New Tablet Question

[Midgardsormr]

I haven't really gotten to the point in my work where the angle sensitivity is useful (I'm using an Intuous3), but I've experimented with assigning both the angle and the roundness of the brush to pen angle in Photoshop. It makes it a little bit like using a Chinese calligraphy brush. But since I never did get any good with a real brush, having a digital version isn't terribly helpful for me! You can assign other functions to pen angle, as well. I imagine things like opacity and flow might make it work a bit more like a paint brush.

On the subject of usable area, I have heard some artists say that they've mapped their large tablets to a smaller area to make it more comfortable to paint with them, which seems to speak to the greater utility of a small drawing area. I have a 8 x 6.5" tablet and find it the perfect size, although it doesn't match my screen's aspect ratio, which sometimes makes things difficult. Maybe I'll try that remapping trick to match it up.

[Ascension]

I saw somewhere that the I4 can be configured to rotate your image if you rotate the tablet...that would either be tremendously cool or tremendously annoying. For me it would be both because I move my tablet around a lot but I can't draw certain curves and lines otherwise...doesn't feel right. I have an I2 9x7 and it can be annoying at that size but I've had smaller sizes and they annoyed me much more - I'm a big arm movement kind of guy and hate to be restricted. I'd rather have more space and not need it than have something too small and feel confined - only to end up buying a bigger one anyway. Since the I4 is so pricey to begin with I won't be getting one at the size I want for a long time - I'll stick with my old big one rather than buy a fancy new small one.

[torstan]

Thanks everyone. That's really useful feedback - especially from those of you with Intuous tablets. I'll see how flush I'm feeling when the one I have dies, but the small I4 is looking awfully tempting.