Feliz Cumpleaños: 2016

As most of you probably know, my birthday was last week. We had to rearrange the celebration a little for certain activities that could not be re-planned, but everything still went very well, and I had a lot of fun. For my birthday, I got three gifts. The first was a red tablet case from Braden for my Kindle Fire tablet. This will help if I ever drop it, since before, I had no case and could have easily cracked it with just a small fall. Here are a few pics of the tablet with its case.

Click the image to enlarge.

The second gift was a white shirt from August. For this gift, August said I could pick a
simple design to put on the shirt. Then, when he has extra time at work (he works at National Industrial Printing), August will embroider the design I chose onto the shirt. This is the design I chose, but with different colors:

The last gift was from Mom and Dad, and it is what I am going to focus on more in this post. They got me a "Monoprice Pen Tablet." Basically, it is a drawing pad for the computer. It comes with a special pen for drawing. Here is a picture of one, to help you know what I am talking about.

Click the image to enlarge.

     So, the pen tablet is basically a touchscreen, but it only picks up the pen's signal. (The pen has a battery, and is electronic.) Thus, you can draw on the tablet with your hand resting on the touchscreen part, but only where the pen touches will be picked up by the computer. This pen tablet will be extremely helpful in practicing for being a graphic designer. I could draw on the computer before, using the mouse, but now I am drawing much more accurately because it is like I am drawing on paper. I have even figured out that I can trace something, either on the computer or printed/written on paper. When I was playing with the pen tablet, still figuring out what it can do, I had Mom write down her signature on a piece of paper. Then, I went back and slowly traced it with the pen. I won't post a picture (for security reasons), but it turned out almost exactly the same! So, maybe in a future post, I can have a little game to see if you can tell the difference between the real writing, and a trace!
     Also, I can trace items still on the computer screen by using a downloaded software that comes with the pen tablet, PenWalker. Using this, and a very simple dragon design, I can do this:

Click the image to enlarge. Traced image.

Once my hand gets steadier and I am more used to using this new tablet, I will be able to start practicing my drawing skills on the computer. Right now, this is what I can do free-hand:

Click the image to enlarge. Free-hand drawing.

     All in all, I think this is a very cool new toy for me to work with. Hopefully, with some practice, my drawing will improve and I can make some cool pics to share. I hope you liked this post, and feel free to leave any comments in the comment section below or on Facebook.