I’ve been a traditional artist since I was really young and didn’t take my digital media artwork very seriously until recently. It was not until I began streaming and creating streaming assets in 2020 that I began creating digital art more consistently, prior to that, I stuck to my comfort zone of physical medium (which I still prefer and love!). As side note, traditional medium in the age where AI generated content is prevalent, is still the easiest to discern as genuine artmaking in my opinion, and personally, the mode that brings me the most satisfaction and joy.
I tried my best to scroll wayyyy back in my Instagram to find the ver first digital art pieces I posted! Here were some of them:
Hybrid style! Often sketches and lineart done physically, then coloured digitally: (Below were all from 2015! I think you can see I had a cartoon phase XD)
To this day, digital art creators continue trying to mimic the behaviours and effects our physical medium make with ease. From the density and grit of a pencil mark to the unpredictable blending that watercolour offers, my belief is that the mastery of the fine arts will always serve as a good foundation to digital artmaking, but the transaction of those skills to the digital mode is where the challenge lies for many artists.
All that aside, my goal this month was to try creating digital art that looked somewhat like what I would do traditionally! Starting with some brush experimentations. To get as close a match as possible, I imported images of my traditional artwork to compare to the results of different brushes in Procreate.
I tried to keep in mind the properties of the medium, and tried to emulate it in the application through tweaking the settings.
The results aren’t perfect, but they’re certainly more informed than previously using whatever I felt might look good! (It often didn’t turn out very good because I never reflected on it until now :”D)
I uploaded the timelapses so that I can recall the process easily. Please enjoy them!
The brush links are in the video descriptions ^_^
For the sketch brush, I was looking for a brush that could emulate the thick and thin lines in my sketching and find a brush which had the most similar effect to my real life pencil.
For the ink lineart, I was looking for a brush with flexibility in width (because I use a flexible nib for inking in real life), but also with some grit. It had to be opaque.
For my traditional coloured lineart, I often use highlighters, which have a low opacity quality and with a flat nib.