Intuos Pen: Drawing More Comfortably

If I’m drawing or animating digitally for an extended period of time, generally my wrist starts to hurt because the barrel of the Intuos pen is so thick. I’m not sure how common this trick is, but it’s worth sharing because it might spare you a pain in the wrist.

This goes for all pens from Intuos 2 on up to Intuos 4– I believe the Cintiq pens are about identical to the I3’s/I4’s.

  1. Unscrew the tapered tip, right below the gel grip.
  2. Pop off the clicky button by gently lifting the edge of one side; the whole button should pop off.
  3. Slide off the grip.
  4. (Optional)– pop the button back in (seen here). It will stick out, but you can keep it out of your way depending on how you hold the pen.

Now the pen’s barrel is roughly the same thickness of an ordinary pen. Huzzah!

Oil Pastel Blending Secret

Sometimes when working with oil pastel on a toothy paper, you’ve got delicate color shifts that unfortunately don’t sink into the paper’s tooth. Generally applying a lot more oil pastel would be the solution; but that can sometimes ruin the original colors that were laid down.
Fear no more! Pilot’s FriXion erasable pens have rubber “erasers” (no more than a little rubber nub). These blend oil pastel brilliantly! The rubber nub for erasing (it’s called FriXion because it removes the ink via friction) never seems to wear down. Keep some newspaper handy so you can clean it off from color to color.

Dearest Pilot FriXion magic oil pastel blender, you’re now part of my art arsenal.