finger so if you're worried about the touch being triggered accidentally you can toggle it on and off with a switch on the exterior of your tablet and you can customize multi-touch within the wacom tablet properties many tablets are ambidextrous and can be used by left or right-handed artists you can set the handedness in the wacom tablet properties it's worth exploring this control panel to become familiar with the different ways you can customize your tablet more or less options may be shown depending on the tablets and pens you have connected if you have more than one wacom device connected you'll be able to customize each tablet and pen independently some art applications such as corel painter will even allow you to select a different brush with each pen and those pins will retain the settings so i can have one pen for a pencil one for a paintbrush and one for a blender wacom tablets that come with the pro pen can support multiple pens you can also create profiles for all applications or each application individually this will allow you to utilize different pen and tablet settings for each application now let's take a look at another type of drawing tablet display tablets such as the wacom cintiq or the wacom 1 are drawing tablets with a built-in screen you can draw directly onto drawing on a screen feels as natural as drawing on paper the drawing and navigation principles are the same as what i showed you earlier in this lesson and just like the previous style of tablet you can rest your hand on the screen without making a mark if the tablet supports touch you can easily toggle it on and off with a button or switch before working on a display tablet you may need to calibrate the position of your pen if the cursor appears offset this makes sure the mouse cursor aligns with the tip of your pen you can set the calibration in the wacom tablet properties make sure you are centered in front of your screen and keep your pen upright or perpendicular to the flat surface of your screen to avoid offsetting the alignment an optical effect called parallax may also cause your cursor to look like it is not aligned with the tip of your pen when it actually is some display tablets have more parallax than others so you may never be able to get the cursor and pen tip perfectly aligned but you can get it close don't stress over this too much because you'll probably be looking at your brush cursor while painting more than your pen tip and the last type of tablet we'll talk about is the all-in-one such as the wacom mobile studio pro 16. there's not much to say about tablet computers they are basically a display tablet with a computer inside one of the key differences between a tablet computer and a display tablet is that the tablet computer may be able to sense the orientation of the screen this can be useful for tilting your canvas to make watercolor paint drip and rebel another way to rotate your display is to change the screen orientation this can be useful when drawing in portrait mode you can enable and disable this feature with a switch on the exterior of the tablet now let's explore some extra features that your tablet may have if your pen has an eraser you can flip it over and that should select the eraser tool in your art software this eraser can be disabled or programmed to another function like blending this allows me to toggle between two different brushes with a single pen and the eraser may even be pressure and tilt sensitive just like the pen tip which means that you can use it for drawing if you want to reduce the amount of wear on your pen nibs if your tablet supports multi-touch you can use it to navigate your computer you can use both the touch and the pen while working but only one at a time there are some global gestures you can use and customize in the wacom tablet properties but many art apps provide their own gestures as well here are some universal gestures tap with one finger to perform a left mouse click a right click can be done either by tapping and holding with one finger or by tapping with two fingers depending on the app tap with one finger and drag to move objects and scroll drag with two fingers to pan the view of your canvas pinch to zoom in and spread your fingers apart to zoom out and with two fingers on the tablet rotate your fingers to rotate the view of your canvas like you would a piece of paper there are several techniques for using multi-touch one method is to put your pen down and then use your primary hand to gesture although this can be disruptive to your flow another way would be to use your free hand that isn't occupied by the pen be sure to keep your pen away from the tablet because even hovering the pen can cause multi-touch to malfunction using your secondary hand for multi-touch also makes you unable to use it for keyboard shortcuts or express keys and finally you can use the same hand that you're holding the pen with but it's very likely that your pen will interrupt multi-touch every so often since it's so close to the screen the advantage to this technique is that you have another hand free for other things express keys are buttons on your tablet that can perform just about any command they are most useful when assigned to commonly used functions such as undo and redo hiding the application interface and panning the view of your canvas just to name a few the more express keys you have the more shortcuts you can access at once there are also on-screen buttons you can program in the wacom tablet properties to add menus and submenus of commands set these to an express key to trigger them you can even customize the express keys for specific apps and all other apps using profiles next let's talk about brush expressions we've used the pressure expression to control the size and opacity of a brush earlier in this tutorial but you can also use expressions to do other things you can tilt your pen to widen your brush dab this can simulate shading with the side of a pencil tilt can also detect the bearing or direction that the pen is pointing you can use this to angle the medium that comes out of your brush here's an example of how this expression can be used to paint fur without tilt the fur would all be going in a single direction if your pen supports the rotation expression you can also rotate the barrel of your pen to change the angle of a flat brush tip the wacom art pen is the only pen i know of that supports rotation this can feel more natural than using tilt to angle flat brushes your digital art software must also support these expressions while many drawing tablets have a smooth or slippery surface some drawing tablets like the intuos pro have some tooth or a slight feeling of paper grain this texture feels more natural to draw on because a bit of friction is what you would expect when drawing with a pen on paper or applying a brush to a canvas this does cause the pen tips or nibs to wear down but that's better than the tablet surface your tablet probably came with some replacement nibs you may have overlooked them in your drawing tablet box but most likely they are concealed in the pen stand pen case pen sleeve the pen itself or maybe even the tablet additional nibs can be ordered online and there are even felt tip nibs and other types of specialty nibs that can give your pen a different feel you can keep your nibs from wearing down too quickly if you use proper techniques check out my video on that subject if you want to learn more let's move on to discuss the wireless features of some drawing tablets rather than a wired usb connection which is the standard some of the tablets without a screen can be connected to a computer wirelessly through bluetooth though the wireless connection is convenient a usb connection is faster and more reliable because it is not susceptible to the lag caused by wireless interference or the signal getting blocked that brings us to the end of this video by now you should have a good idea of how to draw on just about any drawing tablet the next step is to get familiar with some art software check out my reviews of some of the best free and paid art apps if this video helped you become a member hit that super thanks button and subscribe for more digital art videos like this thanks for watching and i'll see you next time you