Drawing with Wacom Tablet and Inkscape

I bought a Wacom tablet many years ago, and I wanted to draw with it on my modern laptop (including pressure sensitivity). My Wacom Graphire (ET-0405-U) tablet didn’t work when I plugged in the USB port of my computer (Windows 10, hp EliteBook); here are the steps I needed…

Download and Install Wacom tablet Driver

The Wacom Graphire support page wasn’t working at the time I wrote this.

However, the Wacom Drivers page allowed me to find the “Graphire - ET-0405-U/R Support” driver 6.1.7-3 (for Windows XP, Vista, & 7); from 9/13/2011

The driver exe installed on my Windows 10 machine, even though the driver is almost one decade old. After installing the driver I restarted my computer. I opened services.msc and verified I could see the “Tablet Wacom Driver” service running. I opened Inkscape which recognized the Wacom device.

Here are some extra Wacom resources.

Inkscape Setup

I followed steps like these and these to get my Inkscape to support my pressure-sensitive tablet (aka “pen pressure”).

In summary, open Inkscape and choose Edit > Input Devices. Select the Wacom devices, confirm they support pressure-sensitivity, and the Screen option. Click “Save” and restart Inkscape.

Use the Inkscape “Calligraphy” feature by pressing C or pressing Ctrl + F6. Learn more about calligraphy and pressure-sensitivity at this Inkscape tutorial. I just wanted to doodle, but this tutorial’s got me excited about Calligraphy as a worldview!:

Calligraphy is not only fun; it’s a deeply spiritual art that may transform your outlook on everything you do and see.