Digital Drawing

The Digital Medium

The digital medium requires just as much skill to utilize as any other.I do all my painting and drawing in Photoshop 7, Photoshop CS2 and Painter IX. Photoshop is 7 dated, but it caters entirely for what I need to paint on my computer.

I use this software consistently infact, much more than the other two packages.

The same applies to the hardware I use; a pretty dated and basic Wacom tablet.

The truth is, there’s no need to sell the dog to buy top of the range software and hardware to start painting on your computer; the most crucial investment is practise.


What do you need?

I draw on my computer with a tablet. This is a simple digital interface that converts my pen strokes into mouse movements. However, the advantage of being able to move your mouse in this fashion is massive. The level of control you can exert using your fingertips is naturally much greater - just open paint and try and sign your name as it would appear written on a piece of paper.

Consider trying to draw or paint with the mouse and the advantages of a tablet are even more obvious. Most tablets are now also pressure sensitive, recording your pen pressure as you draw. You’ll be surprised how natural and real your strokes appear on the screen as you start drawing with a tablet, and interfacing with your pc no is no longer a hindrance to your creativity, but completely natural, and a pleasure.


Which Digital Tablet?

The more you spend on a tablet, the more useful extras or surface area you gain - however these aren’t essential for drawing great images.

All the tablets below are made by “WACOM”, the choice of professional artists and designers alike, and range from the moderate to the expensive. They are all solidly built, and of the highest quality.

You do not need a bigger tablet to accommodate a bigger display. The “Wide” variations of the tablets listed below cater for those with widescreen or dual display set ups.

A bigger tablet does give you more room to move if you enjoy drawing more erratically, but I have used tablets ranging from 4″x5″ to 9″x12″, and find in all cases I adjust within a few minutes to the tablet I’m using, and the process becomes completely natural again. 4″x5″ tablets do not feel constrictive to me at all, and also posses the advantage of mobility.

Wacom Graphire4

The Graphire series misses a few of the extras which makes the Intuos expensive, such as the strips on the side of the tablet used to adjust brush size etc, 512 pressure sensitivity levels instead of 1024 and so on. You can find a comparative review here if you would like to know more, however both tablets are great fun to use and only someone relatively experienced might fully appreciate the extras offered by the more expensive tablets.

4"x5"


6"x8"


Wacom Intuos3

Wacom's latest and greatest. The touch feels very smooth and paper like, and the pen is very comfortable to use.

4"x5"


6"x8"


6"x11" WIDE


There are many more tablets available, but personally I'd stick with WACOM, since you can't go wrong with them.

Software

I use Photoshop 7 to paint on my computer. I've also given ,Photoshop CS2 and Corel Painter X a try - which you can do by downloading trail versions from their websites. Photoshop is truely a massive program, easy to get lost in. The basic functions that I use to draw and paint are largely unchanged in the newer versions of photoshop - which is why I've stuck to Photoshop 7 all this time.

The Gimp (yes really) is a free, fully featured "General Image Manipulation Program", and a great alternative to photoshop or painter if you'd like to try your hand at drawing on your pc at minimum cost.

Once you've got your hardware and software together, familiarize yourself with their nature. Try and write a legible letter in photoshop, so that you can begin to appreciate how your tablet works by doing something familiar.