I just got a drawing tablet, and my first attempts are... *cough* less than successful. So... Are there any secret ninja techniques for drawing tablets, or is practice the only cure.

Here's my attempt:

Tablet and Drawing Tutorials?

anywhere specific? I'm probably going to stick with the line tool, and use the tablet for more exact things.

http://good-tutorials.com/

It's filled with various CG Tutorials with over half of the total dead. Not sure about the drawing one.

Okay, first tip -use the tablet to unleash tablet specific capabilities of your drawing software. Like most 'brush tools' will give you a dynamic thick and thin line depending on pen pressure with a wacom.

What you're struggling with is the interface difference - instead of looking at your hand as it draws on paper beneath it, you are looking at a monitor that is showing the work of your hand drawing on a tablet removed from the monitor.

Becoming comfortable will be a function of practice. I personally am still not as good at drawing with a wacom as on paper, but I draw very well on a wacom and the editability of graphic software makes the medium competitive with pen and paper.

You may want to begin by drawing your pages in pencil, scanning them and INKING the page on a separate layer with the wacom tablet. This will help you learn basic pen control with much focus on that while the basic drawing isn't an issue.

The trick to doing good work is to leverage the software to do what it's good at. My first draft with a wacom is also poor. Let it be. In photoshop I add another layer and use the first drawing as a rough. When I draw over this rough I can be more specific with realtion to line technique and quality and fine detail.

I don't know if I qualify as a "tablet ninja," But I did a comic entirely digitaly for sevral years, so I feel your pain.

Just getting used to the tablet is a big part of it, and a lot of that is just time and patience. Try using it in place of your mouse for a while, use it to manipulate everything on your desktop. That also helps you with the problem of adjusting to looking at the computer screen, rather than your hand.

Try taking pictures or scaned drawings, and tracing over them with the tablet. (gets you used to looking at the screen)

After that, look up some good tutorials and get into the brushes. Access to their full potential is really what makes using a tablet a step up from the mouse.

Software can also make a big difference. It is much harder to draw consistant lines in Photoshop which doesn't feature any sort of smoothing function than in a vector program like Illustrator or Flash. I tend to use Illustrator for all my line work. The brush tool in that program can be pretty versatile and I like being able to fix problems with lines simply by drawing over them again rather than hitting ctrl-z all the time.

.: isukun :.

isukun
ctrl-z all the time.

It's Alt+ctrl+Z these days ^_^ heh heh

Not on my computer. Or the computers at my school for that matter.

.: isukun :.

Photoshop CS?
Ctrl+Z on CS just goes undo/redo now. Not as useful.
While Alt+Ctrl+Z steps all the way back through the history, like Ctrl+Z does on Illustrator and pretty much every other program...

The alt+Ctrl+Z change is just an irritating silly thing you seem to have to get used to.

ctrl+z only does one step back

you press alt+ctrl+z to keep going further back.

I only need to go back one step to redraw a line.

.: isukun :.

I never said otherwise, i was just informing of functions.

Photoshop CS?
Ctrl+Z on CS just goes undo/redo now. Not as useful.

It's been that way since before CS. I still use 7 and that's how ctrl+Z works with 7, as well.

.: isukun :.

isukun
It's been that way since before CS. I still use 7 and that's how ctrl+Z works with 7, as well.

You're right! It actually changed to be that way in 7.

I'd forgotten because when I was working in 7 I changed it back to be "Ctrl+Z" for going back in the history multiple times (i.e. undo, undo, undo etc.). But you can't change it in CS, not at all... That's one of the things I really hated in CS.
It seems that as programs evolve, they become less and less customisable.

i wish there was a ctrl+something for stroke when im using the pen tool, it would make things move much quicker.

I also wish there was a key that switched me straight over to illustrator, i know there is the button for imageready but not illustrator. i love my vectored lines after they have been illustratored