How to Use a Digital Drawing Tablet: Sketching on a PC Made Simple

Ever wanted to transfer your drawing style from paper to the PC? Instead of scanning it in, and having to clean up a load of nasty smears and lines from pen and paper drawing, drawing on a PC art program using a drawing tablet is a great way to keep your art preserved and usable with a variety of multimedia functions. I am a former paid webcomic artist, a graphic designer for t-shirt designs, and a prolific cartooner, and have been paid for my artwork in a variety of fields. I have a Waccom Digital Drawing tablet, and I really enjoy using it along with programs like Photoshop and Paint-two programs made much easier with a digital drawing tablet. Once you have bought a digital drawing tablet, you might find it a little bit difficult at first to understand how to use one of these little nifty art tools. A few pointers and tips may help out an awful lot when getting used to utilizing a digital drawing tablet, so, if you are ready, sit back, and read on!
After you have bought a digital drawing tablet, installed the software that it comes with and the needed drivers, and have booted up the drawing art program, plug the tablet in via USB, and grab the drawing pen it comes with. Make sure you have configured the drawing pen mouse to work correctly, and hotkeyed any needed programs to the needed buttons. Grasp the pen in your hand, just like a normal pen, and point it, with the pen part down, at the tablet. Move the pen over the surface of the tablet. You should see the arrow on the screen move in response to your movement of the pen. You will notice, and be sure to see this, as some people have a hard time picking up on this, the corner of the tablet represents the corner of the screen on your PC. This corner is the corner of the tablets drawing surface, and not the entire surface-it should be differentiated from the rest of the tablet. Get used to understanding how your tablet's screen relates to the main computer screen-this will really help in drawing with your tablet. Getting comfortable with your tablet is one of the most important steps to using it well, and relating to the tablet's surface is key to this.