Lost 12 finished pieces when my tablet pen died mid-stroke

Working on a big showcase piece at 2 AM in my Brooklyn apartment. Pen ran out of battery right as I was adding final highlights to a 40 layer illustration. The auto-save corrupted the file and I lost everything from the last 4 hours. Has anyone else had a Wacom pen die at the worst possible moment?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantp1428d ago

Had my Cintiq pen die during a client commission once, right in the middle of a tricky lighting pass... lost about two hours of work when the file glitched on recovery. It's brutal how one little battery drop can just erase all that focus and flow you had going, especially at 2 AM when you're in the zone.

the_diana28d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, is it really that bad if you lose a few hours of work when you're learning to paint better? The lighting pass you redid was probably way cleaner than the first version, since you knew exactly what you were going for the second time. I've actually found that redoing tricky sections from scratch forces me to fix things I didn't even notice were wrong the first time (like how I'd been oversaturating the shadows).

linda_dixon4928d ago

Can't help but laugh, my tablet pen died mid-stroke on a birthday gift I was painting for my sister. She got a half-finished cat with three eyes instead of a cute pet portrait. Had to redo the whole thing and now she brings it up every Thanksgiving.