Sta.sh
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.......... The design MUST HAVE ONLY 2 COLORS; BLACK AND WHITE
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Frustrated *Pauses for a moment while everyone takes an inward gasp suddenly*
Now I *do* actually have a tablet. A few years ago I bought a little 4x5 Wacom Graphire for $100 thinking that this was the bees-knees and that because everyone else had one, so must I.
I gave it a shot and man... what a disaster. I could barely select a freakin' tool with it properly much less do much colouring as I tried to co-ordinate everything, so after a few hours I put it away and went back to the mouse for another year or so. I've pulled it out now and then to give it another shot but with largely the same results.
So I tried it again tonight after watching
generally kick-ass with her intuous as usual the other night. It took me 30 minutes to colour a section of a leg (on a velocity cover by ken rocafort and 
btw...) with the wacom, with less than satisfactory results and then I made a new layer and did the same thing with my usual skill and brilliance (
) in 5 minutes!So I simply don't understand WHY everyone insists that a tablet is the way to go. I think they suck majorly and are more trouble than they're worth. I tried colouring like Nei with a layer set to screen mode with the wacom but can't for the life of me get it to do what she does. I have no idea how to set up the pen and brush. I went back to normal mode and tried the usual gradients and style that I colour with but using the wacom and had some success but it was sooo slow that I'd still be colouring this picture 3 months from now if I kept it up.
Now don't tell me that Oh, you've just got to stick with it and give it a chance... That doesn't help. I want to know how the frack you're meant to use this thing otherwise it can go in the drawer forever! Until then, it's mouse-power for me. Sure it takes more layers and a hell of a lot more clicking and selecting of stuff and overall (assuming I could use the wacom) it's slower but stuff that. I work just fine with it.
/end rant
As to tablets and the inevitable Cintiq's: the quality of the device also matters. I don't believe the "graphire" series is all that good. My first real tablet (not counting the crappy little Wacom 4x5 a previous employer got all the artists one time - god that thing was horrid) was a 6x9 Wacom Intuos 3. I bought it used for 20 bucks just after the Intuos 4's came out and I found it to be amazing - not for drawing but for color. Then I found my Cintiq 18SX used and I was done - coloring and now I do all my linework there as well, having mostly dropped doing art on paper completely. Now the Wacom 24 is coming out and I desperately want 2500$ to get one. But that will take a while - and not to mention the waiting list to get them.
Personally I could never go back to a tablet again, having had a Cintiq. But they are more affordable to be sure. Cintiq's are very hardcore. And that's my thing. I know that Freddie Williams II uses a tablet to draw and not a Cintiq and to me that's amazing because when I draw I have to see it like it's paper.
I don't know how you can have such high precision, by the way. A couple of evenings ago I decided to give some flats to my Finch Dark Knight inks. I first tried with mouse but it took forever and I was getting terribly nervous because I can't do a proper mask or color... >_<
It's a little to do with how much easier your 'cuts' can be with a tablet - though this takes time, and a far more accurate tablet than you have, maybe.
It's more to do with pen pressure and the weight of your hand when you apply the color. THIS is where a tablet can really shine for coloring, as you can gradually build up the level of shine you want on your characters, without having to resort to extra layers, layer modes, etc.
You have to set your brushes to the sort of modes that take advantage of that - under your options, things like "shape dynamics" set to pen pressure give you finer control over details and the shape of your brush as you paint. My personal favorite is setting up "other = opacity jitter" to "pen pressure". This gives you that gradual build up (and is why a lot of us paint in screen mode right on top of our flats - the screen color gradually builds up highlights and is additive).
There are a few of your pieces in a few places where I feel the highlight is far too opaque, too solid, or not really quite the right weight to be the sort of highlight that would best work with the piece. A pen tablet would greatly help in these areas.
All of that said, it requires patience and a little bit of time to get used to it. You can play with some of the settings in your graphire to change how sensitive the pen is and things, how much of the tablet is actually active. All of these things might help you transition over.
It's up to you whether you want to reach for higher than you already are or just stick with what you know works. Good luck either way!
The settings for your wacom tablet can be accessed from the system tray - there should be an icon there if you installed the software, which I recommend doing.
Hope this helps!
took me a week to get used to using a wacom over a mouse, it went into the drawer and back out again, repeatedly. it took me a while to use it optimally but I cant even bare the thought of going back to mouse coloring. it also allows for the opportunity to vary style by doing more painterly rendering.
its a more versitile tool for the purpose of art, the mouse is very limited. but, if a floppy drive can be made to play the imperial march [link] I dont see why you cant use a mouse to color.