My journey into digital art
A gateway to a world of fantasy and imagination
Whether you are listening to your Calculus teacher drone on while you doodle in your notebook, or whether you do commissions and get paid for your art — art is an expression of your creative self and it is available to everyone.
Art has been in my life for as long as I remember. I remember a program called “Art Vistas” in elementary school that taught me about various art styles and some famous paintings. Each lesson had an associated hands-on project and we dabbled with sketching, acrylic-on-canvas, and clay sculpting. What I realized through this program was that I was relatively good at copying art and could effortlessly create good replicas. But, I never felt like I owned the artwork or could show it to people. Basically, it felt like plagiarism.
Whenever I tried to create my own characters, they always came out differently on paper from what I had imagined in my mind. So I started my journey to discover my very own “art style.”
My first drawings were pencil drawings done with simple block shading. But, these got boring after a while. I tried working with colored pencils, but I always felt that I never had the right color for what I wanted and everything seemed to be slightly off. Most artists who use colored pencils have hundreds of pencils, but I did not feel that buying all those supplies would provide the experience that I was craving.
So I took a break from art. Throughout middle school, I only expressed my artistic self through school projects. That was until I started watching ANIME.
Anime isn’t like any other art form because you cannot replicate it into a physical piece. The digital effect is what made it so beautiful. There are no limits to the colors, shapes, and textures possible. And I decided that I would create digital art.
I bought a cheap drawing tablet and watched a few videos of digital art speed drawings and thought, “This looks simple enough.”
I was wrong — very wrong!!
There are so many things to consider in digital art. Layers, brushes, pressure sensitivities were techniques and nuances that took me a long time to understand and implement.
Here is my first digital art piece. I thought it would be interesting to try drawing myself in a manga art style, but without any knowledge on how to effectively start, I ended up drawing everything on three layers: the sketch, the line art, and everything else
Anyone who creates digital art is probably cringing by now. At the time of creating this piece, I did not realize that for every single “aspect” of this piece, I had to create a new layer. Otherwise, I would not be able to adjust the lighting, change the colors, or fix any mistakes. The devil was in the “detailing”.
I also did not know the differences between the various brushes that came with my software (Krita v.4.2.0). Without any knowledge of how to change the brush settings, I ended up with extremely flat drawings with blocky blending.
But, I didn’t give up. I started from the basics again. I tried drawing line arts, making sure I knew how to create smooth lines.
Then I started adding black and white colors, with minimal shading.
I took the same drawings and added colors, learned how to adjust colors, and use the alpha lock feature.
At this point, I thought my art looked a lot better than what I had started with. But for me, it still lacked a realistic feel. The line art was too chunky and everything felt stylized. So, I started on a new quest to create realistic digital art.
I started following different artists on Instagram and combining different parts that I loved about their art styles in my own creations. And, I finally created my first realistic painting.
I know what you are thinking. This piece is not realistic — the girl has glowing eyes and horns!
Of course, this is not something you would usually see — in art or in real life. But what drew me to digital art was the ability to be creative and imagine the impossible — to fantasize. For me, realistic art need not fall into any specific art style — traditional sketches, manga, or cartoons. Realistic art is something you can imagine seeing in this world, even though it may be a fantasy creature.
Art has always been a way for me to express all the creatures that I see in my imagination. Whether it’s a simple charcoal sketch or a multi-layered drawing — art makes anything possible.
And giving free rein to your imagination through art is a theme that particularly resonates with me at this time when most of us are sheltering in place and hoping that we will all emerge from the crisis someday.
“Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” –Jonas Salk
