I've been learning digital art off and on for at least 6 or 7 years.
I got a small Wacom digital art tablet for my birthday one year and I was excited to try it. It was one of those ones that plugs into the computer and appears on the screen when you draw on it, rather than one with an in-built screen.
One of my paintings made with Photoshop CS2 and a Wacom tablet.
Unfortunately I struggled to grasp this, it felt a bit weird to not be able to see exactly where I was drawing, so I didn't really pursue it and stayed within my comfort zone of traditional media.
In 2019, just after starting university, I decided to invest in an iPad pro. One of the main reasons for this was because I wanted to try Procreate, a popular drawing and painting app. Not only would it be a bit cheaper than a drawing tablet with a screen, but I could use the other features like watching a tv show while I paint at my desk or even using it to show my reference images.
I instantly preferred this over the old drawing tablet, as I could draw straight onto the screen as if it were paper.
One of my first attempts at using procreate.
I didn't really invest much time into learning to use it properly though until I started using it in my third year, 2021, as a way to sketch out my illustrations before painting. Before I had just been using a really old version of photoshop on my laptop and my old Wacom tablet.
Using procreate was so much easier, I can't believe I hadn't thought of doing it there sooner.
I could draw most of the process, from the thumbnails to the final refined sketch, and do it anywhere comfortably.
Then I decided I wanted to try completed paintings and illustrations just using digital painting, instead of just using it to draw out my traditional paintings.
Here I attempted to paint a moose. I liked it, it was fun to paint, but still a bit rough.
This painting was a biro sketch of a Pallas's cat, coloured in procreate. I learned that by duplicating the drawing layer and setting the layer to multiply, you can paint underneath that drawing, without needing to make the background transparent.
This summer I've decided to work on digital art more, so I started a digital art course by artist and animator Aaron Blaise. He's known for his work at Disney from the late 80's to 2010, as well as his own animated short The Bear & the Hare, aka the John Lewis Christmas advert released in 2013.
In the last few years he's began selling pre-recorded video lessons that are not only affordable but incredibly helpful, so I decided to try the digital painting on Procreate one.
After going over the basics, the tutorial was to paint this lion. It's by no means great but I learned so much about lighting and colours and how to create detail. Eventually I realised the approach wasn't so different to how I used to draw my coloured pencil pieces, you start by blocking in the base colours and add the details last (to put it simply).
Using what I'd learnt I decided to create a painting on my own. I chose to paint this pony and although it's not perfect I really like how it came out and I think I've definitely improved.