#pen tablets

Hmm. I use a plug-in drawing pad rather than a tablet, so the tech may be a little different. My limited experience of drawing on a mobile pad was using my fingers on the free ms-paint style 'doodle' softwares which came installed with them, and a free, terrible stylus with a rubber nub which was about an inch thick 😔

The hardware I've used since late 2017 is a Huion 1060 tablet. The page for the "1060 plus" (which I believe is slightly better, though my current tablet works fine!) says it has "8192 levels of pressure sensitivity", so I've always been lead to believe that it must depend on the surface you draw on rather than the stylus alone. I have a pen with the same serial number where the nibs are replaceable, and you can get similar ones for an iPad (and fancy drawing tablets which look really pretty on their website but also cost $1000 on average, and, uhhh, no).

My pen (huion) came with a few extra styluses, which are all about 10mm each. I replaced the nib once on the old pen, mainly out of curiosity, about 3 years ago, but I've replaced the pen since then (... Which came with new styluses, so I now have 8 replacements. If I take better care of it, this pen is going to outlive me.

If you DM me or send me another ask I might be able to help more. What brand is your tablet? You could probably get a good pen for under $40 as long as you find something compatible. It seems the more generic your hardware is the better luck you'll have.

Have you tried using the company's official website? Once you know the specific product serial number of the pen you want (I.e, TURTLEPEN 0-167), you can Google that, and eBay will usually have it. Amazon might, too, but it's not as specific & the search function on Amazon is usually lacking [how they became a super-rich-mega-corp is beyond me]. I got my replacement pen from Wish & I know there are other sites which are good at providing new unopened/unused second-hand goods directly from a warehouse or supplier.

Most of these pens and drawing tablets- especially the nibs- are made to the same specifications.

Pen pressure tests for the Huion HS611, based on tests done for other Huion tablets by a reviewer on the website in the source link. The reviewer used Clip Studio Paint, I used Medibang Paint.

A user on r/huion asked for these tests, and I’m posting it here because… well, I just needed the images posted somewhere, so Tumblr it is! LMAO but also, may be useful for anyone else looking into pen tablets.

I do really like this tablet, but this test has made me realize that the initial applied force on here isn’t actually ideal for me; I like to do very light sketches, and this tablet makes it difficult to do that. I just didn’t realize since the tablet I had before this was just… kinda terrible. (It was a Huion H420, I do not recommend, that tablet’s small size has been terrible on my wrist. I beg of you to not buy it. Just get a HS64, it’s only about ten bucks more, please do not follow past me’s actions. It’s only good for sometimes writing signatures and as a cheapo tablet to throw at annoying underclassmen in a graphic design class.)

Tilt tests aren’t included since Medibang doesn’t support the feature, and Krita has a habit of overheating my PC. I might do them later if asked though in a reblog.

Some notes:

Antialiasing is on, pen correction is set to 0.

Pen pressure curves were reset to default for these tests.

I didn’t have an actual ruler, so I did the slow ruler line test with a piece of paper then showed straight lines done freehand. Also the weird starts are my fault, not the pen's.

I haven’t actually done much crosshatching before, and this is the first time I’ve ever done intentional line tapers with just my hand, but it’s actually really fun?? wow I need to find a way to incorporate that technique into my art.