What do you paint with?

Almost everyone here seems to be artists or so, and you certainly use some high end drawing equipment. Now I am a total newbie, but somehow I can already see that Verve could be a start of a new hobby for me. But I just don't have much money to spend on the hardware. I mean, I have a decent PC, but what I'm looking for is something else to draw with than the mouse.

So, I guess a simple question would be in place: what do you draw with and was it expensive? A specific tablet, a touchpad, something else?
For example, would this do for a hobbyist who is just learning and having fun?
http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos-Small-Tablet-CTL480/dp/B00EN27TCI/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

[Taron]

I believe that would do just fine!
I personally have a "semi-old" Wacom intuos3. It has always done a good job and still is all I have, spilled coffee into it by one of my cats and all...
I wonder, if you could find a used one of that type?! Shouldn't be expensive eiher. It's A4 and therefore quite a bit bigger than the small one, which you will appreciate very quickly.

But, either way, any Wacom is better than a mouse!

Yes I did notice the effective drawing area on the Intuos I linked is extremely small...I know I could get started with it just fine, but I'm thinking I might start craving the good old A4 size pretty soon...thanks for the tip for the Intuos 3 A4, Taron. Seems a bit harder to get hold of a used one...I'm living in FInland so I guess it would have to come from inside the EU for the sake of customs, postage etc.

And then there's this; the big brother of the previous one.
http://eu.shop.wacom.eu/products/intuos/intuos/intuos-pen-und-touch-m/578?c=2213274

This looks veeeeery usable. Now off to count my euros and cents!

[Taron]

Well, looks like it supports pressure sensitivity, that's good. Doesn't look like it supports pen tilt and such, but that's not a total necessity anyway. I'm happy about it, but don't even use it that often unless I do, eh... darned... trees and shrubs and all that. doh!

[Taron]

Finland? Omg, I had a weird kind of dream the other night, in which I could speak countless languages, except Fin...eh..."finnish"? LOL, that's weird to begin with, haha?! Anyway, that and icelandic. Hmmm, now I'm wondering if that's a charming thing to mention or not...hmm...

Anyway, I find it fascinating and awesome! I've never seen the northern lights, you know...I'm so sure one could do an excellent take on those in Verve!

Yes, Finnish is considered to belong to one of the more difficult languages in the world, mostly because of the numerous case suffixes added to the nouns. But hey, I've seen two year olds speak Finnish, so it can't be that bad! Finns on average can actually speak quite many foreign languages; I myself speak fluently Swedish and English and a little bit German. Back in my school days, I was actually thinking German is a hard language to learn - Der Akkusativ, Dative and Der Genetiv were all difficult to me!

Yes, the Nothern Lights are awesome, and one of my dreams is one day to be able to paint them. Yesterday I did clouds for the first time in my life, so...

[Taron]

Ahaha, the Germans and their articles, too, hehe, it's been very strange for me to get into the Croatian language, which I'm still far from "in", but piece by piece... I'm used to Germanic/Romanic languages and the Slavic just totally pushed me out of my knowledge base. Until I looked a bit into Sanskrit, which shocked me as I saw a key between these vastly different appearing languages inside Sanskrit. A number of curious overlaps, but I only remember the feeling.
Anyway, I can't believe those were your first clouds ever, that's for sure! It looks like you're getting comfortable quickly and that's beautiful!

Taron, can you make anything of this model? Is this actually Intuos 3? Hard to decide from the text (even in Finnish ).
http://www.tori.fi/uusimaa/Piirtopoyta_Wacom_Intous_Large_10388696.htm?ca=8&w=3

EDIT: One more question: If I end up getting a smaller Wacom (I mean, somewhat smaller than A4; seems like my budget requires me to start with a smaller version), how do the coordinates of the tablet trasform to the coordinates in screen? I mean, I hope the drawing area doesn't actually represent the whole screen...? Because I think then the resolution would be terrible.

I have a monitor with 1920x1200 resolution, so it would be very clumsy if my smaller-than-A4 Wacom would represent the whole of it.

Pribably stupid questions, but this type of HW is all new to me.

[Taron]

OMG, that seems excellent!!! The price is crazy, too... 200Euro?!? I should steal it away, hahaha! Get it quick!

Believe it or not, but you then would have twice the tablet I'm having for a fraction of the price, I believe. In other words: I'd envy you!

Hmm, maybe I will! You know, I'd get a new Intuos5 Medium (with far less than A4 screen size) for the same prize. But this is waaaaay larger