@cengland0 For sure. Now those that were asking for "no repeats" better be buying this.

@pitamuffin Mmmm-hmmm.

@cengland0 im glad it didn't sell out before I woke up, I didn't stay up for it and my girlfriend could use this :)

@armchair Very!

@armchair Agreed! In for one.

@lljk same here

@lljk If you're into them, really wacom is the only way to go. There's a few others out there, but I've really seen nothing that comes close to them. Of course when you're paying $50 for some knock off instead of $200 for the wacom, I guess what can you expect.

@lljk Monoprice has a fine line of drawing tablets that apparently get quite good reviews. Not being an artist, I can't say whether or not they are good, but I hear good things about them from artsty people.

@lljk It's worth reading Frenden's reviews before jumping into the space. That tag covers everything from the drawing tablets OP wanted to Cintiq replacements (and Cintiqs) to stuff like the Surface Pro 3. Dude also does drop-dead-gorgeous Manga Studio/Clip Studio brushes for next to nothing. He is a super valuable resource.

NOTE: I am not Frenden, I am not getting kickbacks from Frenden, I'm just like READ THE THING EEEE.

Wacom used to be the only game in town worth your time for small knock-around entry level tablets, but that's getting less and less true. If you go down that road, research helps - something else might fit better with your style, and you might want to keep your costs down for the initial commit. It really pays to read Frenden to narrow down what you want, then go check Amazon reviews to confirm whether the thing you want has issues with your existing equipment (driver issues, Mac incompatibility WHICH HAPPENS A LOT, software conflicts, bla).

@bakeyoural Meh! So very Meh!

@heartny They're handy for looking at slides & negatives quickly without the hassle of setting up the projector.

@Starblind I miss the glory days of film.

@heartny as a former battalion adjutant with "for the commander" signature authority, my first thought as well

@Starblind Looking at what and whats?

@mcanavino A slide is like a tiny, very thin iPad that only shows one picture and does nothing else ever.

@Starblind huh, that's silly! Do they use inductive charging?

@HELLOALICE Great hint! Seems like there's no end to the uses for a light box. I've got a 400W DIY monster, and I'm in for one of these to use as a more elegant and portable light box.

@Endreo truth

@Jetlag You can always renew your VMP. It's not like you're banned from ever being a member again.

@Jetlag I didn't cancel my VMP and I did order so much shit.

Here at meh, I got the batteries, I picked up my third Foscam IP camera (still don't have the other two set up), the Damson speakers last week. Spent money at Walmart online, Amazon, too. I told myself after buying Imagepac negative film last night "ENOUGH!"

Then this light box showed and golly gosh darn it, wouldn't ya know I've ALWAYS wanted one of these?

giddy-swanky-caviar

@cengland0

Although if this is Irk, it would definitely be my favorite.

'Careful, some folks might think your comment @stinks.

@RedOak You liked the animal fans? I guess one or two were cute. ;)

@saodell Google something else. I looked at a used car weeks ago, it is still haunting me on this site.

@Pamtha Weird, signed up for Harry's like a year ago, never googled them again, but their in my top 5 to this day.

@Rstoker art deco wall lamp? better get 3 :)

@gyozilla

@Distraktor clever. In a similar vane, if you frequently print on watermarked bond paper it could be useful to assure you've got the paper loaded upright and front-right. But perhaps it would be overkill for that.

@CerPrime Click this Google search.

@CerPrime I have this one and it works quite well. I like that I can adjust the brightness easily. It's really lightweight, and since I purchased the easel for it, I can use it at the exact angle I need.

@Fen_Star That's.... Significantly less portable.

@Fen_Star and then how do you get it to project white easily?

@editorkid - Good idea to tag @JonT or @MEHcus.

@KDemo Good point... I owe you a beer too. Thanks for getting my back.

@editorkid I reported the issue a few weeks back. Problem is with the +4 ZIP codes your ccard provider is using but Meh won't allow you to enter.

@IQof20 If that is the problem, why did it let him buy the first unit? It only became a problem when trying to buy a second one.

@cengland0 @IQof20 Actually, at first it wouldn't let me buy it at all because of that. Then I clicked after the zip code and typed in the hyphen and four digits and, even though they didn't show up, that was the transaction that cleared okay. A few minutes later when I realized that aside from the gift, I had a use for one myself, that trick didn't work on either the card already in the system or the one I try not to use online. (I also reported the problem after the fukō sale but never heard back. Did you get any response, @IQof20?)

@cengland0 @IQof20 I just talked to Visa and the rep said they don't even have the extra four digits in the system. Those are in the mailing address database, but as far as they're concerned they have nothing to do with transaction processing. She asked me what zip code I was using, I told her those first five digits, and she said in a really puzzled tone, "That doesn't make any sense. That's what we've got." Maybe time to ping @dave and @shawn?

@editorkid I've looked into this and I'm happy to share what I'm able to see from our end from Stripe (our payment processor). To me this really looks like an issue with the issuing bank (not necessarily Visa).

• At 12:00:59am ET your bank sent us the following error message:

• At 12:01:08am ET we got the same error message:

• At 12:01:40am ET we got an approval from your bank.

You might have typed in a hyphen and four digits but it didn't make it to our site. The name, billing address, and expiration date was identical to the previous two payments that were declined. I'm confident in saying this because the card's "fingerprint" (which we use to help track fraudulent cards across multiple accounts) is identical.

Why would your bank give us two error messages of The zip code you supplied failed validation before approving the exact same address 32 seconds later?

• At 12:15:35am ET we got an error from your bank for the exact same card that was approved 14 minutes earlier with the exact same card fingerprint.

• Same error message at 12:15:52am ET, 12:16:10am ET, 12:16:28am ET, 12:16:58am ET, and 12:17:22am ET.

• At 12:18:10am ET it looks to me like your bank had enough and blacklisted this card. We got the following error message:

Since we're having so many issues with the card I'm going to delete it from our system. If you contact your bank again, here's some info about declined charges: https://stripe.com/help/declines

@shawn, you continue to be awesome. All I know at my end is that Visa says "shrug ain't us," but knowing that it's my bank rather than you folks or Visa proper, and having a specific log like this, hopefully will really help now that I know I have to talk to the bank itself. Thanks for taking weekend time helping me on this... you are on the beer list too. (And yeah, so many failed transaction attempts in such a short time led to a card block. But Carol at Visa was glad to hear it was me and removed the block, and thinks the idea of Meh is pretty cool and is going to check it out.)

@shawn You're awesome!

(I become a spec-whore when I'm on the fence for a purchase like this.)

@RedOak The manual and the manufacturer's page says 5.1mm/0.2in. Amazon says 5.1mm, but then converts it to 0.27in which isn't right at all. I didn't measure it myself, but I would say confidently that it is 0.2in.

@Moose thx. So the front page is wrong. Saved by a sellout overnight!

@RedOak Damn, why didn't I read this before they sold out?

@RedOak That does sound awesome. And for those that still know about "dye sublimation" is.... a photo print mounted to one would be cool.

@G1 @Kylethephotoguy luckily for my credit card, they sold out before I came back in the morning!

@G1, not sure whether it was the camping angle that floated your boat, but we camped this week and brought along a really cheap LED light string (as in, the LED leads themselves were directly strung together) connected to a 3xAAA box. We hung that string across the middle of our standing height tent and it worked great as ambient lighting for about $5 as I recall on eBay.

@MsELizardBeth I have this same one for that very reason, lol!! It's been a life - and eyesight - saver! Just wish it had been on sale when I got it...oh well!

@sugarpike i was doing both holographic and glitter heat transfer and it was making me crazy. Did 4 shirts worth without going more blind.

@MsELizardBeth I'm amazed that others here do shirts! How cool is that? I don't do anything really artsy, but I have fun doing it.

Here's one of my favorites (we had annual meets at the Disney resort in Anaheim for fifteen years and I made the shirts for us all). That year's theme was "The Year of the Ride". We all got little Sharpie pens to go with the shirts. We marked off the rides we'd been on.

@lisaviolet What a fun souvenir idea! Approx how many rides can you do in a day?

@KDemo Thanks, it was fun! Our group name was on the front.

The most I've ever done was on a rainy weekday in February a few years ago with my best friend. We did 23 rides in one day.

And I've found that using Ridemax (available for both Disneyland and Disneyworld) is a great help. One of our problems is we stand around "waddya wanna do now?"

@mick To coax dimensionality out of a drawing, add shadows and specular highlights even if they aren't there in the model or source material. A lot of artists struggle with this not because they suck but because they're in a certain sense too GOOD... they're trying to hard to accurately depict the source. Of course if you're working from a physical model like a still life you can alter the lighting to bring out sharper shadows and specular highlights, but sometimes you just have to fake it. Try studying the works of impressionist painters, where this concept is taken to its logical extreme. Good luck!

I made a little example of an ammonite. Whether the specular highlights and shadows exist on the source object or not, they add dimensionality where there previously was none:

@mick On the upside, you're going to be popular in Ancient Egypt.

@gwrankin They probably opened one for the photos and the demo video.

@cengland0 So you think 600 is just a number they found as reasonable to stock and sell out of?

@gwrankin I think 600 is what the buyer could get delivered in time for this sale.

@dashcloud That makes sense.

@gwrankin Especially so when you consider that art supplies like this are a bit unusual for Meh. Had they gotten a deal on speaker docks or knives or such, then they'd have tons of 'em, but if they're selling products that are a bit more out there then it makes sense to buy fewer at first until you know it's in a category that Meh users are interested in.

@mellowirishgent They're measuring diagonally from corner to corner, like a monitor or a TV screen.

@Starblind Then that should be 17.2 inches.

Sqrt( 14^2 + 10^2 ) = 17.20465053408525

@cengland0 Extra half inch possibly the width of the ruler portion.

@cengland0 5.1 mm equals 0.2 (5.1 / 2.54) inches and 0.27 inches and therefore 0.3 inches. So yah, 17.7 inches. CC math.

@sammydog01 lol. Yea. When I saw more orders than the CEO I too realized my problem. (luckily most of it is for work and not coming from my bank account)

@ACraigL

There has been some great discussion on this item and how to use it.

@hypernuvigilant for the Frenden's reviews site. @HELLOALICE advice.
Others on the t-shirt advice, & so many others…

I do have a question about buying some basic supplies such as a small set of pencils and charcoal. I am in a small town so am not hands-on. I have a 12 color set of Sanford Prismacolor which seem ok.

I just did a search and, maybe this set of Prismacolor could be an OK set but the really older sets were fantastic. Others recommend these brands : Faber-Castell, Lyra Rembrandt Polycolors. Then I found that the Prismacolor Premier were recommended and at a reasonable price. Gets so confusing…

Also seems one needs a decent sharpener (manual) and maybe a nice variety of paper to play around with.

Sorry to ask so much. Maybe there is a review site that one can suggest… anything would be really appreciated!

@fjp999 Colored pencils and markers: yes, prismacolor. Graphite: staedtler or however you spell it's. Blue pencils, come in a tin. Fine-tip black market for inking: Sakura.

These are not top of the line, but they are the best for their price. Copics are expensive as fuck.

Get a huge box of vine charcoal and a cheap kit of different softness. Buy a few moldable grey erasers.

Paper wise, buy a strathmore pad. Not Bristol, just drawing. Buy a huge thick cheap shitty sketch pad.

Use the vine charcoal on the sketch pad and everything else on the drawing paper. Don't try to do anything super crazy nice for a few months. When you're ready, play with Bristol and vellum. The stiff translucent kind. Killer for markers.

Most importantly, LOOK. Don't draw an apple. Draw the lines and shadows. DrW what you see, not what you think. There, art 101.

@fjp999 Oh. Any sharpener will do. Don't let anyone con you otherwise. Yes manual to avoid rattling the cores but just buy a piece of crap $1 sharpener. And paper variety is for when you know what you're doing. One step at a time. Get a cheap pad of tracing paper too.

@fjp999 I've used prismacolors (120 color set) and they were fine. I do recommend a knife to sharpen the pencils. Not mandatory, but once you start it's nice to be able to customize the point (flat on one side, etc.)

Rembrandt stuff is fine as well, particularly for their pastels and charcoals. Conte crayons are another good starter item to have as you can make quick sketches with a few different colors to make things pop.

For the colored pencils, I would get a good, high-quality sketchbook -- any is fine, but if you're doing work with charcoal or conte, a newspaper sketchpad is the way to go. Strathmore makes good products in both cases.

Hope that helps!

@fjp999 Looks like @HELLOALICE and I are pretty much on the same page. Good luck on the new hobby!

@HELLOALICE @ACraigL

This is so amazing! Thank you both!

I guess I have talents in other mediums but get so jealous when my partner would just sit down and create page after page of amazing sketches… having all these Japanese friends who could all make magic with pencil or pen and paper (learning to write the thousands of characters in Japanese which are actually often pictures).

I do know that drawing can be a learned talent from my uni days and a Psych 101 class with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

thanks again all

@HELLOALICE @ACraigL

Got a notice of a small biz having a sale (30% off w code SummerSale30) and have always wanted to support this site - handeyesupply.com - They are nearly sold out of the things I wanted and what they did have in stock was very limited.

I did pick up a Cretacolor Monolith Woodless Graphite Pencil 6B all they had, for $1.57 and a case of 12 Palomino Blackwing in the gift box for $15+,a couple of Magma Sketchbooks for $11 each and a large roll of Bee Sketch Rolls White 24" x 20 yd for $7.

I hate paying for shipping so picked up a few other things like pants, dustpan, etc.

Those Palomino Blackwing pencils look beautiful. May not live up to all the hype but a good price.

btw, @ACraigL they have a book, 224pgs, on "How to Sharpen Pencils" Sold OUT! At the time of publishing, there is an ad for the guy - "ARTISANAL PENCIL SHARPENING - $12.50 PER PENCIL"

@fjp999 That's David Rees, who is a genius and a very, very funny person. His My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable was more pointed and biting than Tom Tomorrow's stuff and Get Your War On got even more pissed off. Poking around his site, it doesn't look like navigation and archiving are a priority of his, but there are great paperbacks that collect lots of his stuff.

@editorkid thanks for the links. I got curious about this book when I saw Amy Sedaris (of Candy from Strangers) featured in the "Customer Testimonials".

@editorkid I asked Stripe's support team to look into this further and they responded how I thought they would.

Thanks for reaching out to let us know about this, and I'm sorry about the delay in getting back to you. It looks like something strange was going on with the bank since we got both pass and fail responses to the address and zip checks from the bank in a very short period and with the same billing address.

It look like the address and zip code checks are now passing, though, and the charges are simply being declined by the bank. Since the most recent attempts passed those checks, it may be worth asking the cardholder to reach out to his bank to see if they can approve the charges and confirm that they have the correct billing address on file for the card.

Thanks, @shawn -- @hollboll also emailed me the info. I totally slacked off on calling my bank earlier this week, and now it turns out that's a good thing since I can give them not only the info you had this weekend but also this info from Stripe. Way to reinforce my procrastination, man. On the other hand, if the bank is now just declining all charges from you guys, I'd better call soon, because this is the one card I use online...

@Noddy93 Or days. Apparently I'm an idiot for not ordering one of these when I had the chance. I had to use ambient lighting like a freaking caveman to trace motivational artwork for my son this morning.

@ACraigL I had NO idea what to expect and totally agree with you!

WoW. I was forced to use laser printer paper & very difficult to trace on but I actually impressed myself - I did find some very old tracing paper (at least that is what I think it is) but will have to cycle to this big box while waiting for a mail order.

First attempt with was a complex line drawing - came out pretty good… #2&#3 were smallish photo based and omg - fingers are difficult! but tracing really makes you notice all these amazing details. Now learning to reproduce them…

I do have a kind of passion for mechanical pencils and am using the "uni - Kuru Toga". I am sure the one they sell in Japan is even nicer but the one I got at Amazon is really fantastic. I have never broken the lead. The pencil automatically feeds the lead (usually) and even though it says it is 0.5 HB it seems much finer.

I would buy another one of these tracing boxes to use maybe as a LCD light source, conversation art piece (x-ray) etc.

btw, I didn't realize how tacky masking tape was… I really have to get tracing tape now.

@nchew003 I’m interested. My email is sammydog001 at gmail.

@sammydog01 here’s me using mine.

@lisaviolet Nice!

@nchew003 I love mine. I don’t use it often, but when I do it’s EXACTLY what I need.

@nchew003 @sammydog01 I am STILL kicking myself for missing out on this, and here it is, nearly a year later, and I’m still missing out on this. It’s nuts.

@mossygreen Hey @sohmageek, did you sell the one from your fuko? Looks like there is a resale market here.

@mossygreen I haven’t heard from this guy (gal?) but I’m no longer interested in it. Good luck!

@sammydog01 S/he probably realized it could be posted somewhere and sold for at least slightly more money. And since I wouldn’t pay slightly more money for it, I do not begrudge the choice.