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As technology advances, so does the potential of digital art. Many artists nowadays are trying out digital art as a medium of such to do art. However, the transition from a traditional medium to a digital one is not always smooth. Though there are a lot of skills and instincts that are transferable to digital art, there are many aspects of digital art that must be known to help beginners have a better ground on learning digital art.
I’m here to give a few tips and tricks that can be very useful to beginning digital artists! I have experience with the digital medium for five years now so I know the basics pretty well. Some of the advice stated here is directed to beginners only. However, I hope experienced people in the medium could learn a bit more from this!
- V Mokhtar, Staff 2020-2021
On Brushes
On Brushes
As what the Krita Team says about brushes, “In [traditional art], when painting or drawing, you don’t just use one tool.” This applies as well in digital art. All art programs present themselves with an array of brushes at your disposal! It is completely up to you to use them. Utilizing the brushes could help bring your art to life!
By default, an art program would have one soft brush that could be used as the main tool. If you are looking to block down how the shading will look, one brush is good enough for that and later in the process you can overlay areas with different brushes to achieve a different texture. Once you have the fundamental structure of the shade, texture can be easily added. You should use textures to your advantage to elevate a certain mood in a piece!
Fig. 1. A collection of my favorite brushes with their purpose stated.
Fig. 1. A collection of my favorite brushes with their purpose stated.
Figure 1 features all the brushes I use in ibisPaintX regularly. None of these brushes require payment. I have a set list of brushes for various parts of the drawing process because I feel as if these brushes help me get a better flow while drawing. Some are not the typically used brushes but appeal to me alone. The watercolor brush is traditionally used for mixing colors and in shading, but I personally prefer using it for line art because it has a soft texture that I like. Experiment with brushes that work best for you and where you feel most comfortable using them.
Though every art program has basic brushes, some lack more textured brushes. Programs like Photoshop and MediBang Paint by default only have basic soft, hard, and blending brushes. Such programs have custom brushes available online! Feel free to search for one you find is to your liking. Get the “feel” of what brushes fit the most. If you feel like you need a custom brush in your art program, there are plenty of video and article resources explaining how to add custom brushes for your specific art program.
Fig. 2. A drawing comparing the use of the default brush (left) and a custom brush (right).
Fig. 2. A drawing comparing the use of the default brush (left) and a custom brush (right).
As seen in Figure 2, I made a drawing that uses the same sketch with the only difference being I used a different brush in making the line art. I wanted to depict a dreadful and fearful emotion in the drawing. As you can see, the use of a custom brush helped elevate that mood in comparison to the default brush. While it is not mandatory, it is extremely useful to have many other brushes to give your drawings more depth. Use brushes to your advantage to both make work more efficient and to give more emphasis on certain emotions when needed.
Fig. 3. A comparison of the default watercolor brush (left) vs. the modified watercolor brush (right).
Fig. 3. A comparison of the default watercolor brush (left) vs. the modified watercolor brush (right).
It is also important to note that you can customize the brushes available in your art program without additional downloads. You can customize some of a program’s default brushes if it feels like you want to use this brush more. Here, I show the original watercolor brush (right) and the modified version of it (left). This tweak helps me make the color denser in the brush and makes it more ideal for my style of line art.
On the other hand, there are programs that have so many brushes by default it is intimidating to skim through them. From the top of my head, I can think of programs such as Krita and IbisPaintX. Though it is good to have a lot of brushes available without external downloads, it can be intimidating to pick which one to use. I suggest you experiment with the brushes that look like they pique your interest. Test them if they work for you and you feel comfortable with the settings. For you to not forget, most art programs have the ability to tag or favorite brushes so that you can get a specific tag for your brushes!
Fig. 4. My personal tag for all the brushes I use regularly on Krita.
Fig. 4. My personal tag for all the brushes I use regularly on Krita.
In figure 1.6, I show my favorite brushes in Krita. I have one for soft shading while the rest are used for outlining and adding textures. I didn’t show the full brush list but I was able to condense a list of over 100 brushes to around 8-10 brushes I use all the time. All these brushes appeal to my style of painting and plays to my strengths in painting. Feel free to find what works best for you!
Follow more of V's guides on Digital Art here:
Follow more of V's guides on Digital Art here:
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