Desperately Seeking Solutions

It's no secret that I've been eye-humping Wacom digital drawing tablets for a while now, but I'm a long way from touching a price tag that lofty. I decided to start looking at those lesser known brands: Huion, XP Pen, etc. and found one by XP Pen that I'm now panting after as far more attainable.

21.5" display, touch keys, no touch screen, and a pressure sensitivity-in-the-many-thousands stylus with terrific reviews. Sorry, Wacom, but I'm cheating on you. Being nearly 5 times cheaper and much more reliable, it's not even a competition. I'm now aiming for the much more affordable range of $400-500 as opposed to the $2200-$3000 of the leading tablet company. For one, the 16 inch display falls into the $2200 range. Looking at the standalone option, Mobile Studio Pro, is upwards of $3000 and even those START at $3000, going up several hundred bucks for each inch of display.

While I'm sure leading brands probably get there for a reason, it's also very likely that hype starts to drive up those numbers more than anything. Look at Beats headphones; despite only being mid-range in sound quality, they're popular and more expensive than much better quality brands like Sennheiser. For a girl who just wants to start some serious digital drawing, the cheaper option is simply more appealing. I've learned over time that it's better to look past brand power, to find something functional and right for me, so research is a girl's best friend.

That's not to say I'm not a fool for Apple. People generally think that Apple is too high-priced or not upgradeable, but I've never had trouble snagging a great deal on them, especially prior to a new model. I'll take a generation behind the newest for a deal. As far as upgrading goes, my iMac was ahead of average for a good five years before standard PC packages ever came close. I've always preferred single-player gaming on consoles as well, so having a gaming rig was never a factor. I played World of Warcraft and Sims 3 on it just fine, no lag or graphics issues to speak of. My laptop, the latest 15" Macbook in 2010, finally reached the point where it wouldn't upgrade to the latest OS, Mojave, but I'm not shedding tears over it. It's still my faithful writing companion (but just as faithfully backed up because, holy hell, I've had it nine years. My first PC didn't hold up this long).

Even though brand power can feel like an added bragging right, there's nothing better than owning a piece of equipment you're not secretly cursing at, a trouble-shooting, customer support nightmare with a fancy logo on it.

I believe I've found my Mr.-Right-Now, which is as good as it gets with technology. Inevitably, tech just only goes so far before the hardware must simply be traded for the next best thing. The only technology I truly regret buying was my first laptop (I'm convinced Dell actually means 'coaster' in some language somewhere) and the Kindle Fire (which completely died for no apparent reason after less than a year of light use). Other than that, I've made some pretty stellar choices, fueled by research tailored to my long-term needs rather than being more impressive at a party.

I expect it will only take a month at most to save for it. But you can bet your ass I'm bragging about it when I do!

Digital Painting

Over the years, I've told countless people about my journey through drawing. I've made PDFs, web tutorials, talked about it, but most went bye-bye with GeoCities and MySpace and Angelfire and Apple's iWeb.

While this is largely a writer's blog, there's only so much I can talk about writing since it's clearly not the only way I communicate my ideas. For a good deal of writers, drawing came first. We can scribble form before those forms become letters that communicate the ideas. 

The very first drawing my mom saved in my baby book was one I did when I was two and I told my mom it was called "The Sun and Her Babies". It was a bunch of smiling potatoes with sticks coming out of them, which incidentally looks like every drawing done by two year olds, my own nephews notwithstanding.

My transition to digital began in the mid 90s. Home internet was incredibly rustic then and drawing tablets weren't a thing. My first drawing was of Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z done with a mouse in MS Paint. Again, like most people my age. My siblings and I fought over that computer and my dad got rid of it. My school finally got a computer lab with internet and I would sneak onto Paint after rushing to get my work done and keep practicing. My family didn't get another computer until I was 19. The first thing I did was download PhotoShop 7. (8 and 2000 were next on the list-- because every company was obsessed with the turn of the century 2000 suffix.)

Again, with a mouse. To be honest, it was probably mid-2k before I even learned that drawing tablets were a thing. I saved up about $50 to get the cheapest one I could find. It was still clunkier than traditional drawing but much better than a mouse.

I used PhotoShop for a long time without really doing more than playing with filters on a single layer. Traditional was still preferred so it was casual use. I never touched vector drawing until college (around 2011) and I didn't learn why layers were so awesome until then either. However, college did awaken an insatiable curiosity for digital drawing and painting and I began to soar in terms of experience and expertise.

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TL;DR: I was in this digital drawing progression from the onset to its rapid rise and beyond.

What do I use? I've advised a lot of people on this and they've confirmed it's great for beginners as well. For affordability, Clip Studio Paint and a Wacom Bamboo tablet are going to be your icebreakers. CSP has a huge catalog of free brushes and textures and canvas options as well as a simple interface that makes it simple to branch into pricier programs like PhotoShop.

For people with money to blow, Wacom also has Cintiq and Mobile Studio Pro but you're looking to drop 1.8-3K for the top of the line, drawing right on a screen ones. I covet an MSP but I own the mid-range Intuos4 which cost me $400 back in 2000. Yes, you can get off brand tablets for cheaper but I love Wacom so I can't verify how well those work. A PhotoShop suite is worth every penny. I never bothered to upgrade to the Adobe CC. Quite frankly, fuck the subscription business models. I'll gladly upgrade but I'll never pay for something that becomes obsolete unless you keep paying monthly. I stopped at Adobe CS6. One of the best master collections is Adobe CS4 if you can get a hold of it. I juggle between CSP, PS, Illustrator and InDesign. Absolutely shell out for the latest Adobe Acrobat Pro. Formatting lifesaver, that one.

As for how to learn, know what you want to do and take advantage of YouTube. You can learn how to use filters to create nearly any effect. Lynda.com offers subscriptions that come with certification, learning as much as you want. Cheaper than college too.

I may do tutorials again someday. I truly enjoy talking about the nitty-gritty of how-to's. For now, I just wanted to demonstrate that it's not always an express process and you can ease into it in small steps. You don't need to start when you're super young to get good at it. In fact, up until the past five years, I was pretty inexperienced with the finer points of digital.

For those that follow, expect to see some of my latest digital paintings for the UnQuadrilogy in the year ahead. I'll do cover reveals prior to publishing to look out for those. As I've said before, I'm juggling it with writing so I wasn't able to start Inktober this year but I look forward to trying it next year.

If you have any questions about digital painting, feel free to ask. Yes, I love answering questions (as long as they're not the moronic sort that plague Quora-- I subscribed to the graphic design category and I've come to regret it...). As far as technique or process go, I can help you decide a workflow from a source photo or arrange a composition or offer a critique. I won't come down on anyone just for asking, even a dumb question. I also do basic HTML and Flash coding on occasion (epubs sometimes needs HTML formatting as well). I try to answer all questions or direct you to better resources. I did have a general design education but I've focused on specific interests after schooling so I know some things better than others.