A Digital Drawing Diary

During the past several years I've been working to learn digital art. Specifically I've been learning digital drawing and painting using Sketchbook and Painter, although I only just adopted the latter. On my other art blog, The Studio Journal my focus has been mostly on traditional materials, but about three years ago a gift of a Wacom tablet set me onto the digital pathway. Before the Wacom I had tried pressure-sensitive tablets and had made a few rudimentary stabs at drawing with a stylus on my iPad too. But none felt satisfactory and by no means did those first efforts feel creatively useful. So progress toward the digital age was eluding me until I started using the Wacom Cintiq. A Cintiq is actually both a display and a pressure-sensitive tablet. So the image appears under your hand as you're drawing or painting it and the pressure response makes it feel much more traditional. Digital artists are already making wonderful pictures using various programs; commonly Photoshop and Painter seem most frequently used, but other programs are also useful. Sketchbook, which is the program I use most, has the virtue of being free.

Anyway, my plan with this blog is to post a digitally-made image daily, partly as a personal daily digital diary, partly as a stimulus to be diligent in my practice; and partly to aid in learning to use Sketchbook and Painter more adeptly. The intent of this site is not to produce art for sale but to practice and by sharing that practice to help any interested party along the same path. The famous quote from Michelangelo Buonarotti to one of his assistants: "Draw Antonio, draw and don't waste time," applies.

These images are based on various sources but most commonly they will be based on an image stumbled across on the Internet. Sometimes it may be a life sketch, or perhaps a sketch from scrap in the studio.

A digitalium, by the way, is a something digital or binary, so a digital drawing fits the definition.

After Menzel, "Portrait of an Old Woman"

The digital drawing above was made using Sketchbook and a Wacom Cintiq tablet. I was most interested in 1)making the initial drawing as accurately as I could, 2)emulating dimensionality by using the chiaroscuro method. The original is by Adolph Menzel, a much neglected German artist of the 19th century.