#ive downloaded procreate for drawing and its so much fun!!

[ryemackerel]

any tips for starting on digital art? I've got a little wacom tablet and downloaded krita and I'm having fun but it feels like theres some kind of barrier that isnt letting me transfer traditional skills I've learnt over to digital

hey!! so i used to be exactly like this a ton of years back. my first time really getting serious with digital was around 2015, but i definitely remember how difficult it was transferring my traditional art skills to digital. here’s some advice :]

at first, although it will be difficult to get over that barrier, LOTS of practice will help you get into the groove of things again. going to digital art after being solely traditional changed my style a lot to begin with. with new mediums/programs, your art style is *bound* to change a little bit. at first i didn’t really like how my digital style looked, but i started to realize the more i drew, the more my art skills started to shine through. switching up mediums (ex: from traditional to digital) might even help you acquire a new art style that you might like :D

another thing! before i used a tablet for the first time back in 2022, i used to love just drawing with my finger on my phone and use pencil + paper. as soon as i started using a wacom tablet, the feeling was incredibly weird? though, i always liked to treat my tablet as its own pencil and paper.

trying to visualize this helped me immensely with traditional to digital. since you did traditional beforehand, i think starting off with a pen and tablet is a great gateway to starting digital art. pen+paper vs pen+tablet is almost identical to each other, the only thing being that the pen+tablet is more digital.

and! with digital, there is absolutely *no limits* to what you can put on your canvas. i highly implore you to experiment with as many brushes as you like, edit your art with effects, add textures, and go crazy with the shading and lighting. :) eventually you will definitely find a brush you’ll love, and from there things will feel much more comfortable to figure out.

again!! this takes a lot of practice and effort to really make your art skills shine through, and it will take a while to finally get used to it and make a piece you’re going to like. but eventually you might find yourself enjoying digital art, and i hope this advice guides you along that journey <3

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(somewhat related but my switch from wacom tablet to ipad was SO rocky. it took ages for me to try and transfer my tablet skills to my ipad, and procreate felt uncomfortable for me to use. however, eventually i got over that barrier and now i use procreate and ipad as my main sources :] hopefully this helps inspire you)

(left: november-december 2022 vs right: november-december 2023!! one full year of using procreate!)

(the old ones had duller colors and less defined sharpness/lines. they look cool but i wasn’t proud of how dull they were. in the new ones, i feel like ive started gaining a mastery of the program and my art is now super vibrant again :] )

[derpycatsu]

hello if this is not too presumptuous. do you have any tips on how you shade- any brushes you use or techniques? I adore how soft yet defined your shading is so much

hiii ^_^ ill try to word this the best i can im not the best at explaining my process LMAO… i draw so much i dont really think about it (thank you btw!!!)

ummmm as far as colors go i pick whatever i want. i never eyedrop from a reference because i dont care. if the color im using is close enough to the characters palette im using it LOL (i have like a million saved color palettes that i always pick from too) i use the default paint brushes on procreate that ive slightly edited + pencil brushes ive downloaded/bought from other artists to get a softer look to my art. this can be achieved with any brush in its own way though and you just have to play around with them. there are so many to choose from! ive used tons of different brushes throughout my life. there is no particular way to do it

this is a pretty basic weird explanation of how i do my shading….. again with colors i pick whatever i think looks good xP i like to move around the color wheel as things get darker so that my colors dont look muddy and that theres a wider variety of them in whatever im coloring. (and dont be afraid to use any colors that are unfamiliar to you :) they are your friends) so like if im coloring something yellow ill move towards green or orange (depending on what it is). also i dont use any type of blending layer when shading (like multiply) i do mess around with filters when im done with the piece i just dont use them for shading specifically. i love to play around with HSB and brightness/contrast too. its how i get my art so saturated and warm. NOT saying you have to/should do any of that but its how my process goes LOL

one thing that has definitely helped me improve my coloring is that i stopped using white/black. i use an extremely light version of something like yellow or blue / dark red or brown or blue etc etc. again NOT saying you have to do that But It Has Helped Me

heres like. a visual example on how i do my coloring idk ⬇️ i didnt really know how to put this part into words

anddddd thats kinda all i got for advice….. my big thing is to just keep experimenting and playing around with everything! find something you like doing and dive right into it! i hope this helped in some kind of way and i wish you the best of luck on your artistic journey. remember to have fun with your art too :^) thats the most important part

[cheswirls]

Hi can I ask what programs you use? I would love to use something thats not as pricey

hi !! for art or gfx? if its art ive sold my soul to clip studio paint. i think its normally around 50usd to buy a pro license, but i got it on sale so it ended up being 20usd.

if you want something free i tried autodesk's sketchbook between making the switch from firealpaca to csp. it has a really great interface, v high quality, good brushes, etc. iunno why autodesk made it free but it certainly (to my knowledge?) didnt downgrade the quality. i still have some wips where the sketches were made in sketchbook hah. i rly.. need to go thru that folder more.

im saying all this as a mac user, so if you have windows, while i think all these should work? on windows too?? another one ive heard tons about and recently had a chance to try myself is paint tool sai. its another more complex drawing program like csp except. for windows. i rly love the brush options sai gives you, esp for custom ones. always trying to emulate them in csp but theres jus something not there, never adds up well. sai has like a month long trial version thats free, off the top of my head iunno how much it is but its NOT expensive at all. maybe around the same as csp.

(i jus realized sai 2 recently released this year so all info i know is for og sai. sai 2 might be more costly)

sai i think is also what ppl use as a low-grade gfx editor. supports animation?? should at least??? but ye there is a lot to do there.

if you like ps but dont wanna pay for it photopea is a browser emulator of ps. kinda weird to work in a browser + does require internet but it does function exactly the same. can open up an existing project. can export things. jus. thru google. magic.

i used gimp for the longest time to edit stuff. its still lurking around here somewhere. the bad thing abt gimp is the more you add to it the longer it takes to read thru everything and load. i had a tonnn of assets installed so it always took a small eternity to even want to start up. past that i still think its a good program. if you want something thats smaller but functions better try seahorse!! that might be dated actually lmao. does anyone still own seahorse.

tbh my computer doesnt support the latest cc updates at all lmao so all my adobe software i have is ripped 2019 cc stuff. if you like an adobe program n wanna use it do yourself a favor and download an older version. better/free/less time-consuming/easier to deal with. if its not a cc version you dont even have to rip it. jus download that bitch n start it up. (if it is cc you gotta key it so you can use it after trial period, but its not that hard, jus an extra step rly)

thats all i got haha hope that helped some. if anyone wants to add on go for it.

[annypuff]

Hello! How are you? I hope you are doing well ☺ i had a question for you! I want to get into digital drawing, but I don't have a tablet, and honestly not much money either HAHA. Do you have any recommendations on what type of tablets I should be looking at? Or even some tips? I would really appreciate it! Your art is amazing

hi!! i can tell you personally what i’ve been through if that will help!  sorry, i get super into these things!!! lol so this is gonna be long, sip some water and grab a snack lol

i started digitally drawing in 2005 on ms paint with just a mouse haha.. and it wasn’t until maybe like 2009 i got a wacom bamboo fun tablet! which isn’t the kind with a display. I got it for like, $60-70CAD at the time, at one point had to replace it but it was still the same style of tablet.. and i had been drawing with it for over a decade! I was using ms paint but at some point i switched over to adobe’s flash (like an old version that i was able to get for free) and then paint tool SAI (which i got a “portable” version of... aka pirated lmao) anyways, wacom is on the pricier side but ive heard many great things about the brand huion? they’re a cheaper alternative and i believe they’re just as good! you definitely should watch some youtube videos about them though! so many of my friends (who are just casual artists, or just starting out!) just bit the bullet and got huion branded stuff and they love it so far.

however, some people have come up to me about how they can’t seem to fathom drawing without looking at their hand, so they opt for display tablets. this is where even ipads and other mobile tablets can come into play to. so i bought my display tablet, an old wacom cintiq, secondhand, just like, 2 yrs ago and i love it so much and i totally understand why people would rather skip the regular tablet “phase” and go straight into display tablets. it’s pretty much the closest thing to putting pen to paper except, digitally! but it is EXTREMELY pricey! you’re essentially buying a powered monitor lol depending on the sizes and brand, it can go anywhere between $300-2500! im going to mention huion again bc, yup!! very good alternative, more affordable brand! now if you’re thinking mobile tablets, i just recently got myself the samsung tab s6 lite, it’s a good mid-tier price and they support many other drawing programs and recently they released clip studio paint (what i use) for android and its fine so far! there’s many other mobile drawing software out there too, i suggest looking up on youtube as well as i cant seem to recall the names lol. but honestly, i only ever use it if i wanted to draw digitally on the go lol. this is very privileged of me. i know a lot of artists solely use their ipads and procreate, which i get why it’s so amazing but literally like that post i reblogged had said, it doesn’t matter what you have, it’s how you use it!!

currently i use clip studio paint as my software, but i bought it (on sale!! it goes on sale a few times a year) lol after i started making a stable income (again i feel very blessed) i also got SAI officially hahaha. i literally don’t know how to use photoshop properly :’D GIMP is a free drawing program, i think it reminds me of photoshop though so i didn’t really use it much. I actually haven’t gone around looking at any other drawing software, as i just keep advertising CSP to my friends and they also bought it.. so i would once again resort to youtube for that lol but i love CSP bc they have built in 3d models you can pose!! lol and backgrounds and other assets you can download, etc... when it’s on sale i goes down i think to 70? maybe less, i can’t recall. i don’t wanna advocate uh.. “portable” versions but uh... there’s that option too ;) (not sure if CSP has it but i think SAI’s is around somewhere on the internet...)

in the end, it really is an investment if it’s something you want to hone!! huion is something you should definitely look into and if you want to keep doing it in the long run, you can upgrade much later! I would say, if you can somehow test how well you can do with a non-display tablet, i would just go with that for budget purposes. if it wasn’t for my impulsive nature, i probably wouldve stuck with a non-display for a very long time lol.

oh also this is me assuming you have a laptop or a computer, if you’re running solely on mobile then an ipad alternative would be the samsung s6 tab lite, or anything similar, esp if you’re just going to be using it for drawing!

im so sorry this is so long LMAO my INFP ass just wants to be as helpful as i can... TLDR: try huion! LOL and trial versions of drawing programs!! to see which you feel more comfortable with hehe