Dug out my old Wacom Intuos from 2012 and tried it after 8 years

I found my old Intuos 4 in a box at my mom's place in Portland last weekend. Plugged it into my current setup and the cursor jumped around like crazy for 20 minutes before I remembered the driver was SUPER outdated. Ended up spending an hour relearning pressure curves from scratch, but now my brush strokes actually have that natural taper again. Has anyone else gone back to an older tablet and felt like you had to re-learn basic drawing all over?

3 comments

3 Comments

sarahpark9d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, tell me about it. I dug out my old Intuos 4 last year and spent a solid half hour just staring at the cursor doing the jitterbug before I figured it out. Honestly, the worst part was trying to adjust the pressure sensitivity again. My first few lines looked like I was drawing with a wet noodle and then suddenly a brick. Ngl, I almost threw it against the wall. But once I got it dialed in, it felt like coming home to a clunky but lovable friend.

abbyp619d ago

That "wet noodle and suddenly a brick" description is spot on... I used to think pressure sensitivity was just a gimmick, I'll admit it. But after fighting with my own tablet settings for an afternoon, @sarahpark, I realized how much control it actually gives you once you stop fighting it. It really does change the whole feel of drawing once you get past the setup nightmare.

jennifer_jones179d ago

Realize it's the same with pretty much anything that takes practice, not just art. Learning to drive a manual car is exactly like that, first you're jerking and stalling everywhere, then one day it just clicks and you're shifting without even thinking. Same with cooking, you follow a recipe and it's a disaster, then you learn how heat actually works and suddenly you're improvising stuff that's actually edible. Makes you wonder why we expect to be good at things immediately instead of just accepting the struggle phase.