It’s time! We’re going digital!
Coming up next, I’m doing something I originally said I wouldn’t: I’m going to start providing a little bit of technical advice! While I leave the skills of observation and general art practice to the pros, I know enough about digital art to give my own spin on how to get started. Those of you looking to switch to digital, this is your moment: the Digital Dabbles series. (It’s not a pun, but it’ll do.)
Well, “switch to digital” isn’t really the right phrase. Your art practice should be a blend of digital and traditional work, and there isn’t any one point where I’d recommend totally abandoning a sketchbook. If you’ve always been digital and are fine with that, keep at it, but in general I think everyone should still work with traditional. Mixing both can help you accelerate your skills so much more quickly. You’re often learning a lot more in studies traditionally, while you can apply different kinds of new technical skills digitally.
The foundation of your drawings is almost always that sketch. If your sketch isn’t right, nothing that you do with your linework or painting or shading will be able to cover that up. Sketching digitally is a skill that takes a lot of practice on top of your normal art skills! Besides, you can mix the two by doing your sketch on paper and taking a photo to add clean lines and finish it digitally. I’ve got an older video about this here.
Anyway! Here’s what we’re going to get into. I’m still going to make my regular motivational videos too, and these digital series videos will be shorter and releasing faster, like the original purpose of my video series. (hhehee) These topics aren’t necessarily all standalone videos, and some might be many videos. (You mean you didn’t write them all in advance?) But if you’re a skilled digital artist already, I hope you’ll watch too! I’ve observed lots of different tricks from many different artists and think there’s always something new to learn. Something I often have found lacking in digital art instruction is what people actually do to apply things. Like, classes might tell you what layers are and what they do, but what you really want to know is how you use layers to create your works, how you split your drawings up and group them, how you blend them together. Anyone can look up the documentation for how an art app works for a bedtime story. What’s not shared often enough is what actual artists are doing with them.
You might notice I have blending modes on here a lot. I think they’re one of the most powerful digital tools that often are avoided because they look scary. I’ve come so close to talking about blending modes in other videos, but decided that before I can do that, I need to talk about other subjects, and… here we are. I will be sure to focus on the visuals for this series. You will see me actually using art apps as opposed to me just… talking at you the whole time.
Anyway next up we’ll be talking about art apps and the kinds of tablets commonly used. If you’ve got some software you’ve been trying already and like, stick with it! If you’re feeling a little unsure or would like to try something new for this series, I’ll have some recommendations. But don’t wait on me: keep up your traditional art practice! Every single sketch you make will improve your skills no matter what. Go do some doodling, and I’ll see you back here in just a bit!
| Production Info | |
|---|---|
| Music | Johnny Gorillas - Green Tomatoes |
| VRChat World | Sea Breeze by WispyWoo |
| VRChat Avatar | Vulper by Royalty, Meaty, and Reval |