the hardware
tablet & pc
* I’d recommend getting a graphic tablet at A5 size, this is large enough to make fluid strokes.
You want to get started making digital paintings too, but you don’t know where to start?
In this guide I will show you how to get started with digital art.
The great thing is that making digital art doesn’t have to be expensive, it could be you already have most of the equipment you need!
A graphic tablet works a bit like a mouse and needs to be attached to your PC or laptop.
You can draw on the surface of the graphic tablet using a special stylus (some variants need to be charged, others don’t). The surface of the graphic tablet reflect your screen. So when you put your stylus in the upper right corner of the surface, you will find your cursor in the upper right corner of your screen.
They are relatively cheap, actually you can get a decent graphic tablet for around $50 – $100. Wacom graphic tablets are seen as the industry standard, but when you get started with digital art, I would advise getting a low budget graphic tablet, they can do a great job.
Pros
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Cheap option (depending on the brand you choose)
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Doesn’t need batteries or charging
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Not very susceptble to damage (since it doesn’t have a vulnerable screen)
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It’s also very handy to use in stead of a mouse, to prevent RSI
Cons
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You need a PC or laptop
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Takes some time to get used to, since you need to watch the screen and can’t look at your hand while drawing
software and apps
There are quite some free digital painting programs out there.
Perhaps you want to try out one of these programs before you invest in a more expensive program or subscription.
This is an open-source program and a good alternative to Photoshop. Maybe it’s not as powerful as Photoshop, but it has a lot of options. At the Krita website you can find tutorials and resources to get started with your painting adventure.
Krita is one of the best free painting programs available and includes a great variety of tools and features. While Photoshop has features that can be useful from painting to photo retouching to photo manipulation, too many options create a tough learning curve for a digital painter.
Krita keeps its interface painter friendly with a clean style and minimal distractions. Tools are accessibly placed, and most of the window is dedicated to the canvas. Since Krita has such a gentle learning curve, it's easy – and important – to familiarise yourself with its features before diving into the painting process. It's definitely worth it as the program is so good it made it into my pick of the best software for digital artists.
you can download
the program for free HERE
* Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux | Cost: Free
Pros
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Amazing support for displaying brushes
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Very customizable
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Constantly updated
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Easy to use layout
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Easy editing in a tiled view
Cons
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New features are not tested thoroughly
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Poor Touch Controls
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Working with text is not that pleasant
This is another free digital art program which is great for manga artists.
Mediabang Paint Pro lets you create comic panels easily, has a tool for comic page management and finally the programs snap guides will let you create perfect lines easily. Also, this program is available for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS!
If comics or manga art are your thing and you don't want to shell out for Clip Studio Paint, have a look at Paint Pro from Japanese company MediBang. This free, lightweight digital drawing tool comes loaded with 800 free pre-made tones and backgrounds, more than 50 brushes, easy comic panel creation tools and a huge selection of free fonts.
you can download
the program for free HERE
* Platform: Windows, macOS | Cost: Free
Pros
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Great for manga artists
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Has a lot of options for editing photos
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It's a powerful, fully featured app and it's free
Cons
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Needs more brush options
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Displays a dialog with some ads at the start (this can simply be closed)
*This is the program i will cover for this guide.
Adobe Photoshop is used by a lot of professional artists and has a LOT of features. Since it has so many features it can be quite overwhelming though, making it less suitable for beginners.
For a long time, Photoshop was the unquestioned king of digital art tools, but increasingly, competitors' offerings have been challenging its reign. However, Photoshop remains a hugely capable and powerful tool and recent updates have seen its capability expanded further. Add to that the complementary iOS app that's only set to get more powerful and the photo-editing giant becomes even more attractive.
Because it's part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, you can easily share your data and access all of your assets – including brushes, images, colours and styles – across all of your devices. There's also an impressive library of Photoshop plugins available to add extra functionality to the program.
($9.99/month)
download HERE
* Platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS | Cost : $9.99 per/month
Pros
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Industry standard / Lots of tutorials
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Trove of plugins that extend functionality are available
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Includes powerful content-aware tools
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Packs a staggering amount of functionality
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Integrates with Creative Cloud
Cons
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Expensive & Latest versions of Photoshop are subscription-only
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Learning it can take some time
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Batch editing of images is not straightforward
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Needs a powerful setup to run smoothly
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Is based on pixels while Illustrator works using vectors
01. TAKE INSPIRATIOn
From Books, Movies and even Anime series, by famous Writers, Producers and Studios;
imagine your scene from the experiences of others, one scene at a time, as they sketch out their story in your imagination.
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Fantasy Art Genius Guide Volumes
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2D & 3D Books by Don Seegmiller
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Digital Art Masters (Volumes 1-9)
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3DCreative: Issue (over 100+)
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Wizard How to Draw: Getting Started
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Wizard How To Draw: Advanced Techniques (Wizard Best of Basic Training)
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Ordinary to Elegant: Transforming Photographs Into Digital Paintings
02. read graphic & digital art books
03. start with a sketch
Sketching is essential to many artists, both traditional and digital. The benefits of sketching before painting is that it allows for quick iteration of ideas without committing to the longer process of painting. Things can be worked out in rough form ahead of time.
Sketching digitally can take many different forms – it can be a traditional pencil sketch or (as in this case) a quick painting.
When working on quick sketches, try to give yourself time limits, both per sketch and for the overall sketching process.
This will help you avoid spending too much time on any one idea and get you into painting faster.
04. Establish perspective and set the mood
You’ll also note that in this image above I’ve applied a simple gradient behind the perspective lines. This is something I like to do for exterior paintings as it does two things. First, it implies the direction of the primary light source in the image (in this case, the sun). Second, it gives me a bit of direction for the colours I want to start painting with. I’ve opted for cool, muted blue tones.
Once a sketch has been finalised, it’s a good idea to lay down some perspective guides before you paint anything. Perspective is such an important part of painting – even in paintings like this one where there aren’t a lot of visual cues. It’s something I make a habit of doing in every painting, as it helps with the flow of the image.
Every element you paint should recede towards the vanishing point.
This is quick and easy to with the Line Tool.
05. draw big
Make sure your canvas size is at least 2'000 x 2'000 pixels (or you could simply use A4 format [ca. 2'500x3'500 pixels])
and has a resolution of 300 dpi. This is especially important if you want to print your picture afterwards. But don't overdo it
or you could crash your computer. Also the bigger your picture is, the more disk space it will need – keep this in mind!
I usualy go for 2'400 x 1'300 pixels.
I'd recommend to draw a basic sketch zoomed out to get the proportions right. Then zoomed in to add details and draw clean lines.
The bigger the canvas and the smaller the brush size, the cleaner everything will look in the end.
06. REFERENCE
Take full advantage of any reference you can get your hands on. Depending for what you are going for.
07. LAYERS IN PHOTOSHOP
Digital art has some advantages over traditional – use them!
Layers are a great way to organize your drawing or experiment without the danger of ruining your picture.
I normally use a layer for the sketch and then add another one for the line art on top of it.
Then I remove the sketch and make a flat color layer under the line art and a shading layer which is connected to the flat colors.
I do that for every object and background.
You'll end up with many layers, but everything is nice and clean. In the end you can merge them into one finished drawing or
just leave them this way. Just note, the more layers you have, the more disk space your drawing will need.
Of course you can also draw everything on one layer as if it was traditional. That's just a matter of taste.
Create a new layer for each additional element drawn. Separate, group, and name your layers accordingly,
this will enable you to make changes when you want, to areas that overlap other layers without disturbing them.
If you have trouble finding layers you can change the size of the thumbnails
- left click on the Options menu on the right hand side of the Layers Panel, then >"Panel Options"
Quick copy CTRL+J, a layer if you want to make changes to it, when drawing or using the Eraser tool.
08. Choose your brushes
As you start using Photoshop’s Brush tool and Brush panel for the first time you might feel a little overwhelmed.
The amount of customisation and control you have over what your brush looks like and the way it behaves can be
something that sidetracks you if you're new to digital painting.
My recommendation is to limit yourself when first starting out to two brushes. Here, I’ve highlighted both the Soft Round and the Hard Round brush in both the Brush panel and the Brush pop-up.
Normally I'll use the standard hard and soft ones, but there are many interesting custom brushes to create different effects.
There are brushes that create clouds or leaves, which make it easy to add a nice texture to a tree bark or stones.
While it's certainly better to draw everything yourself, these brushes can save some time.
So I'd definitely experiment with them, but don't overdo it.
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While you use the brush tool hold ALT + Mouseclick to select the -Eyedropper Tool- to fast pick a color in your picture.
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"[" and "]", Increase and Decrease brush size, works for the Eraser tool. Note; (you can hold down the buttons, or just click).
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Hold down the Spacebar when using the brush tool to use the Hand Tool, so you can move your view on the picture.
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Simple brushes are your friend, don't be scared to play with the brush settings.
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Use custom brushes. Use/save different angles to your brushes, Window>Brushes>Angle°;drag the circle(the brush direction picker)
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While you use the brush tool hold ALT + Mouseclick to select the -Eyedropper Tool- to fast pick a color in your picture.
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To save a Brush Angle, click the New Brush Preset Icon at the bottom of the Brush Presets Panel.
09. ESSENTIAL PHOTOSHOP SHORTCUTS
Another advantage of digital art: You can speed up your drawing process by using shortcuts.
I for example, draw a lot faster with B for brush, E for eraser, CTRL+Z for undo and CTRL+S for save.
Having to search them in the sidebar or menu and click them manually, would take a lot more time!
It takes some time to get used to it, but it's definitely worth it.
- Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E Will merge a copy of all Layers
- F Cycle through workspace backgrounds
- X Change your foreground and background colours
- D Reset foreground and background colours to black and white
- ] and [ Change your brush tip size
- Ctrl+J Duplicate a layer or selection
- Space Bar Hold Space and drag to navigate around the image
- TAB Hides or shows all panels and tools
- Ctrl+T Transform a layer
- Ctrl+E Merge selected layer down, or merges several highlighted layers
- Ctrl+L Bring up levels box
- Ctrl+T Open Free Transform tool
- Ctrl+M Open Curves
- Ctrl+B Edit Colour Balance
- Ctrl+Shift+Opt+C Scale your image to your preferred state
- Ctrl+G Create clipping mask
- Ctrl+0 Fit on screen
- Ctrl+Shift+> and < Increase/decrease size of selected text by 2pts
- Ctrl+Shift-> and < Increase/decrease size of selected text by 10pts
- ] and [ Increase/decrease brush size
- Shift+F5 Fill the selection
- } and { Increase/decrease brush hardness
- , and . previous/next brush
- < and > First/last brush
- Ctrl+] Bring layers forward
- Ctrl+[ Send layer back
- Ctrl+Shift+[ Send layer to bottom of stack
- Ctrl+Shift+] Bring layer to bottom of stack
