Thanks to Wacom, I had an opportunity to field-test their Inkling digital sketch pen. I used it for a sketching session and here’s what I found….
Inkling is a tool that turns hand-drawn lines to digital, editable lines. There are two parts to Inkling: the pen and the receiver. Inkling pen uses a standard ball-point refill, which is included in the package. There is a separate receiver about the size of a large pack of gum and a USB cable to connect it to the computer for transferring the drawing file. Before I got started, there was prep work to do. It takes full three hours to charge the unit, so I installed the Inkling Sketch Manager software into my computer while I waited.
Next day – Inkling is ready for the first sketch outing! The pen and the receiver fits neatly into a compact carrying case – it is a perfect size for toting it around with my usual sketching supplies.
Inkling pen feels very natural. The receiver clips easily to the top of the sketchbook page (I used
Stillman & Birn Alpha series since it takes a variety of media
well). I pressed the button on the receiver to turn it on. I then held the pen, which has the weight and the feel of a fountain pen. I was careful not to cover the tip of the pen (where it sends the signal). It took me a few strokes to get used to the softer feel of ball-point tip (I usually draw with Uniball Signo gel pen that makes crisper lines), but I started sketching as usual very quickly and felt at ease.
For this test, I chose a typical scene that many of us Urban Sketchers
draw all over the world: people eating at an outdoor café. It was an
ideal sketching setup: I had a chair to sit in, a table to rest my sketchbook, an umbrella above to provide shade (it is advised to keep Inkling receiver away from strong, direct light), with clear sky and a steady midday light.
When I was sketching, people moved around (of course), so I pressed a button next to the power button on the receiver to create a new layer, and continued drawing.
I went home and plugged in the receiver into my computer to see how the sketch turned out. I opened the file in Adobe Illustrator. The sketched lines are turned into editable vector lines. Lines that are drawn after pressing the layer button on the receiver do appear on separate layers. The lines are fairly uncluttered
without too many extra stray points – much better than an
auto-trace tool.
Here is a big disappointment: Inkling did not record the top part around the umbrella, as you can see from the scan of the original sketch. Maybe my hand was blocking the receiver, or I might have started sketching before the receiver was fully on.
It also did not record smaller area of the sketch accurately – maybe it
had to do with amount of lines per area, or how fast I was moving my
hand. The left side is a close-up of the scanned drawing, and the right
side is how Inkling rendered it. It reminded me of the time when I tried
to draw with an iPad: the lines dragged behind my finger at times
because I was drawing too fast for it to render in real time.
I also found that you have to use the Inkling Sketch Manager software to set the position of the receiver – either on top, left, right, bottom, or corner of the page – or it won’t record your lines. When I sketch, I flip my sketchbook around to use both sides of the paper, so not being able to change the recording direction on the fly is limiting, especially since I rarely have a laptop with me when I’m sketching.
In conclusion, it is a fun tool to try as long as you keep in mind that it doesn’t reproduce your sketches exactly. It does help if you are used to drawing with a pen and keeping your sketchbook oriented in one direction. It can only record pen lines, so if you paint directly or use another media when you are sketching, this might not be your thing. For digital drawing, I’ve used Wacom’s other products (Intuos tablet and Cintiq) and found them to be much more precise – but Inkling is useful for making editable lines of your sketches to refine
later. The ability to make layers of your sketches can be explored more, like I did here: I added some colors and made an animated GIF using different layers.
I like the feel of the pen and the ease of the use of the receiver. If the software can be improved to record the lines more
accurately, and if the settings can be changed without the computer (perhaps even by using a smartphone app), it will truly be portable and be better suited for drawing on location. I still enjoyed playing with it!
