There are so many examples of art improving so many aspects of our life.

That could be through UI design, improving the way we navigate the internet and brand ourselves; interior design, improving our comfort and quality-of-life within our home; and cooking, improving our dish's aesthetics and perceived taste; there's no doubt that art and visual design play a key role in how we live our lives.

However, its not always true that technology improves art. It's especially clear with the current rise of generative AI, it's hard to show support for both art and technology without someone asking you to pick sides.

But today, I want to share gaming's effect on digital painting, and how I use my trusty Nintendo Switch to level-up my drawing process.

So, ever since bought my second drawing tablet in 2016, I've always been annoyed how much more difficult it is to draw digitally in comparison to good ol' pen and paper. Just sketching with a tablet is so much more laborious than just whipping out a pencil and scrawling on some spare notebook paper.

But why is that?

I found that a lot of time was spent simply pausing and reaching for CTRL+Z to undo a mistake, or hitting a hotkey to move from one brush to another. It's so unnatural, and lets not forget the desk space required. At the very least, you need ample space to place your drawing tablet, keyboard, mouse, and monitor, all within arms-reach.

As a college undergrad dorming in a triple, that's impossible. A nonviable. Out of the question.

There had to be something better than the 6 buttons on your tablet or pausing your drawing to tap the tiny, on-screen, "zoom" button.

Thats when I watched a few documentaries of manga artists in Japan. I noticed one artist was using something weird in their off-hand, which looked similar to this:

Immediately, I needed to know what this was and how I can get my hands on it. So I went on a quest to find it--opening 50 tabs in the process--only to find that it cost as much as my tablet.

That's when my weary eyes fell on this:

Finally, now my art skills will magically improve and I too can be a professional artist without spending another $200! (jk)

No, but really, when I tried this out, it was just much easier and much more enjoyable to draw and that is probably the best outcome for any beginner digital artist. For those more experienced, it shaves down a lot of time.

So, let's see how it's done.

Ok, you want to use your Switch controller to level up your workflow.

This guide will assume you're not living under a rock (or pre-2006) and you're running Windows Vista, 7, 10, 11, etc.

Sorry Arch users.

Oh, but you're going to need Bluetooth. Thats the only way Joycons can connect to your computer. Most modern computers that support Wi-Fi should support Bluetooth as well, but if you don't, you can buy a dongle somewhere like Amazon.

You're going to need to download a program that can map your Switch's controls to something useful, like undo.

There are lots of options out there, reWASD, JoyToKey, and antimicrox. They all have pretty much the same features, but different business models.

Personally, I use JoyToKey because it has a simple interface, layers feature, and combo command support. And it will do all this for free. Do you see the theme?

After you download the setup, you can open it and you should see something like this:

We now need to connect our joycon. Again, to do this, your computer needs to support Bluetooth.

If you're running Windows 10/11, you can open the Settings app and head to the Network & Internet tab.

Now put your joycon in search mode by holding the button on the side of your joycon until the lights strobe back-and-forth.

Hit Add device and select Bluetooth.

At this point, your joycon should show up. Select it to finish the connection.

And all done! You could probably use your joycon to play games on the PC, but we need to do a bit more if we want it to help us out in Photoshop.

Now that our controller is connected, let's head back to JoyToKey and customize what our mighty joycon can do.

If our joycon is connected and we hit some buttons, we should see what we pressed in JoyToKey. So now, we can choose a button or direction like left, and assign an action to it.

Select the button you want to map and hit Edit button assignment.

For simple keypresses, stick to the first Keyboard tab and edit the first box to your desired key.

In this example, I mapped left to R which allows to reset my zoom level in Photoshop by nudging the joystick.

Awesome.

What if I want to use a tool for a very short time, only while I hold down the button (ex. eraser)?

Well, that's a common use case and you can set that up on the Keyboard (Multi) tab and selecting [Input1] when the button is released (and [Input2] when it's pressed). This creates a sort of temporary toggle like so:

In this example, when I hold this button, I hold E (eraser in Photoshop). And when I release, it hits B (brush in Photoshop) to return to my tool.

The sky is the limit with this program, so explore what it can offer and go wild.

If you're going to use your joycons for anything other than drawing, or you're just fed up with how UP is RIGHT and LEFT is DOWN, you're going to want a proper joycon driver.

I'm not going to go into all the details, but my favorite program is BetterJoy. It's simple and plays well with JoyToKey and other games.

The joystick is too sensitive. It keeps activating commands with barely any movement!

You can fix this issue by adjusting the threshold needed for activation:

Now you should be good to go! Get out there and put your gaming skills to good use! 🙂‍↕️

Using a joycon is not some silver bullet that will make your a better artist and it will take some time before you're used to working with one, but don't worry about it.

Especially if you're using one of those tablets without a screen, it's been noted that some individuals never quite get a hang of those and their digital art pales in comparison to their physical art. Or at least until they get a tablet with a screen.

All I hope is that after following this guide, you enjoy digital art much more and I hope you create some awesome stuff.

Don't forget to help out your fellow artists and creators by spreading the knowledge. If this helps you, it will help them (unless they just love their keyboard).