Drawtober

Oct. 25th, 2020 09:11 pm
jack: (Default)
I have been doing drawtober all month, trying to adapt to drawing on a computer instead of paper. It's been a strange journey, some things so much easier, some things a lot harder, but I really enjoyed some of my experiments.

Probably the most convenient place to see them is on facebook: Recent uploads and all my art. You should be able to see them without logging into facebook! If not, please comment and I'll have a fiddle. Or if anyone has a recommendation for a more reliable place to store images in albums, please suggest it.

I particularly liked the silhouetted dinosaur at sunset, the cow basking in a field of sunlight, the two superhero figures against dramatic color backdrops, the big wave, and the snowy foggy forest, and the swirly blue mist ghost.

There's some quite different techniques. The wave and forest were from Realistic Paint, a program that aims to simulate physical paints a lot more. The figures were made in Krita, a major open source digital paint program, drawing an outline (freehand or tracing a poser), using a tool to fill, and adding shades and highlights on a new layer which make it pop as a on-flat figure. The cow and dinosaur were made in Krita trying to emulate some of the techniques of realistic paint.

I found an old graphics tablet I never really used and it helped a lot with sketching well. The pressure sensitivity isn't working on this computer yet though, I don't know if that's worth debugging further.

Krita seems to asusme there's no point doing paint-y stuff unless you have a pressure sensitive graphics tablet, which makes sense, but seems strange. The colourful effects I made by using a combination of different brushes to put in colour and then smear it about to make texture, and I'm not sure if that's normal. I assume you CAN make a brush that does something similar to a paintbrush in Realistic Paint, but it doesn't seem to be the default and I'm not sure if I understand why.

But I have a cartoon-y style and paint-y style that both seem to produce results, so the month has been reasonably rewarding.
jack: (Default)
On the way back I went to Heffer's Arts. That was very nice, it had the feeling of coming home that other specialist shops and libraries often have.

Everything has little pads of paper you can try a pen on. I'm glad to see I wasn't just imagining that custom -- I remember buying a pen somewhere like Smiths once, and being looked at as if I was insane when I asked if I could see it write. Always or never doing so makes sense, but at least it wasn't only in my head.

It's also useful the other way round. I'm sure you remember my classic anecdote of looking for seating objects for the Veizla, going into a shop and saying:

Me: Hi! Excuse me, do you have about thirty, all about this big, each a different design?
Them: Have about thirty what?
Me: Yes, exactly.

Here it's a lot easier. Just, "Excuse me," point to a clef drawn on the pad, "I want one that draws like that."

In fact, many of the doodles were very nicely done, I feel out of place :)

In the end, I got a calligraphic marker, which I think does what I wanted, though I find something else would be more appropriate later. I considred brush pens, and they're definitely a superior product for drawing overall, but a little delicate and wet for my feeling right now. I almost looked for some colours too, but decided I didn't want to go overboard, I could barely draw proportions, I don't know if I want to venture into the murky waters of shading :)

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