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Digital Sketchbook- April 2021

Every so often I like to upload the best sketches and drawings I’ve accumulated over the last few months. Here’s the latest:

A skater cat circa 2007.
There’s a story behind this one. Perhaps I’ll make something of it one day. Jennifer the reluctant apprentice wizard and Faisal her silver-starred mentor live by the lakeside in the idyllic rural village of Pensy-Clockham. There’s a whole thing growing in my head but it’s all a bit formless so far.
I like drawing wizards. They’re easy and the hats are satisfying.
Walk like an Egyptian priestess.
Fat Lord Hermann
Morty the narcissistic necromancer. 
He spends all his time hanging around with skeletons and consequently feels very insecure about this weight. On the other hand- he feels great about his hair!
A steampunk engineer
Flamingo Knight.
An often overlooked area of military history. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to see a horde of these guys charging at you- all sharp steel, honking and plumage! Of the course the real danger is falling off. It’s quite...
A noble flamingo knight
Owlbears!
Deadly owlbears. Hunters of the night. In the dark eucalyptus groves of the world they still clamber, their terrible cries echoing “Twit- tawaaarrrgh!” Their powerful beaks can crush bone and sinew like a sausage roll. often an unsuspecting...
Deadly Owlbears
Polar Shaman.
From the digital sketchbook, 2020
Polar Shaman and his best bear buddy

I also upload these things on my tumblr and instagram accounts, so go follow me on there to see them as soon as they’re uploaded:

https://www.instagram.com/spikedmcgrath/

https://spikedmcgrath.tumblr.com/

…Incidentally is anyone else still using tumblr?

An artist’s Review: XP-Pen Artist 22 (2nd generation)

XP-Pen recently sent me one of their brand-new graphics tablets to try: the Artist 22 (2nd Generation)

Before we go any further and in the interests of transparency- I get to keep this tablet. That said, these are my honest thoughts, and I intend to be fair about it’s strengths and weaknesses.

I’ll leave the unboxing details to the youtube pros, save to say that the packaging is pleasant to look at, and the contents are all securely contained. I plan to focus on the general experience of using the thing. My current workhorse tablet is an aging Wacom Intuos 5 large- which has served me well over the years- and which forms my baseline for comparison.

The screen

Let’s start with the screen. The first thing I notice in this area is that the build quality feels very good. It’s heavy, and the stand feels solid and reliable. There’s no flexing when you rest the weight of your arm on it.

The tablet stand

It’s important to note that the screen is not touch sensitive. This took a little getting used-to. After all, nearly every screen these days has touch capability, so the compulsion to zoom with pinches and pan with swipes is pretty ingrained in most of us. I never used the touch capabilities of my Intuos 5, but it’s different when you’re working directly onto a screen. After two weeks I’ve become used to it, so it no longer bothers me, but I do think it would definitely be nice to have.

I should also note that there are no hotkeys on the tablet. Again, on my old Intuos tablet I always had one hand on the keyboard and so never used them, but because this tablet is already quite wide- from an ergonomic point of view it would be nice to have.

For output the tablet uses either USB- C, or a combination of USB-A and HDMI. It also has a separate power cable. On the subject of cables- there’s a generous number that comes with it, and you shouldn’t need anything extra to get it up and running. My only criticism with the cables is that they’re a bit short. I struggled to reach the computer comfortably with them.

One concern I always had with screen based tablets is that they become uncomfortably warm with use, which is obviously no good if you’re using the thing all day. I’m happy to say this isn’t the case- the screen stays at a fairly stable temperature (about 25 celsius when I checked it).

There’s no fan in the screen either- unlike similar models, which means no added noise. I know from my Lenovo tab how irritating that can become after a while.

The picture quality is good overall. The colour range appears very good, and covers ~122% of the sRGB spectrum and ~90% of the Adobe rgb spectrum. My only problem with the picture quality is that deep shadows and bright lights are somewhat compressed, and lose a bit of contrast.

The other thing that’s unavoidable is that the resolution is only 1920 by 1080. On a screen this size (21.5 inches) that resolution is stretched to its limit, and on close inspection individual pixels are visible.

The Pen

I was delighted to learn that the pen doesn’t need batteries. It just works. It’s pretty light, and feels very pleasant in the hand. It feels similar to- though a little less chunky- than my Wacom grip pen. There’s no eraser on the end, but frankly I never used that either. Similar to the touch keys- I’m from the one hand on the keyboard at all times school of art.

Bottom: New pen, Top: Old Wacom grip pen for scale.

I have quite big hands, and while some pen buttons are pretty uncomfortable to me I find this one to be perfectly comfortable

My initial impressions of the pen are very favourable. I was impressed by the feel of it and of the grip provided by the slight toothiness of the screen.

A quick test drawing. A “noughties” skater cat.

Activation pressure for the pen is extremely light- which is excellent! Most of my work is done with fairly light strokes and I want the tool to be as responsive as possible. There’s nothing more irritating than a pen which either misses a stroke, or requires RSI inducing pressure to work! The default pressure curve in the driver settings is very good too- producing smooth natural gradations in thickness. This pen feels great to draw with.

It also has 60 degrees of tilt sensitivity, which is nice, but not something vital to most artists I imagine. As far as I’m aware there’s no capacity for pen rotation sensing, which perhaps most people wouldn’t use, but I’m personally very keen on.

The drivers

Installing the drivers is a smooth and simple experience. I had no problems at all getting everything working seamlessly. In the two weeks since I haven’t experienced any problems at all.

In terms of features- the drivers also allow you to set different, separate settings for different applications including pressure curves and pen button shortcuts. You can set the buttons to any keyboard or mouse input you like, which is great. You can also choose whether to use Windows Ink (Booooo).

The general experience

One thing I really like about this tablet is that you can unplug the HDMI cable and it immediately switches to functioning like a conventional screen-less graphics tablet. This is great if you want to switch up your posture, or check colour accuracy using your separate monitor. I don’t know if it was intended as a feature, but I find it very useful. I’d go so far as to say that it would be even better if there was a button or switch to quickly toggle between these modes. It’s also worth bearing in mind that at 21.5 inches it’s a pretty big drawing area regardless!

Banana for scale.

Conclusion

Overall I’m extremely impressed. Considering this is a mid-range tablet I’d be very interested to see what a top of the range tablet looks and feels like.

From my perspective it’s biggest strength is it’s pen, and the drawing experience, which is excellent.

It’s biggest weakness is the screen resolution, and it’s contrast in the extreme ends of the value scale, particularly the dark values.

I can absolutely recommend this tablet- particularly for drawing, where it excels. If, like me, you were wondering whether it makes that much difference for digital drawing to use a screen based tablet rather than a traditional one- the answer is yes, it does.

If you’re interested in purchasing one, or learning more, click the links below:

Xp Pen store: https://www.storexppen.com/

Product Details https://www.xp-pen.com/product/855.html

Digital Sketchbook : August 2019

How time flies. Today the rain pours down and a cool breeze seems heavily to imply that summer is over- which is shame because I like that bit. Here’s a few assorted sketches from the past few months. Never as many as I’d like!

Lenovo Miix 520: Artist’s review

Lenovo Miix 520 hybrid tablet
The Lenovo Miix 520. The pen has a little clip that slots into the USB port.

I recently bought a Lenovo Miix 520. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now so I thought it was time for in-depth review for all the artists out there who might be considering buying one. This is intended to be an artist/illustrator specific review as there’s plenty of more general reviews out there.

In my opinion the Surface Pro was too expensive for what you get. Another £150 for the keyboard and pen? No thanks, Microsoft. Apple’s much lauded ipad pro and pencil was out of the question for me too, as I wanted to be able to use my current (windows) software.

The Pen

Lenovo active pen 2
Lenovo’s Active Pen 2

The pen (Lenovo Active Pen 2.0) feels OK- though it’s a bit like drawing on glass with a fine marker. It provides very little grip so it’s hard to do fine detail work. The sensitivity is fairly good but you have to press quite hard for the initial register. I’ve noticed other people do this so it’s not just me. Parallax is not an issue, and you can calibrate the pen in the Wacom settings program if you feel like it’s a bit off.

It’s quite uncomfortable for my big hands. I find pressing the bottom button difficult without cramping my hand up a bit. For some people this may not be issue at all. The top button only works if Bluetooth is active, and has it’s own separate battery. Bit daft. I haven’t found myself using it very much.

Part of the reason I chose this tablet over other options is because the pen uses Wacom technology. (* See update at bottom) I hoped this would give it an edge over other pens for actual artwork- not just note-taking. Who are these students in reviews spending nearly £1000 on a device for note-taking!? Anyway I digress…

Lenovo Active pen 2 Wacom settings app

The Wacom pen software is quite limited. There’s no way to set application-specific settings to to the buttons, which I would have found very useful.

This may all seem overwhelmingly negative- but buttons aside the pen itself feels nice and solidly made, and after the initial phase of getting used to it I found it quite pleasant to sketch with. Just don’t expect it to be as natural as a dedicated graphics tablet.

The Screen

Tablet using built in stand.

The quality of the screen is fine. Nothing special. I have noticed it gets quite hot with sustained drawing or any intensive work. The combination of processor waste heat, your own body heat and the screen itself occasionally make for a pretty toasty experience.

The brightness is good but not great. You can’t really see it outside unless you’re in heavy shade, even then the glare from the reflective finish makes it hard to see. I’ve found that polarising sunglasses help – but only when in portrait mode! Otherwise the filters simply block out the screen. This a fairly common situation of course- most tablets have glossy screens- but it does mean you can’t really use it for a spot of digital plein air painting.

Other hardware

Keyboard, Active pen 2 and case. The case is a pretty simple fabric pouch,
but it does the trick and it comes free with the tablet.

The keyboard is very nice. I love how it feels. This is subjective of course. I’ve never cared for those hipstery mechanical keyboards that are really tall and clack like a Victorian typewriter. It can also light up so you can see the keys at night, and because it’s magnetic it snaps easily into position when you need it. I’ve also bought a separate USB wireless keyboard and mouse though, because a mouse is always useful and the vanilla keyboard gets in the way of your drawing hand when it’s on the screen. It also prevents you from using the tablet in portrait mode because it snaps onto the bottom edge.

Battery life is poor. When drawing or painting it can only be described as terrible. Id say about 2-3 hours max. Ive been doing nothing more intensive than writing this review for the past hour and I’ve already drained it by 50%.

It also has a noisy fan. The noise is not intolerable, but it does imply that the CPU would fry itself without the fan. It’s a moving part that uses extra power, and a potential point of failure. Fortunately it doesn’t always need to be on.

It has one USB3 port, one micro USB3 port, and a micro SD card reader. Since I’m focusing on the art sides of things here I’ll let you read more about the other hardware elsewhere.

Remote Desktop

This is something that I’ve wondered about for a while: “Can I use my powerful but location-bound desktop to do all the heavy lifting while I simply stream the output to something more mobile?” In short- “Can I work in the garden instead?”

The answer is “Sort of, yeah, a bit.”

One of the perks of using remote desktop on windows 10 is the ability to stream pen pressure input to the host PC. This works well in theory- but in practice the resulting line quality in Photoshop is so severely compromised and you can’t realistically use it for finished artwork. It doesn’t seem to have the same smoothing compared to when you use it on a local machine. It ends up a wiggly lined mess. There’s a also the additional element of network lag on top of the time the line takes to process- which makes for a rather sluggish experience.

Red arrows point to wiggly lines caused by drawing over remote desktop.

Another issue I’ve had is that certain applications throw errors when you try to start them up through remote desktop. They seem to be confused about the hardware they’re running on and won’t start. Annoyingly, this seems to apply mainly to graphics programs that are dependant on the graphics card. You can in some cases get round this by starting the program and then connecting to the computer with the application already open. However- they may still crash.

Generally speaking, if you have a decent LAN speed you can use remote desktop pretty well for most basic things. It’s sadly not yet quite there for finished artwork.

Performance

Lenovo Miix 520- The back of the tablet and the stand

I opted for the “Miix 520-12IKB ” so that’s an Intel i5 8250u and 8 gigs of RAM- which is a pretty good amount for most 2d graphics work.

Personally I want maximum performance mode for most work. Pen lag irritates me. This obviously drains the batteries faster but so be it! To get the best performance you need to ensure Windows and all drivers are up to date. You’ll also need to tweak the Intel graphics settings and make sure your windows power options are set to performance mode.

The Miix 520 works well with Photoshop out of the box- no need to disable the hated windows ink like I have to with the old intuos pro on my desktop. I’ve used it on files up to about 5000*7000px with a handful of layers. If you keep to the smaller brush sizes it works perfectly. Gestures are a pleasure to use and very responsive.

Overall I’ve been enjoying using it- mainly as a laptop. It’s performance is very good in that respect. I’ve also been doing a bit of sketching in tablet mode- the wireless keyboard works well for that- assuming you’ve got the space to set it up.

Conclusion

Knowing what I know now, I’d probably still buy it simply because I don’t know of any comparable alternatives that do what it does better and at the same price point.

It’s got it’s weaknesses but I’ve produced a few satisfactory sketches on it and used it for client work so I can safely say that it does it’s job. I can sketch in the garden, but I still have to go back to the desktop for the bulk of the work. Ultimately, to me the technology feels like it’s still got such a long way to go. But then I always feel like that.

TL: DR It’s alright. It’s not perfect. If you’ve been stuck at a single desk for years because you need a desktop PC to work then this may give you some other options.

*Update 27th February 2021:

The pen no longer uses Wacom based drivers. I’m not sure why, perhaps some licensing agreement expired with Lenovo. The newer Lenovo drivers- which replaced the previous ones in mandatory firmware update- are not good. and don’t allow you to set the pen button to a simple right click! Because of this I would no longer recommend this tablet for artists.

Other reviews:

The Brotherhood Cover art

Here’s some more cover art- painted late last year for a book that’s just launched- “The Brotherhood” by Phil Smith

A young woman scales a giant aqueduct overlooking dark city.
The Brotherhood: Full cover art

Here’s what the blurb has to say:

Paige has a secret. A terrible, horrible secret. The worst part: she doesn’t even know what it is.

Her elvish mother’s heritage set her apart. Her father’s secret ripped her world apart. And her sister’s capture tore her apart. Paige’s life wasn’t perfect, but she was happy. But when her village is attacked, her people slaughtered, and her sister taken hostage, Paige soon learns that her parents harbored a deep, dangerous secret – a secret her sister, Olivian, may end up paying the ultimate price for.

Running for her life, Paige stumbles into a small, but formidable ragtag Brotherhood of rogue warriors hiding in the forest. Her challenge now lies in convincing them to help her rescue her sister from the clutches of the same wicked prince who tore their lives apart, all while discovering the secret that destroyed her world in the first place.

Filled with heroic tales, thrilling action, and non-stop adventure, this first installment of the ‘Eirensgarth Chronicles’ will take both young adults and old alike for the quest of a lifetime one page at a time!

If you’re interested in checking out the book you can read the prologue for free over on https://www.eirensgarth.com/

The book is available for purchase on Amazon.com

The Brotherhood- Front cover art.
The Brotherhood: Front cover

As usual- I had a good time doing this. Book covers are one of the most satisfying things to illustrate. Thanks again Phil for the generous creative freedom!

Cover art for “Ozel the Wizard”

Here’s some recently completed work that I did for Author Jim Hodgson and his latest YA (young adult) series dubbed “Ozel the wizard.” Here’s the blurb from the back of book one- Apprentice Quest.

Cover illustration for book one: Apprentice Quest

A hopeful orphan. An incredible wizard. One boy must do the impossible to change his life forever…

Ozel wonders if he’ll ever escape his angry, fat caretaker. As the orphan hopes for a better future, a mysterious wizard gives him the gift of an apprenticeship and some unbelievable magic. But when Ozel discovers he’s the lone heir to a massive fortune, he’ll need more than a few spells to claim it. 

After learning his portly caretaker plans to steal the money first, Ozel races through a forest of blacksmiths, witches, and even the undead to protect his birthright. If he survives the treacherous Tangul forest, the orphan and his wizard may just have to stop a twisted mage to go from zero to wealthy hero.

Apprentice Quest is a young adult fantasy novel full of action and humor. If you like powerful wizards, twists and turns, and coming-of-age tales, then you’ll love Jim Hodgson’s worthy successor to the magical genre. 

Cover illustration for book two: Journeyman’s Trial

The last book in the series- Wizard’s Resolve– launched just before Christmas. If you’re looking for something that has wizards in it and doesn’t include all that tedious Quidditch nonsense then check it out over on Amazon.

Cover art for book three: Wizard’s resolve

It was a great pleasure to work with Jim, and hopefully the future will see many more opportunities to do so!

Vintage steampunk posters

Here’s a couple of posters I designed for a client some time back, both of them are vintage, Victorian-inspired steampunk styled efforts.

The first is a poster for a fictional airship race over the streets of Paris. “La Grande Course d’air de Paris!” I spent a long time trying to match up google Earth data with old photos of the city to get as realistic impression of the city in 1986. The design even features an old version of the Eiffel tower with it’s original top and it’s briefly-featured yellow ochre paint job.

Below are the thumbnails I presented to the client with the possible options for the finished illustration. I often think that some do a much better job of selling the idea than others and I’m often surprised by what gets chosen.

The second poster is a handbill advertisement for a lecture by the Great Detective himself- Mr Sherlock Holmes. This one features a purely typographical approach, with hand-drawn decoration similar to some period examples.

There’s a whole world of Victorian typography and hand-drawn lettering out there that’s really incredible. Despite it’s imperfections, hand-drawn lettering has a lot more charm than a digital font. It’s definitely something I’d like to explore further in future.