Line Art

Not too terribly long ago, I bought a Surface Pro 2.  Forget, for the moment, all your criticisms of Microsoft, its recent turmoil, and the travesty that is its latest Windows.  This machine is the culmination of the crossroads of everything I've ever wanted in a computer.  It's fast, it's hugely portable, it has good battery life, but critically, and most importantly, it has a built in pressure sensitive tablet.

As a lefty who mouses with my right hand, I haven't ever and never will art well with one.  I have owned many, many tablets over the last twenty years from extravagantly expensive to terrifically cheap and terrible.  Despite having used these to good effect and having practiced on them for untold thousands of hours it's never been as natural as pencil on paper.  Working digitally, for me anyway, has always been cleaner but it's never been as natural as meatspace efforts.  The Surface Pro 2 solves this neatly and it's no word of a lie that I've been waiting for decades for a proper solution--and now I have it.

This is Rhode from Divinity II which I'll write about more at a later date, most likely in my end of year recap.  Rhode was one of my favorite characters.  Sketched from reference on my Bamboo then cleaned up on the Surface with colors hopefully following at some point.

Yes, I could have purchased  Cintiq but they are hugely expensive especially for someone who doesn't honestly art all that much =and= the Surface came with all the laptop I'll need for hopefully quite a while.  Now, other than time, I don't really have any excuses.

As I was thinking of replacing my old laptop anyway, this really was a no-brainer.  Actually since my employer paid for most of it through a development bonus it was even-less-than-no-brainer.  I am enormously happy with it which I haven't been able to say about a laptop for a long, long time.