Half-finished fanart or How my Intuos 4 grip pen died
Since I didn't use it for years, my Intuos4 grip pen, which still worked perfectly, developed a gritty, sticky substance on the surface of the plastic. I don't seem to be the only who has experienced this, according to entries like this one, but I'm probably the only one who tried to clean it with an eco friendly kitchen cleaner after getting tired of wrapping it with paper tapes. The pen is clean now although it died during the rigorous cleaning session. With hindsight, I should really have taken it apart before wiping it. Stupidity needs to be punished.
After this experience, I rummaged for my old Bamboo Fun tablet and lo and behold: the Bamboo Fun grip pen has developped the same sticky substance. Since it's even older than my Intuos, I tossed the pen and don't even consider buying a new one. I did consider getting a new Intuos 4 grip pen but decided against it since I use the tablet too seldom and the iPad has made it redundant for people like me who can't really draw with a tablet.
Anyhow, I must admit I've never even learned to ink with the Intuos. As much as I love the Intuos 4 tablet since it feels so right to doodle with it, it's a pain to use it for drawing and inking when I can be ten times faster if I use a normal pencil or pen and paper. I once thought drawing digitally is cheaper, considering how expensive quality paints and markers can be (unfortunately, I have an exquisite taste when it comes to drawing and painting supplies), but when I look back at all the Corel Painter versions (which never worked as they should and always killed my drawings at some stage), the software updates and paid upgrades of apps which worked perfectly with the older versions before the newer, larger, and faster computer updates came and rendered the old apps unusable, I begin to suspect that drawing traditionally is not only more satisfying and faster but also cheaper in the long run. For photo editing and colouring experiments, the touchpad and smaller iPad apps like Sketchbook Pro and Procreate suffice.
RIP, Intuos 4. I'm going to miss you from time to time but we two weren't a good match although I loved to abuse the digital undo and zoom in options. I'll try to colour the fake-fanart with the touchpad now (since I only copied the artwork by Matsuri Hino and changed the heads, it doesn't feel right to give the picture the status of a real fanart). If this doesn't work, I'm going to colour the picture on the iPad although the resolution will be smaller. I'm not happy with their hair and am going to change it for the Copics version (since I doubt I have the stamina and motivation to copy it again for the watercolour version, I'm probably going do another fanart for that one).