Drawing as a Psychomotor Skill
This really brought home to me the fact that drawing is in fact a psychomotor skill. Psychomotor means movement resulting from or connected with mental processes. The eye, mind and hand must work together. And like all motor skills, drawing improves with training and practice. You need to train your hand to make the shapes you want, the way a pianist trains the fingers to strike the keys with measured force, or the baseball pitcher practices precisely aiming the ball.
So anyway, I decided to scrap the hi-tech stuff and go back to paper and pencil. I think I need the directness of the hand and mark directly linked, not through a computer screen, though I'll still practice with the tablet. I just wonder how long it will take me to get past 'rookie' status with it!
Comments
I have been trying to bring myself to put out the money for one of those tablets. I am not all that great at drawing anf I’m more interested in doing digital stuff. Do you think it’s worth it?
I love my tablet, but I can’t draw with it. Instead, I sketch on paper, scan it in, then color it in using the tablet as a sort of testing ground.
I love my tablet. It isn’t always easy to draw with, and it takes time to get used to, so if I’m struggling I tend to go back to paper and pencil, as I mentioned in this blog entry. But it does have some great features – the way you can use layers, for instance. I think you need to take the time to learn the software, too. I’m still using very limited software, as I haven’t decided which drawing package to go for.
all the drawings in this article, except the first one, were done on the tablet –
http://drawsketch.about.com/od/figuredrawing/ss/drawingnoses.htm
I bought the largest, most advanced tablet I could afford – the bigger hand movements give you more accuracy and helps to avoid repetition injury.
The plastic nib of the stylus pen + the
plastic surface of the wacom tablet = no grip.
Your pen slides around all over the place.
Here’s a hint anyone who draws or paints
on a wacom tablet for a living knows about: place a piece of paper over
the drawing surface. The paper will give
you some more tooth to the surface and
make it easier to prevent slipping.
Try different kinds of paper until
you find the just the right “grit” for
your tastes. Hot press, cold press, etc.
Helen,
Have you tried the WACOM tablets that you draw driectly on, without the CRT or LCD montior? I head the Industrial Desing dept. at Buell Motorcyles and bought two for our dept. They are great and the new models are even better with more features and tool shortcuts. Drawing with the WACOM gives our designers fearlessness you can get with paper. Mistakes are easily corrected and a drawing with hours of time is not scraped by one mistake.
Mike
Thanks for that great tip, J ! I’ll have to gather some more for a tips page.
Mike, no, I haven’t tried them – that’s the Cintiq model. I just looked them up, they are surprisingly affordable. What a great tool.
Good post Helen!
Here’s a tip… Change your tip!
I too still am not as comfortable drawing on the tablet as I am with real life paper and pencil. One thing you can do to help give you a little more control is to replace your plastic pen nib with a felt-tip nib. Yep it’s exactly what it sounds like. I just wrote a blog post on this, you can check it out here:
Oops, I messed that link up.. here it is:
http://www.bradfitzpatrick.com/weblog/308/use-a-felt-nib-on-your-wacom-tablet-pen-for-more-drawing-control/
this is fantastic. donnelly.aidaho.com