I purchased a new Wacom Graphire4 6×8 tablet to replace my older and smaller Graphire3 4×5 tablet. I’ve only been using my old tablet recently more frequently when I started drawing comics again and I figured, I could invest in a better model than the one I have right now.

At first I was tempted to buy the more advanced (and dearer) Wacom Intuos3 series tablet but it costs almost double the equivalent sized Graphire4 models. There are additional cool features in the Intuos3 that are absent from the Graphire4 but after much thinking, I felt that those additional features couldn’t justify the cost. Specially since I’m not really a professional artist or anything like that.

Anyway, I took the plunge and bought the Graphire4 6×8 model which is a size up from my older tablet. And now I believe that the size of the tablet does matter. With the old tablet, I had to draw things small and it hurts my fingers if I had to draw a lot of small squigly things on it. With the new tablet, drawing on it isn’t such a chore. It is actually enjoyable now.

So enjoyable in fact that I did a quick sketch on Painter while “breaking it in”. I posted the small sketch on the right. It’s a picture of nobody in particular so don’t ask who it is. I just used the pencil tool to draw the quick sketch then the oil tool to add the shading parts on it.

After trying two Wacom tablets and one non-Wacom tablet in the past, if you ever decide to buy a tablet, I absolutely recommend that you buy a Wacom-branded tablet and no other. And don’t buy the 4×5 sized tablet (because it’s the cheapest) but opt for the bigger sizes. Your hand will thank you for it.

And now, I can’t wait to draw some more on it.