Forums » Art & Creativity » What digital art program should I use?

I'm just sitting here wondering how you people make such nice things. My digital art is no where near the skill level of you people... I'm very intimidated now.


((NOTE FROM KIM: This post and much of the following conversation originally took place in the topic OFFICIAL CONTEST: Genre Mascots Art. I split it off into a new topic, as it was entirely its own thing))

I don't know how it is for everyone else, but I've been drawing digitally for 13 years, at least. Practice paid off for me.

If you want help to improve your art, stop by the Arts & Creativity forum. Novalynn posted a topic with some art resources and tools that help you learn, you might find it useful.

Don't be afraid to enter, this contest is pretty darn likely to be held annually so every year is a new chance to win something! And be on the lookout for art trade events that are organized regularly once or twice a year, we got those too.

What programs do you guys use?

Because I have Inkscape (which is hard to use) and Adobe Illustrator (That I have yet to learn to use because I have no one to teach me).

Youtube is often a valuable teacher when it comes to any form of art. Whenever I have a question, I head to Youtube and if there isn't an answer there, you can often ask some people you know who use digital as a preferred method.

I use Paint Tool SAI, costs about 50 bucks or so I think? GIMP is a popular free program to draw with. openCanvas is also a free program, although it's also quite old. Adobe Photoshop is popular too, but costs a pretty penny. Some people love it to draw with, others hate it (I don't like drawing in it).

I also use a Bamboo Pen tablet. Wacom discontinued it, the Intuos Pen tablet is the replacement and the cheapest step-in model for beginning artists. (I love the small canvas area and stick with it despite not being a beginning artist anymore though) I'm pretty sure Walmart and other places have cheap tablets, but I also hear a lot of bad things about the quality (break easier?) whereas all 3 Wacom tablets I had never broke, I just needed to upgrade for software and widescreen purposes.

I have all of the Adobe Suite. But Photoshop, as I have been told, is for photo editing, while Adobe Illustrator is the one for art and vectors.

I have an Intuos Tablet.

I never really got GIMP to work for me.

I use Sketchbook Pro, and GIMP. Inkscape is a great tool as well that I've tried really hard to dabble in, but vector art doesn't come intuitively to me, so I admit, I have a very hard time with it.

I pretty much work exclusively in Photoshop. It's just what I learned to use in college even though I still only have a basic knowledge of it. I've been trying to step into using Corel Painter or SAI, but I'm kind of lost on how to use them so I stick to what I know. I've been doing digital art for... maybe seven or eight years? I used to use the Intuos tablets but recently bought myself a fancy shmancy Cintiq Companion.

I also work exclusively in photoshop. I used to use GIMP back in the day.

Practice, understanding of anatomy and shading and other techniques, are all drastically more important than what tool a person uses. No one rolls out of bed and just starts making beautiful art -- people have to practice, usually for years. One can speed up their progress with focused practice and "chunking", wherein one chooses a very narrow and specific thing they want to get better at (i.e. "More accurately measure the proportion of hands by comparing them to the face") and then practicing that thing for at least half an hour EVERY DAY for a week or longer (depending on the difficulty of the goal.) The more specific the thing you are practicing, the easier for your brain to focus in on the specific information that's available there, assimilate it and remember it. After a week of improving one goal, pick another! The brain works on growing new pathways every single day of your life, but what pathways it works on building/strengthening depend on what you do that day -- so even five minutes of practice every single day will yield faster improvement than just three hours every Sunday.

There is a lot to learn about the art of learning, but the key point to keep in mind is that the only thing you should be comparing your art to is your art from yesterday. Improvement comes in small steps from where you were, not in big leaps to other artist's levels from wishing. Practice practice practice!

At this point if we want to continue discussing the art of learning art, we should probably start a new thread!

Well, what I'm trying to explain is that I am not good at digital art. If I was I'd love to be in the contest. But my years and years of traditional art practice make it hard for me to transfer mediums easily. I'm trying to find and learn a program that will be comfortable for me and easy to use.

Identical rules for learning apply. Pick a program and practice with it half an hour daily for a few weeks. With a tablet, the switch is not as large as you think.

It's hard to practice while I'm a student and busy pretty regularly. But yeah, I get it. It'd make things easier if I actually knew what tools did, but I'll stop distracting from the contest now.

There's always next year and the year after.

Photoshop Elements is exclusively for photo editing, and Photoshop in general was originally created for photo editing, but it has come to be a very common tool for drawing. There's tons of tutorials (for pretty much any program, actually) to help get the hang of things, too. Yes, Illustrator is fantastic because it's a vector program, but it's also more difficult to use for detailed art because you don't draw naturally in it, like most do with Photoshop.

As for transferring mediums, it's mostly just tricky to get used to the pen. I know I found most tablets frustrating because of the whole "draw in one place, look at another" thing. (That's why I stalked ebay for an old Cintiq - which, amusingly, has proved tougher than a newer model a friend got, since he had a strip of screen near the middle lose its touch sense.) If you can get a feel for the pen though, you should be able to do just fine. It's also 100% acceptable to draw physically, scan (or take a photo), and then just ink/color digitally.

Jealous. So jealous. I've been eyeballing those things.

My tablet was okay... but then I got bugged because the digital art programs require more care for things like shading and details and you have to work until you get it right.

Inking things took a lot of effort for me because my lines on paper don't always touch completely so I have to work to get them to fill in without leaking into each other.

What does this mean? I am confoozled. Are you talking about with a pen, or still with digital?

you draw it with a pen and then scan it and draw with a digital program over it. like making something to trace and then using the computer to trace. Does that make more sense?

I have been using PS most of my digital art career (Started out with MS paint and a computer mouse) but when looking for a program to use it really depends on what you're looking for as a user. I've tried many programs like Sai, Illustrator, GIMP, Coral, Photoshop etc. But I always find myself going back to photoshop because I am most comfortable with it. Heck I use MangaStudio 5 to draw my panels and then move my file to PS to draw my pictures/color.

Now to be fair, before I took a digital art class and learned many useful tricks on PS I spent a good portion of my time learning PS on my own. If you don't know how to use a program, don't just give up, start playing around with it. See a tool and have no idea what it is? load up a picture and start messing with it. Theres also youtube which is a fantastic resource. It took me many years of practice, even as a busy art student, to get to my current level. (And I am still improving everyday!)

If you'd like a just basic overview of how to draw on PS from a picture you maybe drew first on paper, I did do a very simple, very fast tutorial for a friend you might want to utilize.

Here is my quick video

I'd be more than happy to try and made more videos to help people, but remember practice and exploration are the key. No one understands how to use a program right off the bat. Its a process of trial and error. And I remember when I first got my tablet 4 years ago I was highly intimidated and bummed out by other digital artists. You just gotta find your way

My problem with inking was always lines not touching just right so the fill leaked out. And I got tired of it and quit. It was too frustrating to take that much time on something.

I can draw tons and tons in a matter of minutes on paper. But one computer pictures takes HOURS and is never satisfactory. It drives me nuts.

Well if you're trying to fill them in that is your problem. (Assuming you're using photoshop) Its not going to work quite right. Modern programs like these do not like it when you draw a square and then try to fill it in with an ink bucket. You actually have to take the time and color it in with a pen as if you were doing it on paper with colored pencils or paint. There is not easy shortcut to avoid it.

If you're trying to draw people and using the program like ms paint, when filling in certain spaces it will not work. you have to physically color them in.