Digital Arts: Ramblings of a newbie

Posted by : Zabran Adam Friday 20 September 2013

My latest art as of this writing

Okay....digital arts...arts created using a computer. Well, it's a fairly new thing to me in my life. I started to try digital arts only 2-3 years ago. Before that, I only drew sketches and do tones with pencils (thanks to my mother who taught me my 1st light and shadow pencil shading to me). I RARELY do pencil colours cause I suck at it.

Microsoft Pain-OH NO!

Well, that is the general consensus regarding using MS Paint to do artworks. People just treat it as a plaything for the 90s kids to waste time upon on the family's computer. It's kinda true though, the tools and features are VERY basic. There is no layer functions too. So yeah, it's quite the inferior product.

Anyways, I still used it as my 1st program to draw digitally (mainly because I have no other software at that time). I took a picture from a manga and decided to colour it. Well....it took forever. And the end result? AHAHAHA, only one soul have feasted his eyes on it. I PM the artwork through Facebook. Now only 2 (including me) people knew how that horrible artwork looks like.

GIMP

GIMP, a free image editing tool. Some call it the poor man's Photoshop. Well, the only reason I used it because my friends was using it....and it was free. So I decided to give it a try.

I tried the layers. and it was much easier. I started to to like digital art. But alas. I never used this software for long.

My GIMP colouring practice. I still used manga images to practice on. I only used thee burn and dodge tools for the ~~non-existant~~ shading.

Scanning artworks

Well, since all my previous exercises are just manga images that I colour, I decided to do my own drawings and colour it myself. Thankfully, I have a scanner at my house, so I proceeded to draw on paper like I used to, and ink them with technical pens, and scan them. But it was hard to get a good scan with clear lines and crisp contrast, which was my main source of complain.

Paint Tool SAI

Alas, after some research and googling, I stumble upon this software. Many recommended it, especially for sketching and drawing purposes. It's not free though. But it's really good. It's extremely lightweight and resource friendly (it can run on my toaster of a netbook). The layout is simple and uncluttered, straight to the point.

Anyways, I started to do my own drawings. Even though I scanned it, when I opened it using SAI. The bucket tool is not detecting areas very well, so I painstakingly use the curve tool to re-do every outlines of the drawings I scan.

Clickclickclickclickclickclick until the whole artworks finished.

The end result for all those clickings.

Aaaand finish!

I used this after that, I colored it using bucket and stuff. I used this method and trained reeeaaall hard to get better.

One can still produce a good digital artwork without a mouse. It just takes patience, time and practice. Don't give up!

Drawing Tablet

After getting good at my digital art, I decided to expand my potential further and purchase a drawing tablet. After asking recommendations, test-driving and borrowing my friend's draw tab, I decided to buy the most basic and cheap Bamboo tablet available.

I already practiced a bit with my friend's draw tab, so I already had a running start with mine. It didn't take that long for me to be familiar with (it took around a week). I definitely helped a lot in my drawing, now I can do more complex textures and have more control in shading. I also do all of my sketches digitally now too. So my scanner is pretty much of little use now (but you will always be my treasure, my trusty little scanner!)

Sketches are now digital!

Lots of effects doable using drawtabs

I'm still learning the tricks of digital art and will always strive for the better! So expect more from me. Follow my blog and deviantART (links in the contacts section on the homepage)

Thanks for your time~

{ 1 comments... read them below or add one }

Picollo Tiwas9 September 2014 at 03:27
awesome :D
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