I have been told that drawing is not about any particular skill or talent, but rather sight and perspective. I recently purchased a wacom tablet to help with animating from the computer. After having set up all the applicable software, I was ready to draw. At first, I was simply doodling, drawing smiley faces or writing my name. I found the technology and the apps that cater to it to be really fun and intuitive. However, when I attempted to actually try to draw something with a little more substance, I found myself really struggling. The tablet itself does not show anything that you've drawn on its surface; all of that appears on the computer screen. So while drawing with a pen and paper has a natural connection with the eye and the hand, that connection is broken when drawing on the tablet. I often found myself looking at the screen as a frame of reference, and my hand would get confused and not do what I wanted it to do. Even when I tried to trace an object, my creation came out less than beautiful. I don't blame the technology or the hardware for this problem, it's all on me. I think that just getting used to a new way of looking at something will be challenging and difficult to accomplish, but I'm certainly looking forward to trying .
There are tablets, like the ones in class, that show the "point of contact" with the mirror-like reality of the virtual world, but I think is important to train eye-hand coordination in alternate coordinate systems, it helps understand that world through data.
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