#I was experimenting with pattern brushes on fire alpaca

[zip-toonz]

Art Trade piece for @milkofjeg !

[sonreiv]

Digital anon again, in ur experience what tablet works best?? Do u ever have problems with the whole connecting tablet to computer process, any warnings and advice for starting digital?? And (sorry for all the questions) what do u use to draw digital ??

Hey nony! I got a bit lenghty so I’m going under the cut.

 I’ve only ever owned two tablets so I can’t say I know a lot-- I’ve had a Genius MousePen i608X which is fairly cheaper than a Wacom, but unnecessarily large with a tiny work space and the pen was battery powered and super fragile, so if you’re a clumsy idiot like me who drops his things on a whim, it doesn’t last. And I think they don’t even make Genius tablet anymore, so if you were to buy one it had to be via a third party site. But it’s cheap and the driver works fine, same pressure sensitivity as an intuos.

My current one is a Intuos pen small CTL480L by Wacom. It’s small but just enough for me. The cable is tiny on purpose so they make you buy the wireless kit, but I just bought an USB extensor. It comes with 3 extra nibs in a hidden compartment that no one tells you that exists, and the nib packs are ridiculously expensive and might not even ship to your country (they don’t ship to mine) but fret not, there’s tutorials online that teach you how to make DYI nibs with trimmer line and it’s super cheap and easy. The driver will sometimes randomly fail and not read the pressure (usually when you had the tablet connected for a while without using it) and you have to restart them via Services (if on windows) which is a bit annoying but it’s quick to solve. Wacom is the go-to for most artists sssso from experience and from what I always hear I’d recommend that but!

I came across this post about a tablet that’s fairly cheaper and pontentially superior than a wacom’s so it’s worht to take a look! The cheapness factor depends on where you live though bc the shipping turned out to be more expensive than a wacom tablet itself.

Now whichever you decide in the end, from my experience you probs don’t absolutely need a big ass active area and 2k pressure levels. If you get one that has that, neat!! But it’s less about the tool and more about what you do with it. I’ve never tried a more expensive tablet but I’m doing fine with the one I got now which is the simplest tier in wacom.

About the installing process, it’s chill. The same process as installing any programs in your computer. I’ve heard from other people with Genius tablets that the driver simply won’t work, but with Wacom you should be safe. The driver derps sometimes like mentioned before, but you just have to go to Services and reboot it, takes a few seconds. Once the driver is properly installed in your computer, you just plug in the tablet via USB and it starts automatically, get to drawing.

I use Paint Tool SAI for making art. It’s a paid program, but my cheap teen ass pirated it a few years ago orz others also commonly Photoshop, Manga Studio and Fire Alpaca (which is a free one). I’m set on SAI cause it’s simple enough and made specifically for making digital art. I use Manga Studio when I want to do effects like patterned backgrounds.

About tips on starting digital... Mann it’s an entire new world, I could sit and go on and on! I’ve been drawing digitally since 2014 and there’s still things I don’t know. The most basic advices I can give are (most of these applied to a SAI user):

Set your canvas to be 4000x4000px large and with a 300 ppi resolution. You don’t have to use the entire space, and you should size it down before uploading, but a larger canvas has better quality and minor mistakes are less visible.

When filling in base colors, use the magic wand to select an entire area and the select/deselect brushes to trim your selection. Saves you a lot of trouble. (ps works better if you’re doing a clean, “closed” lineart)

Try different brush settings! Sometimes what isn’t working is the kind of brush you’re using. Play around, look up what setting the artist you like use and you might find a brush that makes you comfortable when drawing (took me 12 years to realize the brush I used to sketch was making it harder for me).

SAVE. ALL. THE TIME. Set one of your express keys to be a saving button and soon enough it’ll become an almost unconscious habit.

Set a bunch of hotkeys to make your life easier! I don’t use them enough tbh, but it’s good to have some for flipping and rotating the canvas (I use tab to flip the canvas and Q+W to rotate counter-clockwise and clockwise). Always flip the canvas during the sketching process because when flipped you can notice mistakes more easily!

Try to avoid using black and white to shade and highlight your art. I mean, when choosing a darker/lighter shade for shadows/highlights, try moving the mouse sideways and changing the color a bit, rather than just choosing the same color but closer to white/black.

SAVE A FUCK TON OF TUTORIALS, EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO USE THEM NOW, SAVE THEM SOMEWHERE AND LOOK AT THEM AND EXPERIMENT! There’s SO many things you can learn and you can only grow with digital art by experimenting. I struggle a lot actually to step out of my comfort zone and try new stuff which leads to my art style evolving faster than my digital process orz but I’m trying!!

It WILL feel awkward and you WILL feel like it doesn’t look good enough, and that is normal. You move to a whole new medium and it’s like you’re learning how to art all over again. You have expectations on how your art will look like, and you’ll be a bit upset because it doesn’t look how you wanted to yet. It’s normal. Might take months, maybe even a couple years for you to find yourself and what works for you digitally, but it’s because only YOU know what your expectations are, to everyone else it’ll be an awesome process of improvement. Look up a bunch of tutorials, watch speedpaints and see how people do their thing, try different brushes. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask again or DM me directly! I still have a lot to learn and experiment but I can share what I know! Hope this helped a little!