Buying a tablet

[grriffion]

Hey everyone on here, been browsing for the night and been looking around, cool forums! ive been drawing on and off for about 5 or 6 years now and ive really only ever done work in a sketchbook and the normal 2b pencils and baught a few different levels of pencils ... ANYWAY enough rambling.

I want a drawing tablet to start dipping my fingers into color and digital alterations to my work and im overall very excited. I am asking for a wacom intuos4 XL from cosco for a birthday present from my sister dad and mom to me. i have adobe photoshop elements 7.0 from a friend, i am beginning to understand that elements is not the ideal software for drawing? anyways, what are you guy's thoughts on getting this wacom intuos4 XL as my drawing tablet? any software recommendations? i heard sketchbook pro is good? thanks in advance!

[Sebastard]

An Intuos4 L or XL will work perfectly. It depends on the size you're used to and the size you want to draw on. I have a large model and i honestly couldn't want it any bigger then this. Just be sure that drawing is something you want to do :). As for Software, get either Photoshop CS2 or 3 or/and Painter 9, 10 or 11. They're pretty much the standard. Sketchup works too :).

[arestocrat]

agree with what Sebastard said.
Also, seeing that you have a lot of knowledge in traditional media, Painter might be a good option for you! Painter11 has the new hard-brush engine, so the pencils in Painter behave pretty realistic (like fading out if you tilt the pen, pressure, etc). Maybe you want to check that out! I recommend you get the 30day trial from corels website and see for yourself. Enjoy! :D

[grriffion]

thanks for your replies guys =D, ill deffinitely look into the painter software. i definitely love drawing and i really want to begin to break into the digital art side of drawing.