#so hard to make a good highlighter color digitally imo

[thestrangecarrotcake]

i just remembered that when i originally drew my merMay drawing i was like,, bothered by the fact that i was using colors i had saved to my palette??

like bestie what do you think you saved the colors FOR???

[iraprince]

hello! do you have any advice for switching from traditional art to digital? (i recently ran out of supplies so im relegated to my computer lol) i hope youre having a good day!

i sure do!

first off i really recommend clip studio paint, but i also recommend u wait for it to go on sale. it goes 50% off a few times a year, so imo it’s worth waiting, but it also is usually on sale for only a few days so u have to stay on top of it. they usually announce on twitter etc. the tools don’t make the artist and obviously it doesn’t Really matter what program u end up settling on, i’ve just been really pleased with CSP and i wanted to recommend it

second: nothing that u can do with digital art programs/tools is cheating and it took me way too long to really internalize + understand that. copy-pasting stuff instead of redrawing it, using symmetry rulers, using transform/ctrl+T to stretch or squash slightly off anatomy instead of starting over -- when i was first getting into digital i A. didn’t know u could do this stuff and B. felt weirdly guilty doing it once i figured it out, as if i was a worse artist for using the tools that are literally built into the software or that it was lazy or dishonest to do so. that, it turns out, is bullshit. any drawing is just a constant series of decision-making and a lot of digital tools just help u make or retract or edit those decisions faster than traditional does. it’s not better or worse, it’s just different, and it’s worth ur time to figure out which of those differences are the most convenient and useful. this stuff exists for a reason! use it! save ur wrists and ur patience and ur time!

figure out file organization early, because it’s something u don’t have to deal with irt traditional art and so it probably won’t come naturally, but it also makes ur life harder to have a desktop swarming with wip files that are all titled “kjsrhrfgdhgj.psd” or whatever. some ppl sort into folders by date; for me it works better to sort by content (i.e. i have folders for tvrn stuff, patreon stuff, different fandoms, dnd/ttrpg stuff, “misc ocs” for characters i don’t draw much and “misc fandoms” for one-off fanart that doesn’t merit its own folder, etc etc; this is what makes it easiest for me to find stuff, but ur system might end up different.) i admittedly still name my files keysmashes if it’s personal stuff rather than work/commissions, but at least it’s all sorted into a category where i can quickly find it again anyway

also, u can hybridize traditional and digital! i frequently like my traditional pencil lines better than what i can do digitally, so i often scan them in, turn them into lineart, and color digitally (here’s a tutorial on how i prep that). but even if u don’t have a scanner, a carefully taken phone photo with high contrast can still be used the same way. i tend to lay my sketchbook flat on the floor in front of a window, squat down and hold my phone as level as i can while i’m taking the pic, and then i blast it in my phone’s built in gallery editor (highlights/shadows and contrast) before sending it to myself and doing the same thing w tone curve/levels in csp. it’s not perfect, but it’s presentable, and it can be a good way to ease urself in if ur feeling frustrated w the learning curve on digital draftsmanship.

oh, and this tip is really small but it’s ended up being rly helpful for me: resist the urge to zoom in way past 100% scale view just bc u can. if there are times where u absolutely need to, sure, whatever, but there’s no point in regularly tweaking tiny things pixel by pixel at 250% zoom bc nobody who looks at ur art is gonna see that and ur just bloating ur own time spent on things and creating unnecessary stress for urself!! if 100% zoom doesn’t give u the control u want, that may just mean u need to work larger to begin with.

set up a comfortable workspace with a Good chair. look up proper posture and try to stick to it. i know we’re all gay and it sucks to sit in a chair properly but otherwise ur gonna hurt urself. take even more frequent breaks than u do when drawing traditionally! screen bad!

also, if ur tablet has a way to calibrate pressure, try that out. a lot of them are set in a way where you have to press really hard to get full line width and over time it can really seriously strain ur wrist; u can’t manually set pressure in traditional tools (besides like. using softer lead i guess lmfao) but u can with tablet pens and u should try it, bc if u can use a lighter touch overall it really goes a long way towards preventing injury in the long term.

this is all the stuff that came to mind immediately; i’m sure there are tons of basics i haven’t covered, depending on how much of a transition this is for u, but there are a lot of tutorials out there written by ppl more patient and more educationally-oriented than myself so you’d be doing a better service to urself seeking those out than if i were to try to clumsily emulate them lol. good luck + have fun!

[replaykoo]

📁 ᨳ how I study in college :

⠀˒⠀ methods and tipps that might be helpful

# contents

taking notes

organizing your note

reading texts

how to structure a study session

useful apps

more

𖥻 taking notes

I guess the most important thing when studying is how to take your notes. I know there are quite many note taking methods and I’ve tried a few of them (like the one where you section your paper in two collums etc) but usually they just didn’t rly work for me and made things more complicated.

So the question you have to ask yourself is why you even take notes ! Usually that’s for write down key elements from a textbook, lecture etc to remember them later. And for that your notes should be simple, structured and easy to read/understand. A big chunk of words won’t rly help you (imo)

So here’s how I do it. I take „smart notes“. (learned that method from a yt video by mariana‘s study corner). You basically translate bigger ideas/concepts into single sentences. (Or multiple grammatically easy ones). The key is just to make them as simple as possible so you can quickly read over them and understand what the concept explains.

so I keep my sentences simple

one sentence per line / bullet point

I do use → , =, + or similar symbols to add mini sentences and show connections

𖥻 organizing your notes

I’d say if you can, it’s best to take your notes digitally. It’s easy to move things around and re-organize, keep things in sections/categories and you can ofc edit it afterwards if you need to. My fav programm is OneNote bcs you can make great folders, sections, books, sub-pages etc. But notion is also a great alternative (both are free)

I personally have my notes sorted like this :

- major

- minor

course 1

course 2

course 3

lesson week 1

lesson week 2

→ lecture (notes)

→ lecture powerpoint/ dossier

→ literature + notes

→ questions I have or additional info the teacher gave during the q&a session

I’m sure there are many other great organizing systems but this one works quite good for me so far.

𖥻 reading texts

When reading from textbook or just texts that have structured paragraphs I always read the paragraph FIRST and highlight the key word(s) later. This is rly useful if yours someone who tends to just highlight the whole page. It forces you to think about what the key word/concept was. (With paragraphs I mean about 10-ish sentences. Doing any more is kinda a waste of time bcs you’ll have to go back all the time. So keep the chunks small)

While reading & highlighting I don’t take my notes yet. I finish a sub-chapter or topic and then go back and take my notes (like explained above) I find this useful bcs you’ll already know more about the concept/topic when you’re taking your notes, instead of just summarizing the text as you go.

𖥻 how to structure a study session

For study I use the pomodoro technique. You study for 25 min, then take a 5 min break. Then study again, break, study, break .... After 4 study sessions you can take a longer break (15min)

To plan my weeks/days I made a weekly schedule for myself where I marked live lectures/zoom webinars, when I watch lecture recordings, read my literature, do weekly assignments & exercises, study sessions, weekly deadlines and just stuff that usually happens weekly. Since my college is 90% online I can plan all my time as I want to so I made my own schedule.

If you have exams upcoming it’s also a great idea to make a study plan. For that I take a monthly overview and mark my exams BiG in a specific color. Then in the sams color I write down what exercises etc I wanna do each day. (Make sure to mark these smaller or in a different way than the exam so it’s super obvious when the exam will be ans you don’t get confused) If you have multiple exams in a short period this method is super useful. Use different colors for each subject/course

I used to make these on paper (and not digitally) so I just made myself a 7:4 grid and marked the days. I colored the exam day all in the color of the subject. For the study notes each day I just highlighted them in the specific color

𖥻 useful apps & websites

For the pomodoro technique I mentioned earlier I use a website called pomofucus.io ! It’s basically a timer

I also heard a lot about this app called forest ! It’s a study timer that helps you to stay focused and off your phone. It costs 2$ tho

For my weekly plan I use the free google calendar ! You can make color codes categories and the design is rly nice in my opinion.

If you need to study vocabulary I can only recommend quizlet !! They have an app & website both free. I’ve been using it for >6 years and it’s helped me so much through highschool. It has different study modes like flashcards, learning-mode, quiz etc. You can also study sets that other people made, so if you wanna study just some random vocab you can look through these. I’ve found some of the textbooks I used so this saved me quite some time.

Also don’t underestimate study or 101 YouTube channels. I usually looked for some explanation YouTube videos for subjects like physics or chemistry and they always helped me a lot.

𖥻 more

I know sometimes you jsut don’t feel like sitting down to study. Studying is hard sometimes. But procrastinating isn’t the solution. Just think about how you’ll feel the next day. If you put off your work on the next day that means you HAVE TO DO IT the next day. But do you think you’ll be more motivated the next day? Probably not, right ... So just do the work as soon as possible. Your future self will thank you.

𖥻 ending notes

So, I hope you could learn a big from this. These are in no way perfect methods but I think they’re quite practical and helpful. Also feel free to comment if you know other great methods !! I’m always open to try out new stuff c:

Let me know if you liked this guide and what other things you’d like to see on my blog ◡̈

໑ see you next time ✧ またね ഒ