Artistic Endeavors

An excerpt from my my diary, from the 18th of February, 2024.

I’ve been putting it off too long, perhaps because it concerns me a fair bit. I need to be able to use my tablet, in order for this to be even remotely viable long term. Digital art is basically my only hobby at this point; without my tablet functioning, this whole project is going to come crashing down. The one thing I believe I have going for me, is that it’s an old Huion device with no screen; an incredibly basic tablet with only a few buttons and a drawing area. While rummaging through the settings, I noticed that there’s an entire segment dedicated to Wacom tablet configuration. I’m assuming this isn’t literally only for Wacom, but maybe it’s specific drivers which also have generic support as well? Fingers crossed tight...let’s plug my tablet in! Thank god, it’s registered right out of the box, though with no keys assigned. No worries there, this is extremely configurable! I open Krita, get the shortcuts, assign the keys, and set the draw area to a single monitor of my choice! No extra proprietary software needed, like I had on Windows for Huion, and I’m good to go! I didn’t see soft button support—the areas at the top of the drawing area which could be tapped—but I always had those disabled, as they were both finicky and a nuisance to me anyway.

Now that I’ve got my tablet configured, I suppose the best way to test it would be to start making an artistic project in Krita. Nothing wild, just a sketch to get my bearings, and ensure things feel as I’d expect. I settle on drawing my sona doing something silly and evil, which ended up being Foxfire running away with an over-sized bag of money. I find a pretty convincing looking pencil brush and get to it; things are feeling pretty great! I can absolutely see myself being able to use this for artistic projects in the future, this is right on point with what I was expecting. Not really sure what else to add, but things just worked well, and I listened to some tunes while doing it too. Ended up adding a cute phrase next to the sketch that says “be gay, do crime.” I think that summarizes my idea perfectly.

A pencil styled digital sketch of an anthro fox, Foxfire. He has slanted eyes which complete an evil smile, carrying an oversized bag with a dollar sign on it. He's wearing a striped shirt, akin to old cartoon and film prisoners, and he's running away from somewhere unseen. There is no background, but there is text to the left of him which reads: BE GAY, DO CRIME.

“Absconding with funds.”

All writing is licensed under CC-BY-ND with attribution to Foxfire. The FSF recommends this license for opinion pieces.