11 / 15
Nov 2019

Display tablet, Monitor tablet, whatever you call it. It's a tablet where you draw directly on screen.

Did it make your life easier compared to a regular drawing pad? I use a regular one atm and thinking of getting a display one for Christmas. But the thing is, quality speaking, a simple one is fine for me. It gets the job done. So I'm just wondering if using a monitor tablet made your work flow faster. Thanks.

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    Nov '19
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    Nov '19
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I'll tell you what happened for me, but I think I'm rather the exception, if I believe what I generally see saidon the subject.

A display tablet made digital drawing possible for me. Really life changing.
In the (quite ancient) past I had access to a drawing pad, but it was not mine. I never managed to use it despite a lot of effort, and the fact that I was, maybe not good, but okay with drawing with a mouse.
Later, when drawing pads became more common and cheaper, I got myself one, and as it was my own, I could spend even more time trying to get used to it.
I never, never managed to get anything properly drawn with it.

Then I bought a display tablet. Instantaneously switched from traditional drawing to digital. I'd say the first hour I had it, I knew I was going to be mostly a digital artist.

I have bad eyesight and excessively bad eye/hand coordination, so that's probably the explanation.

Yes, it helped me a lot, especially with my draftsmanship. Though I think it can really depend on the quality of the display tablet you're using. Also, I still draw a lot traditionally, which I think is partly why I find it easier with a display tablet.

Very similar here! I could never make the hand/eye disconnect with non-screen tablets work for me, but I've gone pretty much exclusively digital since I got my screen tablet. Being able to look at the lines I'm drawing, as well as zoom in as much as I need, has really improved the quality of my linework.

Hello :slight_smile:

My experience probably isn't that representative or maybe I'm just weird - I've researched this myself and plenty of people on the web (and some few I know personally) said, that the display improved their speed and quality. That wasn't the case for me:

I have a display (ipad air 3) and a pen tablet and still prefer the latter (an intuos L). Mostly because I really dislike the feeling of any sort of distance between pen and "paper" on the screen, doesn't matter how short.

I also get annoyed with my hand constantly ending up in the way and I've got much less of an overview over the whole picture/page when it's so close in front of me - I've always loved that about a pen tablet; you're simply further away from the screen and that makes it easier to stay on top of things imo. Might be better with a bigger screen, I haven't tried that yet.

Aside from that you don't get as many backpains with the pen tablet as you don't have to look down on it. At least in my experience. :laughing: since I tend to end up in a very unhealthy position when I get consumed with an artwork.

Doesn't mean it has to be the same for you, of course.
It might be best for you if you just tried it out somewhere, if you can :slight_smile:

I don't, but a friend of mine does, and they say it's a huge change for them. Specifically, that using the normal type and looking at a monitor led to a disconnect, making it nearly impossible to draw. Drawing directly on the screen was a huge boon for them, and they've gotten a lot faster since getting one.

I purchased a display tabled around a year ago and it has helped me speed up my drawing process, especially lineart.

I'd recommend going for one, you can grab a pretty decent one for a good price nowadays :smiley:

@Isfet made some very good points tho, I agree with everything they said. Despite that I still prefer drawing on my display tablet tho.

I am the same as the first commenter. I tried a few times to draw with a simple Wacom tablet. My art looked awful and I couldn't get it to the level I could do art on paper. When I did get a display tablet it changed my life! It was so much easier and workflow was insane. I currently use an XP Pen display tablet on my computer and I also use an iPad with procreate. I prefer these way more and it has made my learning of digital art faster and better. Also, if you are going to purchase a display tablet and would like a cheaper alternative to Wacom stuff. Try out XP Pen. You can see all their stuff on their website or on Amazon. I seriously love mine and have absolutely no complaints. And it works just as good as one that is way more expensive! I'm not sure what your mom ey situation is. But definitely check them out at least!

I've used both and I'm more fond of the display. They are equally useful to me, but with the tablet, I would at times begin to not associate it with what I was drawing if that makes sense.

I'm the same as isfet, where I had a plain pen tablet, and bought a screen tablet, but went back to mainly working on my pen tablet.

1) I had to look down and lean over for the display tablet, so it made it worse for my posture and back

2) My hand blocked part of the screen all the time and made it harder to work with

3) I was using a surface pro 6 without the key board, and I missed being able to use keyboard shortcuts quickly. I also had a harder and slower time inputting text into my comics because of the lack of keyboard and having to rely on the onscreen keyboard or pen input

4) Probably just me, but I didn't like the noticeable lag between my pen and the cursor on screen (I used a 3rd party pen with my tablet). I could see it. Meanwhile, if there was any lag on my pen tablet, it was less noticeable because I had that hand-screen disconnect.

5) I didn't have issues with hand-screen disconnect in the first place due to personal experience playing piano, which helped my hand eye coordination. Hence, I actually draw FASTER on my own tablet. Nothing beats traditional drawing speed though. I could get 4 thumbnail pages out in minutes!

I have one, but I don't use it for drawing as often as I'd like. I just use it as a second monitor at the moment. I'm planning on drawing with it more when I have a bit of free time in about a month. The main reason I don't use it much right now is because I haven't gotten to practice with it much and it'll take some getting used to over my usual vector style (I bought it in September but uni snatches my time).

it's improved my linework and made me faster for sure. it's not a necessity but it is a tool to make my job easier, and worth the money imo. i have a huion kamvas 21" display tablet, i've had it for a year and i'll never go back!

I used a regular tablet for a long time. Then I started with a Surface Pro, and that was a great smaller investment to see how I felt about drawing on a screen. After almost two years with the Surface, I upgraded to a Cintiq. I Love it. I love it so much. Both the Surface and the Cintiq have worked well for me. They helped with my speed, and overall production.

I hope this helps.

I'm another one who went from pen tablet to display tablet and found it helped hugely. It felt more like I was actually drawing it. But, something possibly to take into account, a lot of the people saying they've struggled with a display tablet have been using tablet computer display tablets not standard graphics display tablets. There is a difference, imo. I tried borrowing a few of my friends ipads and surfaces while looking into what I should get on my step up from Wacom when they started becoming way too expensive for beginners. They were definitely different to a bigass display tablet. I went for the Huion GT220 in the end after trying out several different brands at cons (there's a tip good tip, if you can go to a larger comic/anime con companies like Wacom are often there with several different types of tablet set up that you can try out before committing to anything) and a big tablet screen was instantly different to a little tablet computer.