To start with digital painting instead of traditional?

[Lunatique]

Plenty of digital artists have never painted traditionally, or have had very limited experience with traditional painting. Knowledge gained from traditional painting books still apply to digital painting, except the stuff specific about traditional paints and brushes and paint mixing. All the lessons about lighting, colors, values, edges, composition...etc are the same no matter what medium you work in.

[SergeantOreo]

Hey Lunatique,

After reading your reply, it makes me think getting a tablet
for learning painting is a good idea; I bet it saves loads of money
in not having to buy traditional supplies/materials.

Thanks!

[Lunatique]

If you have any ounce of seriousness about being able to produce good artworks on the computer, you have to have a tablet. Even a cheap small one will be far superior to using a mouse.

As far as traditional vs digital, there are pros and cons for both. A computer setup with a good quality large display, tablet, and software will cost more initially, but it's a one-time deal and it'll last you for as long as the equipments keep running--until you feel like upgrading, that is. However, there's something magical about a tangible piece of art--especially something like an oil painting. If you ever get a chance to go look at some good oil paintings in real life, you'll see that it's got the kind of magic that's missing from a computer display. Also, working with traditional paint/brushes while is much harder and more time-consuming, they are so much more fun than digital. The difference is a little like playing a music video game like Rock Band vs. playing real musical instruments.

[SergeantOreo]

Yeah, drawing with a mouse is a joke.. :D

I'll have to look into getting a Wacom tablet, though I'm not sure
whether Bamboo is good enough;
I want something that will still accommodate me when I get better
(i.e. pressure levels, etc), so I don't have to buy more than one tablet,
or at least in a relatively short amount of time.

It's not that I don't want to learn traditional painting,
but that it would seem much more convenient to start with digital instead,
and it's not like the technique can't be applied to traditional, tablets are just tools...

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, you give excellent advice.

Cheers!

[Lunatique]

If you want your tablet to grow with your skills, then I would recommend you start with the Intuos. I'm still using an Intuos 2 (6x8) and it's perfectly fine. I skipped Intuos 3 since I hated all those touch strips (I had one at work and I disabled all of them). I hated Intuos 1 as well since it required its own power supply. Intuos 4 actually looks like it'll be a winner, with some really useful features.

[bagonasart]

From my point of view, you really have to have some knowledge of traditional drawing and painting. Why? I`ll answer.

My story is that I have finished Art Academy and all my life I was drawing live on paper. I get these skills of drawing. Some of these skills, like stroke line quality and interestingness, rendering skills, even your mind skills (drawing from live). You will not have these skills by jumping into digital things. Its like some learning not from A-Z. But from K-Z. If you understand what I mean. Couse mostly what I recognize, that people who does digital art very professionaly, they have really good live drawing skills. Later I will give examples.

So, I`ts better to improve in both. Its my point of view.

Here they are, the great artists, who have passion and freedom of what they are doing:

Sparth
Feng Zhu
http://www.artbymikko.com/
http://www.streamatica.ch/

Its just few examples, there are many more great artists.

[SergeantOreo]

Lunatique: Righto! I figured that Intuos was probably what I would want to do. A friend said 6x11 is nicer than 6x8 because it is widescreen, but I just want something that is larger than 4x6. :D

Bagonasart: Good point. I don't want to go to the digital medium unaccompanied, or without any knowledge from drawing or other mediums, - my plan is to continue to learn how to draw traditionally (Loomis books, anatomy, etc), but at the same time study painting, through the use of a tablet, since it is more convenient and economical, or at least it would seem so.

Sorry if that was kind of confusing, my writing is sometimes kind of complex in an uneccessary way.

[Lunatique]

From my point of view, you really have to have some knowledge of traditional drawing and painting. Why? I`ll answer.

My story is that I have finished Art Academy and all my life I was drawing live on paper. I get these skills of drawing. Some of these skills, like stroke line quality and interestingness, rendering skills, even your mind skills (drawing from live). You will not have these skills by jumping into digital things. Its like some learning not from A-Z. But from K-Z. If you understand what I mean. Couse mostly what I recognize, that people who does digital art very professionaly, they have really good live drawing skills. Later I will give examples.

So, I`ts better to improve in both. Its my point of view.

Here they are, the great artists, who have passion and freedom of what they are doing:

Sparth
Feng Zhu
http://www.artbymikko.com/
http://www.streamatica.ch/

Its just few examples, there are many more great artists.

While I always encourage and recommend people to experience traditional drawing/painting (if nothing else because it's so damn fun and challenging), I don't know if I agree that it's a necessity. With digital tools, you can still convey expressive line qualities and brushwork, although you kind of have to exaggerate your execution to get it across, whereas with traditional tools you almost can't help but leave behind expressive marks. I think as long as the person maintain the goal of imparting expressive marks regardless of the medium, he'll be able to achieve it. I do think one should at least try traditional drawing/painting once a while though, just to explore and be more well-rounded. A few tubes of paint and a few brushes really don't cost all that much, especially if you stick to student grade stuff.

[SergeantOreo]

Well, I didn't say that I was never going to try traditional painting, but merely that I want to start with digital (at least if that wasn't stated, it is now).

Lunatique, I've read your review of Photoshop's brush engine, but that was an older review,
so I was wondering if you could tell me more about it's current state, and how it stands against Corel Painter.

Thanks for your input.

[Lunatique]

Photoshop's brush engine is not much of a brush engine--it's more like dragging different shaped stamps across the image while being able to control the opacity with pen pressure (if you had a tablet like a Wacom). You can modify the brushes by introducing things like scattering, dual brush, size control set to pen pressure...etc, but for the most part, you are still dealing with a static stamp shape. With that said, artists can do some amazing things with what seems like a very limited brush engine. You only need to look as far as Craig Mullins to see how expressive he gets with just Photoshop. He uses Painter sometimes too, but I think Photoshop has always been his preferred tool.

Painter's brush engine is far more advanced, and it has to be because it was designed to emulate various traditional drawing/painting mediums. It can simulate wet-on-wet, ink, washes...etc--Photoshop cannto compete on that front, at least not yet. If you just want to draw and paint, without taking advantage of all the benefits of a powerful and intuitive digital workspace, then Painter is the way to go. HOWEVER, if you want a powerful and intuitive layer management, image editing, and overall robust toolset, Photoshop is the king.

If I can only work with one, I'd pick Photoshop any day of the week, and this is because a professional digital artist does so much more than simply draw and paint with a picture-making software--we can get really clever with all the amazing editing and managing tools that makes our workflow extremely flexible and efficient. While Photoshop may lack the fancy brush engine, you can still do amazing works with it if you understand how to get the most out of its brush engine. With Painter, you get the fancy brush engine, but the workflow and the editing tools are not nearly as powerful or intuitive, and even something as simple as blending between layers without picking up the underlying colors will result in the transparent pixels being rendered as white pixels--making the entire layer system useless if you want maximum flexibility in your workflow.

[SergeantOreo]

Alright then.

Several more things: Does the newest version of Photoshop have any improvements in painting versus, say, CS2? And I know you said that you don't like the Intuos3 very much and are still using an Intuos2, but wouldn't it still be good to get a newer series for sake
of better drivers and such?

Thanks.

[Lunatique]

Photoshop's new features in every version tend to cater to photographers and designers, not not really towards illustrators, although those image editing features are very useful for illustrators too. You can use even very old versions of Photoshop for painting and get pretty much the same workflow and results. At some point Photoshop did gain additioanl brush settings like dual brush, but that was a few versions ago, so any recent versions will do just fine.

I don't notice any difference between version 2 and 3 when I use them, and also drivers for the earlier models are still updated AFAIK.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.