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Something is calling you to change, to switch directions, to follow your passion, to finally do what you were put here to do:
Good at it. You’re concerned about the looks your friends will give you when you tell them that you’re giving up traditional art, paints, and brushes to start digital drawing instead.
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If you already own a computer, you can practice drawing digital art without buying one. However, your computer should meet some system requirements to work with art programs.
4GB memory is enough to handle basic functionalities. However, a professional approach would be to get a computer with a minimum of 8GB memory for excellent speed. If you’re uncertain of the computer to buy, you can go for a Surface Pro — a hybrid computer tablet.
Otherwise, you can use smartphones and tablets to create digital drawings, but their technologies are limited. They might force you to hold back your creativity because they won’t reflect the detail of every stroke.
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While you can learn to draw digitally with a computer alone, it’s nearly impossible to be a professional artist without a drawing tablet. A drawing tablet lets you explore your creativity.
First, it offers you the freedom to draw on a computer with a stylus. You can draw on a computer as you’d have done with paper and pencil—the tablet is your paper, and the stylus is your pencil. This solves the problem of drawing with a mouse
However, it pays to know what to look for when shopping for tools for creating digital art. You can choose from three categories of digital painting tablets:
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While graphic tablets are the least expensive option when learning how to create digital artwork, they don’t have screens, and you’ll need a laptop or monitor to plug them into and view your drawings.
When drawing on this tablet using the stylus, you can control your computer with the mouse as usual while drawing lines on your tablet.
If you choose a digital painting software that supports pen pressure sensitivity (like Photoshop) you can create lines that change in thickness and opacity as you draw.
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Most digital artists like graphic tablets because they’re super accurate and respond well to the pressure and movement of your hand. It gives the feeling of drawing on paper using a pen.
A display tablet functions as a graphic tablet in digital art drawing, but it has an inbuilt screen. You can draw directly onto the screen, which is more intuitive, especially when you’re used to painting on paper or canvas.
Plus, it’s common to have colour sparkles on display tablets due to applying excess pressure on the monitor. Screen degradation over time can also cause this. Colour sparkle is an unpleasant experience when drawing with a tablet.
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All-in-one options include popular tablets such as the Apple iPad Pro, Microsoft Surface Pro, and Android tablets. Their big advantage is that you won’t need an extra computer to plug your tablet into. Just install digital drawing software for tablets and then paint directly onto the screen.
Such tablets are efficient because they combine both drawing-tablet and computer technology. They provide enough power to run heavy graphic programs while allowing direct drawing onto the screen surface.
For example, if you own an iPad, all you need is to download software like Procreate and use the Apple Pencil to draw.
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It’s easy to learn how to use a drawing tablet, but the most efficient ones are the display and the all-in-one tablet because you can draw directly on their screens.
After getting a tablet, you need to find software that’ll allow you to make digital art. After all, drawing software is the core of digital artwork.
You’ll find expensive software has more advanced features, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easier to draw with or that it’ll meet your needs.
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Clip Studio Paint Pro is excellent software for manga and concept art. It’s superb. In fact, it eclipses Photoshop as a painting program and comes at an affordable price.
While most artists agree that Photoshop has an edge in creating unique brushes and effects, Clip Studio has the most ease of use and a better line drawing stabilizer. For that reason, it’s a go-to option for:
Clip Studio Paint has such an outstanding reputation in the comic industry that art schools use it to teach comic drawing. It has a line-up of features for manga and comic arts. It can also record a timelapse of your work, which is great if you want to refine your creative process or promote your work online (people love time-lapses).
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It’s the most popular drawing software because it has nearly all industry-standard features. You can draw on Photoshop, but it doesn’t address illustrations or comics adequately.
As a result, it takes time and effort to customise the pen and brush tool. Plus, features like pen pressure are off by default.
However, it’s a fully-featured and highly customisable program. Photoshop is the best option if you’re targeting employment in the digital art world because most companies list Adobe Photoshop skills as a requirement.
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People love Pain Tool SAI because of its excellent stabilisation and its overall feel when drawing. It’s intuitive and simple software. It has fewer features but operates smoothly even on a computer with low specifications.
Its major problem is that it doesn’t support CMYK output, so it might require you to switch to other software to execute some of your drawing steps.
Corel Painter is another digital art tool for professional artists. It allows you to paint and draw with tools as you’d do with a typical drawing. Digital watercolours flow, mix, absorb and evaporate just like the real thing. It’s excellent if you are used to traditional painting.
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Even though Corel Painter is a complex program, having it is like having a whole art store buried in your computer. The only problem is it’s expensive.
Also, if you’re sketching and you don’t like the shape of your sketch layer, Sketchbook’s warping tools are limited, too. This makes the reshaping part of your sketch complicated.
Medibang Paint Pro is free software that comes with many features for drawing manga. All you need is to register and log in when you download the software. The tool is excellent if you want to try many features for free, like multi-layer drawing, comic panel creation and pre-made tones and backgrounds.
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Today we’ll give a short tutorial on Adobe Photoshop for illustration. While it isn’t a free digital art tool, nearly every digital artist uses Photoshop because it’s an industry standard.
Pro Tip: You can learn to do digital art with Photoshop even if you’re using other apps because nearly all look the same and behave similarly.
Launch Photoshop on your computer and click on the Create New button when it opens (alternatively, you can press Ctrl/CMD + N).
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You’ll need a drawing tablet to do a great drawing. Once you connect your drawing tablet, enable the pen pressure feature by clicking the icon next to Opacity.
A drawing tablet is critical as it determines brush pressure and how much paint comes out of your brush. Plus, it allows you to tweak your brushes so that they feel more natural.
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While using brushes is the standard way to draw on Photoshop, there are other ways to create easy digital art using the tool.
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For instance, when drawing a body part, a shadow, a highlight, or an object, you’d paint them on separate layers so that you can tweak each element without modifying the entire project.
The critical aspect of multiple layers is that the order you list them in the layer panel is how they’ll appear on your canvas. However, feel free to drag and drop layers to change their order.
The freedom to import brushes is limitless in digital art. In Photoshop, you can change the brush by changing the brush size, tip, softness, and pressure sensitivity. In the same way, you can configure erasers as brushes in terms of size, shape, and softness.
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Create a new file on Photoshop and set the proper settings. Instead of drawing in the drawing space as before, create a new layer. Head over to the bottom of the right-side panel and click the + button to add a new layer.
After creating a rough sketch, add another layer on top of the previous layer. You can name the layer as “sketch layer.”
Next, create another layer for line work. To do the line work, reduce the opacity of the sketch so that it’s barely visible.
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Next, you’d want to go for colours. There are different ways to fill your character with colours. First, use the Object Selection Tool on the Tool Bar to select all of your art.
After selecting your drawing, head over to the “Select” option on the top pane, then select inverse to fill inside your sketch instead of the outer part.
How to learn digital art in Photoshop varies. However, the above step-by-step guide on starting digital art should get you started before learning other ways of making digital paintings in Photoshop.
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