Today, I’m waiting with considerable joy and expectation for the delivery of my latest piece of self-indulgent kit. Having procured the iMac 24, I am now all pumped up about the arrival of my new Huion drawing tablet. A masterpiece of art technology.
There was a time when paper and pencil were all that I needed to be happy but today, I and the art world have moved on to such an extent that only the latest kit and software will do the job for me.
There’s good reason for this. It isn’t just that we arty types have been wickedly seduced by those clever marketing types to part with money that we didn’t need to spend. With these modern pieces of equipment, so much more is possible that a pencil and paper could never have achieved.
But I’ll tell you more about that after you’ve seen the latest from our friends in 14th century England..
The New Toy and What it Does
As I was saying, this new kit enables we artists to do so much more and to do it with enormous efficiency, speed and fun.
Think back, dear reader, to the days before all this clever equipment. An artist would create a piece of work, put it in an envelope and send it to a client or a printer, for example. Days would elapse before the client would send it back with suggested - or required - amendments. The artist would then, quite possibly, start the whole thing again with all the changes requested or required, get another envelope and stick another stamp on it and send it back for approval.
In such a fashion, a week might pass without anything being completed to anybody’s satisfaction. On top of which, the poor, starving artist wouldn’t even have his original artwork any more. If he was a sensible artist - something of a contradiction in terms, as you will know - he just might have made a photocopy. If he had a photocopier, that is..
Next came the fax machine. Revolutionary in its time, because the artist, if he could afford to run a fax machine, could send the image. But still, if changes were required, he would have to start all over again.
Today, however, we have drawing tablets attached to computers and we also have tablets that are entirely independent of computers but have drawing applications and touch-sensitive screens.
All of which means, you can now draw a picture, send it by email, WhatsApp, SMS, Messenger or whatever you like and get instant feedback. Then, you can go back to the original and make changes in many different ways without having to start all over again!
On top of all that, you don’t waste paper any more, either. Nor inks or paint. You don’t have to buy brushes and best of all, my dear twenty-first century friends, you don’t have to buy envelopes - many with stiff card construction to protect the artwork - or stamps. If you use your equipment regularly, you are wildly more efficient than you ever would have been before, and almost certainly more productive. And some of the drawing and painting programs are so easy to use and rapid in their execution that you end up wondering why you would ever go back to pencil and paper.
And so it is that now, I shall be fully equipped and digitised, able to work on large projects at my desk, or just sitting anywhere with my drawing tablet, sketching whatever comes into my head. And both are connected by ‘the cloud’, so that I can access the sketches from my desk and vice-versa.
Many artist friends have said to me that, no matter the developments, they prefer the ‘feel’ of pencil on paper but I know the truth.
The real truth is that they don’t fancy learning how to do all this new stuff.
It’s like the argument against electric cars (there’s no infrastructure and all my spanners are outdated), which was the same argument at the advent of petrol-driven cars (my horse knows the way home and he eats grass, and we have to buy petrol at the chemist shop), before the coming of railways (noisy, filthy things destroying our way of life);
But speaking personally, I love change. I just love it!
Recently, I’ve changed the format of the cartoon strips to fit with web publishing on Webtoons. And as it happens, it’s more flexible, too. There’s more room and a greater range of layouts, so it gives greater freedom to create. I won’t be changing the layout on my Substack posts for a good while yet, though, as these old-style strips are already drawn in linear format but some time in the future,1 the change will come.
As it always does.
Bring it on.
Please feel free to leave a comment, by the way. It’ll be nice to hear from you.
Meanwhile, here’s a link to one of my recent demo videos.
Footnote. As I was typing this, my new device arrived. It’s still in its box and I have to go out for a while. Always nice to have something new to look forward to, though, isn’t it?
A joy, as always reading your thoughts and cartoons.