My digital art journey, man!

See what happens when you follow parental/caregiver advice? My mom says when you've lost something, just forget about it, & you'll find it later! Was busy writing down instructions from a blogger about a special effect in FireAlpaca, & that's when I found this index card I wrote IMPORTANT INFO ON.

My first job at 17 was as a college notetaker for disabled schoolmates! It was great and really helped me when I transferred to university AND years later, for grad school!

Anyhoo, I love FireAlpaca and Paint.NET! Like the blogger who posted instructions for FireAlpaca, I was a casual digital artist back in the day. Doing silly doodles, embellishing my traditional artwork. But doing a webcomic has really helped me become more competent with artist software!

I used PhotoShop for years until I couldn't. Before Adobe even moved into their subscription-based model, PhotoShop became harder for me to use. How do I know? Because I was a notetaker in those classes for Digital Art and Design.

I couldn't keep up with the instructor's/professor's lectures. It's well I can write fast, but I don't know shorthand, so I had to come up with my own shortcuts. Thank goodness my students could understand my notes!

I also still had my Adobe suite on my home PC. I practiced on my own time. Used my own artwork. Bought software books. It didn't help.

And don't get me started on InDesign! UGH!! Thankfully, I threw in the towel to just focus on traditional art, building my skills with different media and such.

Fast-forward to me wanting to finally work on a webcomic. I researched and dabbled for 2 years. The landscape of digital art software had advanced! I felt so lost. Like a prehistoric creature finding itself among more current and evolved animals!

But, unlike the Horseshoe Crab which is perfect and so hadn't the need to evolve in millions of years, I had to find the right intuitive software for a newbie/beginner.

And that's what Paint.NET and FireAlpaca are to me! Simpler to learn, intuitive, and fun discovering new techniques! Also, unlike when, back in the day, I had to peruse through textbooks, I can find most of art software/app info on older blogs and YouTube videos.

I Was Worried For Nothing...

 I am not trying to make light of my concerns when I began to digitizing my comic last week. 

What I mean is when I started to work on the comic in 2018, I did it manually- pencil first, ink after, blacks put in last - but I realized the story was slow-going , my formatting and my art style kept changing, and the narrative was all over the place... And then a light came on. I began working on the story as I did with my comics back in grade school. I simply did it in pen.

The dot grid pen drafts

And WOW, did the story begin to FLOW. Not just in sequence(though that remained haphazard), but in growing subplots, in narrative scope, and an unexpected benefit: a permanent art style began to solidify...

So what I worried about was since the original draft pages were in pen, how did I fix those? I thought and did trace a number of chapters in pencil. Yet, with the new tablet, erasing, correcting, and editing pen and clearing up what was also on dot grid paper(which I will forever use as it helps tighten my perspective and background/setting issues).

The same page on MS Paint

MS Paint retouch

Original dot grid pen draft

What a difference this Bosto tablet makes! My mom continuously tells me "Good things come to those that wait" and I feel this display tablet was made for me.

As somebody returning to digital art after so many years, and trying to do it the 'right way', which means I used digital art as a touch-up to my manually made artwork and illustrations. 

Now, I'm cleaning up paper and pen work, and will use other software for colors, shades, backgrounds, and settings.

Will continue to discuss my process on this blog and on Instagram: Handdrawnbycarmenjr 

Thank you again for sticking with me, dear readers!

I'm Back To Digital Art! Or, at least, trying to

Digital art was something I did for fun. Then when I attended community college majoring in Art, I took my first digital art course, known as Computer Art at the time. 

Yes, it was a pain. We were using Corel at the time. Years later, I upgraded to PhotoShop when it was its own company and still affordable. 

Once I got into an IT Baccalaureate 'accelerated program', I was still fudging around with PhotoShop, occasionally Illustrator and InDesign, to name a few. This was in keeping with my Web Design studies so I could better edit and improve my artwork to upload to my personal website.

Now, after being out-of-the-loop with digital art for several years, I've been studying and retraining myself. Start off with the easiest app and work my way up. MS(Microsoft) Paint. I've also found art, illustrator, and comic software/apps that were free and fully-featured or affordable enough that one did not need a subscription. 

Caption: 3 characters. Cleaning up and redrawing as well so extra strokes in MS Paint.

I'll speak about those other softwares in the next post.

Especially a display tablet of this size: 15.6 inches. Bosto has a variety tablets: regular[opaque gray/black] to display[with its own screen]. 

Caption: My hand wearing my drawing glove with tablet pen

I prefer the display type, like what animators and other digital artists use, as I learn better with visual aids. I'm using my Bosto Tablet(16HD) to clean up and erase/correct my original pen work.  

NOTE: If any of my fellow artists are shopping around for an affordable display tablet, Bosto is an option. Because of supply chain disruptions, I gifted myself two display tablets from the Walmart app. It's important to shop around on Walmart and other stores online. If you see the Bosto below at least $100, it is NOT THE DISPLAY but the regular Bosto tablet.