#im sorry if that was too confusing... i triend my best -bows-

[prar-draws]

Pardon me for asking, but what digital art program do you use? What brushes do you apply for line art? Shading? I'm beginning digital art and I'd love to hear your advice...

Oh, sure!ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ I use Paint Tool SAI and Pixlr Express to art.

My brushes are… Well, one brush. After my blendy one got accidentally deleted I switched to this sole guy;

It’s very easy to handle for me and works good as a color/liner/shader. The dirt02 gives it a delicate texture that you can see on the softer strokes. I also work with an S-1 stabilizer for my strokes.

My canvas tends to be 3000x3000 pixels because that makes it easy to resize and edit the art wihtout much quality loss, (lessenes the visibility of mistakes too.)

While drawing I use multiple layers and the ctrl+z shortcut to keep my tempo and be safe from too many mistakes. I also often use the selection and lasso tools to resize, rotate and free deform my pictures so the proportions look good. When I have an issue with the colors, I use the Filters to adjust hue/saturation/luminescence/contrast etc. 

I also switch the layer modes, most often to lumi and shade (for saturation), shade, luminescence, and overlay. When I want something to be more transparent I adjust the layer opacity.

When I want to color over something I drew previously without going out of line, i use a clipping group or preserve opacity to lock it. 

Clipping groups and overlays also let me apply textures. I draw over the part of the picture where i want the texture, then copypaste the texture onto a layer above and clip group. Then I switch the clipped texture to overlay mode so it becomes mostly transparent and adjust the composition to my liking with filters and changing the layer opacity.

My shades are rough, not blended and really messy, haha. Thats why i compose them together from many layers with varying opacity. Same with highlights.

Also, I periodically organize or divide my layer groups into/with folders. 

After Im done with drawing, coloring and adjusting everything in SAI, I save it and open up Pixlr Express. It’s an online site that lets you apply a whole bunch of stuff on your pictures, for me predominantly crop, resize, focal, text,  color effects, borders and more overlays. It saves only as jpeg, but I can switch the format again in SAI. I also apply small fixes later whenever I wish until the picture is complete.

Hope I helped you a little with understanding my arting process! Remember to draw a whole lot and never give up!! (≧▽≦)/ Even if you will have problems, you will learn with time and practice. Good luck!

Update: Oh, also on time. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself attempting a nicely proportioned, lined, colored, textured and shaded work and end up doing it for roughly 6 to 10 hours. Ofc youll get faster as your art mucles will stretch, but the key here is to just push on instead of abandoning the piece, or splitting it into parts :D

Also, do not delete your art! Even if you think its bad, keep it. Put it in a different folder. It will serve as a concept bin for future art and also will be a tetstament to your art improve/time spent arting!