I made up my mind a few days ago to get a Huion hs611 drawing tablet after a brief conversation with a friend. I was feverish for a change and suddenly I wanted a budget tablet for digital art. My order did not arrive soon enough. It took three days from inception to arrival and for someone who needs things immediately, it took a lot of patience to wait for it.
Here are some photos.
The next step was choosing a software for my art. I don't like photoshop and my heart was already set on sketchbook pro since I used to use it on my tablet and phone. I realized the desktop version is about 19dollars . I paid that and hoped for the best. I felt it was going to be easier remembering a tool I was already familiar with than learning something new with my impatience.
I spent the whole of yesterday, well into the night learning how to use my pen on my tablet and it drove me to tears. Yes, with all the bling bling, I did cry. Part of it must have been from having my taxi driver take me to the wrong location after I'd gone to pick up the tablet. I gave him a bad review even though he eventually took me home. He actually said my address did not exist. I live close to a Cafe and usually put this cafés address. It's a popular Cafe with branches elsewhere in my city. Coincidentally, this branch and the one the driver took me to had the same street number, hence the confusion and since I was so excited on my phone, I failed to see where he was going to.
Anyway, back to my sketchbook story. I struggled a lot with finding my perfect blending tool. My paintings looked blurry but I kept trying. I eventually found a soft blending tool hidden amongst the pastel tools, as well something that used to be known as the tattoo inker if memory serves me right.
I drew the same cherry and apple over and over again and it didn't come out right. After a long day with no progress yesterday, I thought I'd made a mistake. Buyers remorse started to set in, but of course today I tried again.
Here's my bad painting :
Things to note :
Digital drawing is an entirely different skill set. Drawing a circle or line on paper is easy but with a tablet, you might doubt yourself so much if you don't accept this fact as well as the other fact, which is you need all the digital help you can get from the tool available.
I finally was able to get a decent apple down which I copied and pasted after drawing and blending to create this pattern:
I wasnt really aiming for realism, but the more I paint the harder it is to break away from it so I just continued. I want to paint quirky things, things that look more like Adobe illustrator pieces than these so I think I'll need a new strategy soon.
For now though, I'm just happy I started.
Final study piece:
