Colourful sketches were possible on Sandra Grandison's C64

Drawing and tracing pictures using Super Sketch with your Commodore 64 can be great fun. It's easy to use and for a reasonable price provides hours of pleasure.

Super Sketch comes in a neatly packed box with all the necessary bits to create your masterpiece. With your starter kit comes an owner's manual, a quick reference card, some drawings, a Graphic Master cartridge and a warranty card.

Measuring 360cm x 251cm x 38cm, Super Sketch is securely housed in a sturdy cardboard box. The tablet itself, made of plastic, has several parts.

At the top end of the device are a number of keys:

Lift - there are two of these keys (for left-handed or right-handed people) which, when pushed, allow you to move the control arm without drawing on the screen, or to escape from the menu and return to the drawing.

Release - the long bar in the centre lifts the paper clamps on each side of the tablet to hold a sheet of paper either for drawing or tracing.

Menu - when the Menu key is pressed, any current activity stops and the main menu appears on the left side of the screen. The Menu is a list of colours and commands that can be used while you draw.

Select - this button tells the computer to select a command or colour while in menu mode. Select is also used to tell the computer to use the currently selected feature while in drawing mode.

Control arm and pointer - the control arm moves the pen holder around the tablet. The computer always knows exactly where this pointer is - it's used as your drawing utensil for all functions.

This is easy as using a games cartridge - but with a few more bits to get you started. With the C64 switched off, plug the software cartridge into the cartridge slot at the back of the computer. Then take the cord from the graphics pad and plug it into the joystick port.

If you have a disk drive, printer or monitor they can be connected in the normal way. With all the connections made, all you have to do is switch on.

The 37-page owner's manual contains all you need to start you on your way to becoming a Picasso.

In a clear, easy-to-follow style, the standard controls and other features of Super Sketch are explained with hints to guide you. And to save time there's a quick reference card to tell you what's on the main and expert menus.

If your drawing capabilities are anything like mine and only stretch to matchstick men, odd-looking trees and box-type houses, you need the starter kit to get going. It includes sketches of a bluebird, an Island Rover and a cottage, all of varying difficulty.

I attempted to draw and colour the bluebird. First I held down the release bar to slide the sketch of the bluebird under the control arm and paper clamps. Then I turned the C64 on and the Super Sketch title screen came up. Next I depressed the Menu key and instantly the title screen was replaced with a drawing screen and the main Menu.

Since the Graphics Master software automatically starts with the colour blue and is in Draw mode, I was ready to go. Tracing and colouring the bird proved difficult.

I held down the Lift key to remove the Menu from the screen - then, holding down the Lift button, I positioned the pointer of the control arm over the outline.

The next step was to release the Lift button and trace the outline of the bird with the pointer. As I traced the outline of the bird it started to appear on the screen, but I soon ran into problems as the screen wasn't big enough to complete the outline.

To colour the bird I depressed the Menu key and the main Menu appeared on the left side of the screen. By using the control arm, I located the flashing arrow at fill. On pressing the select key, the area around the word fill turned from grey to black. Then I pressed the Lift key to exit from the Menu mode and positioned the cursor in the area enclosed by the blue lines.

To complete the drawing I then pressed the select key on the graphics pad to tell the computer to start filling at the location of the cursor and the bird appeared in brilliant blue.

A zoom facility gives you an enlarged view of the image being created around the area of the cursor. As I drew an image I could see the line formed in the zoom window.

When I tried to draw in that corner of the screen, the zoom window jumped out of my way and went to the upper corner of the screen.

I found Super Sketch easy to us and it wasn't long before I could draw and colour my own pictures. My main quibble is that I found the control arm a bit stiff to operate at times. Apart from that, it's a reasonable buy for some fun drawing: in terms of a business tool, however, I think there are more sophisticated instruments to do the job.