A few months ago, I convinced myself that I would teach myself to use Adobe Photoshop CS5 and would start to create custom clipart. Wacom even sent me the Bamboo Pen and Touch drawing tablet to get me off to the right start. Well life happened, therefore none of the above did. I do see that there are three newer Bamboo Tablets now available . . . the Bamboo Connect, Bamboo Capture, and Bamboo Create. If you are considering purchasing one of those, I thought I would show you what I could do with my Bamboo Tablet without any practice other than going through the accompanying easy-to-follow tutorial just once.
My oldest son has a blog that he had not touched for over a year. Since he is older now, I thought it would be incentive for him to start writing again if I gave his blog a makeover. I asked him what he wanted and he only knew he wanted to change the name of his blog to "Jake's Clubhouse." Based on that I decided to create a clubhouse design for his blog. I used the tablet with Gimp, since I was most comfortable using it above any other graphics software at the time.
Here is the blog before the makeover . . .
(Click any image to enlarge)
The tablet was very easy to use in Gimp. I drew everything free hand using the Wacom Bamboo Pen with the exception of the straight lines creating the wooden boards, the blank signs, and the artwork, which were photos of my son's original scratch art. I found using the pen to be similar to using a mouse, which I prefer over using the touchpad on my laptop, so I did not use my fingers on the tablet much at all.
Here is the blog after the makeover . . .
I have to say that drawing freehand again, after so many years, was extremely fun. I have not given up on my plans of teaching myself to use Adobe Photoshop and to create vectors. This is one of my main goals for the new year and I am hoping to share some of what I create with my readers.
To learn more about Bamboo drawing tablets and other Wacom products, visit Wacom.com.
Thank you to Wacom for providing a complimentary product sample for us to base this review upon.
