Drawing comics

[Bob Hahn]

When a guy can produce the image below quickly, with a tablet, from scratch, then I’ll say tablets have replaced pencil ink and paper.

When a scanned ink drawing is worked on in Xara, you can achieve great results very quickly. To do the whole thing with a tablet would take me ten times as long. Sure I’d have a great result, but I would have to charge ten times as much. When I can find a tablet that allows me to produce the work at the same speed, without losing any quality, I will definitely want to buy that baby.

You sound more like someone who doesn't currently use a drawing tablet and is finding every excuse to convince himself that you still don't really need one.

A drawing tablet isn't an absolute necessity as that's what scanners are for.

Having said that, there are still more benefits than negatives to drawing tablets. Actually, I can't think of any negatives. On paper, you can't select part of your sketch, resize it, rotate it, reposition it, without having to erase and redraw that portion. On paper, you can't make your page larger if you need more room. On tablets, there's no worries of smudging from your drawing hand and you save on drawing supplies.

As for time, to physically use a tablet, you use it no differently as a pencil on paper. So how can a drawing take any longer?

The one physical difference in using a tablet is that you are now looking at a screen and not down at a piece of paper. But even when drawing on paper, you're not looking at your hand or staring at the tip of the pencil, but you're watching the line you are creating. Looking at the screen shows you the same thing. You're just looking up instead of down.

The only advantages pencil on paper has is in creating an original hand drawn drawing. And it's cheap and portable. Pencil and paper will never go away - but there are no negatives one can place on a drawing tablet vs drawing on paper first then scanning. It just comes down to a matter of personal choice. Excuses not needed.