New Forest Tree Surgery Icon

Well, following on from my previous post about the Wacom Bamboo pen tablet, I’ve created my first icon using this lovely little bit of kit – for the New Forest Tree Surgery website – our latest web design project.  It’s a simple leaf icon, this may develop into a sprouting seed as we progress with the graphic design.  News to follow of the release of this website.

After using a mouse for so long on a PC, I wasn’t sure how this would go.  Installation turned out to be as simple as most other plug n play installations these days.  Even with Vista gettting involved.  A couple of discs to whizz through and you’re off.

My first impressions were along the lines of “This is weird….where’s my cursor gone…..why isn’t my hand working properly?…..and so on”, but after about 30 minutes, I suppose the 30+ years of using a ‘normal’ pen translated itself though my fingertips to the pen tablet, and bingo – it feels natural.  Pressure sensititvity and Adobe Illustrator’s (CS3) Paintbrush tool settings allow the creation of very smooth, curved vector lines and shapes.  Double-click on the Paintbrush icon in the Tools palette and up pop some nice options which aid the smoothness of the curves.   Something my hand would not be able to do naturally!

If you’re a left hander, the pen tablet could be even better than for ‘righties’ if you use your mouse in one hand and the pen in the other.  I love it.  An absolutely great tool for the creation of web and print graphics.  It’s going to be well used indeed during the website design process.  Josh Scruggs over at 26 Symbols talks a bit about the Bamboo too – follow this link to check out the 26 Symbols review of the Wacom bamboo.