Learning Simple Digital Drawing from YouTube
Color gradients, starry nights, and… a Sith?
I started learning digital drawing on YouTube earlier this year. I never thought about doing any sort of painting or drawing because I’ve always been awfully bad at it.
The rest of my family is pretty good at drawing or painting. Unfortunately, I don’t inherit that talent.
Funny story, when I was young, my elementary school art teacher told my class to do a nature-themed drawing. But I ended up scaring the other kids with a revolting new animal species I unintentionally drew!
Yeah, it was terrible… I wish I still had the drawing to scare you!
So I never held a paintbrush or drawing pencils ever again… Until my brother recommended digital drawing. I’ve then held a stylus pen to draw at least once a week!
My Digital Drawing Kit
1. Huion H1060P Drawing Tablet
It’s fantastic for newbies and very affordable. I got mine for about $30 from Huion’s official online store during a huge New Year sale!
This is a Pen tablet, by the way. Though the functions are similar to a Graphic tablet, this one doesn’t have a screen on it. One of the main reasons why it’s a lot cheaper. So you could only monitor your drawing on your computer screen.
Good enough for me as I’m just doing this as a hobby.
My brother found it hard to draw on a different device while monitoring it on a separate screen. I thought I’d have the same problem, but surprisingly, I don’t!
To me, it’s the same as typing while looking at your screen or playing the piano while sight-reading a music sheet.
This pen tablet comes with a Micro USB to USB-A cable, a battery-free pen, a pen holder, and eight replacement pen nibs.
Each pen nib should last two to three years. But you may have more frequent replacements depending on:
- The texture of your tablet.
- The amount of pressure on the pen when drawing.
- Which side of the nib you use. It’s best to switch to different sides whenever you draw.
So to start drawing, after connecting the tablet to your computer using the USB cable provided, visit Huion’s official website to download the Huion driver to your computer.
This software enables you to customize the press keys and soft keys on the tablet and pen for shortcuts.
Plus, you can also adjust the stylus pressure sensitivity.
2. Microsoft Paint & Paint 3D
I don’t use the typical digital drawing software like Adobe Illustrator or Procreate.
Since I’ve always been a Windows user…
Hey, everyone has their preferences!
So, since I’ve always been a Windows user, I use whatever is available for free — Paint and Paint 3D. Because again, this is just a hobby.
My Go-to Digital Drawing YouTube Channels
This is the first YouTube channel I learned digital drawing with using Paint 3D. In fact, the cover image of this post is one of my earlier drawings I learned from one of his Paint 3D video tutorials.
I was still very new and had poor control of the stylus pen on the tablet. So I actually ruined most of the drawings!
But these are a few that I was able to salvage after clicking Ctrl Z and redoing hundred times!
Few Paint 3D tips I learned from this channel:
- Spray can for color gradients and light rays.
- Watercolor brush for snow.
- Crayon for the shimmering and trembling water texture, snow texture, leaves on trees, and cherry blossoms.
- Calligraphy pen to draw twigs and branches.
- Layering.
2. Bipu Art
I found this YouTube channel a few weeks after learning from DramArtDigital. I prefer this channel more than the first one because I find the tutorials easier to follow with more details.
Though most of his digital art is drawn using Paint, I started with his Paint 3D tutorials. And a trick I learned from him is to use textures available on Paint 3D for the surface of moons and planets.
I didn’t know that it’s possible to draw decently on Paint until I found his channel.
These are some of the drawings I did on Paint from watching his tutorials.
As you can tell from these digital artworks, I love drawing night views! But I should really learn to draw other sceneries.
Creating color gradients on Paint is a lot easier than on Paint 3D. There are just a few steps to create a horizontal color gradient:
1. Create lines of different colors diagonally on canvas.
2. Fill colors in spaces between the lines.
3. Resize the horizontal pixel to 1. But don’t forget to untick ‘Maintain aspect ratio’ before resizing.
4. Then, resize the horizontal pixel again to the original size.
Other helpful Paint tips I learned from this channel:
- Increase and decrease brush size by clicking Ctrl+ and Ctrl-.
- Crayon to draw leaves or flowers on trees.
- Natural pencil to add textures to the ground, rocks, and hills.
The drawing above is a combination of what I learned from Bipu Art and DramArtDigital.
I drew the background and the Sith (from Star Wars) separately, by the way. It’s a method I learned from DramArtDigital.
So I did the green foggy woods first by watching a Bipu Art Paint 3D video tutorial. Then, I drew the Sith silhouette (which I copied from a Google image) in Paint 3D and switched to transparent canvas.
After that, I copy-pasted the silhouette to the background and added a thin layer of dark green and black fog using the spray can.
Besides digital drawing, Bipu Art also does watercolor, sketches, and oil pastel drawings.
This is a new channel I discovered recently. So far, I’ve only done two drawings from his Paint 3D tutorials.
I noticed that this channel applies slightly different techniques, like the layering of colors to create gradients and brush selection for particular textures.
So I’m looking forward to learning more from this channel!
I Enjoy Doing Digital Drawings!
I’m glad I started doing digital drawings. It’s very therapeutic and tons of fun! I play the piano, but drawing gives me a different sense of satisfaction than playing or making music.
It’s more of a visual acknowledgment of the effort I put into the drawings.
Also, if I mess things up, which I always do, I can always click Ctrl Z!
For now, I’m still drawing based on the YouTube tutorials. But I’m hoping to draw a complete original soon using the techniques I learned from these YouTube Channels.
Are you into digital drawing? What tools do you use?
