Hand drawing vs. tablet

[kakalxlax]

Hi, just got my new tablet (intuos), so i have the doubt about whats better, if handrawing and then colouring using the tablet or draw and color using the tablet, i mean, i want to get good with the tablet but my linedrawing suck with it, i cant get a staight opaque line

here is an example, i drawed this on paper and coloured uing the tablet (my first colouring using it)

[Lintire]

Line-drawing is really what you want to perfect before (or simply in priority of) drawing on a tablet - they can be used in conjunction fairly easily and in the end tablet drawing comes down to a knowledge of photoshop/whatever.

So I say get the traditional media downpat first.

[The-Worsley-Bear]

I think it's down to personal preference really, theres no right or wrong way of doing it. Personally I prefer to do lineart on paper and colour with the tablet. I suppose you should go with whatever you feel most comfortable with.

[TurkeyOnAStick]

Do whatever makes you feel comfortable, since there's no right or wrong answer. If you ever browse through a digital painting magazine or book, you'll see that artists have different ways of initiating a painting. A few off my head that I can think of:
- Perfect the pencil drawing to every detail, then colour underneath.
- Create a pencil sketch, colour, then use the tablet to drive in the details.
- Blob in shapes of colour, then detail.

there's a few more, but I'd be driving the point home too hard.

At 10/8/11 03:45 AM, kakalxlax wrote: .... but my linedrawing suck with it, i cant get a staight opaque line

This caught my eye.
Depends on what you mean by "straight". If your line curves, you tend to make a sweeping action with your wrist, which is natural. If it's wobbly, you've either got Parkinson's or spilt superglue all over your tablet surface.
Completely straight lines can be made with the line tool, or holding down shift with the brush tool.

Concerning the opaqueness, are your brush settings set so the opacity of the brush is less than 100%?

In any case, it might be worth uploading a pic so we can see what you mean, and whether the problem is down to the program or your technique.

[Fifty-50]

What is wrong with her arms?

[ThunderSpam]

Honestly, your preference between digital and traditional medias is really just a preference. In the end it all boils down to skill. And you will only get skill if your practice, practice, practice. A lot of it is transferable, but try to pick something and stick with it.

If you are looking for personal opinions though, I say digital. It is a very powerful and versatile medium if you use it right.

[kakalxlax]

yes i mean i get wobbly lines and i would like to avoid using as most as possible vectors

At 10/8/11 05:15 AM, Lintire wrote:

So I say get the traditional media downpat first.

sry, what?

[bigjonny13]

At 10/8/11 05:10 PM, kakalxlax wrote:

At 10/8/11 05:15 AM, Lintire wrote: So I say get the traditional media downpat first.

sry, what?

Work on drawing lines by hand before you start working on drawing lines with your tablet.

[Jester]

At 10/8/11 05:16 PM, big-jonny-13 wrote:

At 10/8/11 05:10 PM, kakalxlax wrote:

At 10/8/11 05:15 AM, Lintire wrote: So I say get the traditional media downpat first.

sry, what?

Work on drawing lines by hand before you start working on drawing lines with your tablet.

And before you do anything else, learn to draw hands and feet. Your art isn't nearly as erotic as you seem to want it to be when the girls look like necromorphs.

[kakalxlax]

At 10/8/11 05:35 PM, DirtyMeatball wrote:

And before you do anything else, learn to draw hands and feet. Your art isn't nearly as erotic as you seem to want it to be when the girls look like necromorphs.

it started as lazynes but i think it can become a style, hands a feet,unnecessarily hard, just look at the powerpuff girls, those are damn sexy

[Kupia]

At 10/8/11 06:25 PM, kakalxlax wrote: it started as lazynes but i think it can become a style, hands a feet,unnecessarily hard, just look at the powerpuff girls, those are damn sexy

there might be some powerpuff girls hentai out there haha

[Jester]

At 10/8/11 06:25 PM, kakalxlax wrote:

At 10/8/11 05:35 PM, DirtyMeatball wrote:

And before you do anything else, learn to draw hands and feet. Your art isn't nearly as erotic as you seem to want it to be when the girls look like necromorphs.

it started as lazynes but i think it can become a style, hands a feet,unnecessarily hard, just look at the powerpuff girls, those are damn sexy

I'm not sure you can ignore the existence of a few body parts and draw erotica that'll attract anybody besides amputee fetishists.

But seriously, don't be lazy, nobody will take you seriously if you don't draw hands and feet, and it makes the art look unnatural and fairly unappealing. We don't need another Rob Liefeld.

[Lugen]

Well practice makes perfect.

[kakalxlax]

so which brush presets do you use with linedrawing?

[Civilized-Apocalypse]

i dunno, leaving out hands and feet shouldnt really fall under the category of being a style or not
its going to be tough at first but itll help the overall piece if there are at least hands and feet

,,, and the powerpuff girls are in kindergarten...just thought id throw that out on the table...

[ratherlemony]

Congrats on the new tablet, hope you have a lot of fun with it.

I say just practice. Practicepracticepractice with the drawing on tablet and with pencil and paper and you'll get better at it. A tablet isn't 'better' than a pencil, just a bit different (particularly if it doesn't have a built in screen like a cintiq). You'll start to get a feel for the process you use to make a picture after a while. Just play about.

A nice thing you can do is do a pencil drawing on paper, scan it, then tidy up your linework using the bezier curve tool in photoshop or illustrator or manga studio. basically it's a digital ink job, and can work wonders on initial feathery sketches. Once you've got the clean linework done in the computer, you can then go on to colour.

[kakalxlax]

At 10/10/11 04:19 PM, ratherlemony wrote:

A nice thing you can do is do a pencil drawing on paper, scan it, then tidy up your linework using the bezier curve tool in photoshop or illustrator or manga studio. basically it's a digital ink job, and can work wonders on initial feathery sketches. Once you've got the clean linework done in the computer, you can then go on to colour.

tnks, would you recomend to user the bezier for the lineart or the brush tool?

[ratherlemony]

At 10/10/11 05:33 PM, kakalxlax wrote:

At 10/10/11 04:19 PM, ratherlemony wrote:

A nice thing you can do is do a pencil drawing on paper, scan it, then tidy up your linework using the bezier curve tool in photoshop or illustrator or manga studio. basically it's a digital ink job, and can work wonders on initial feathery sketches. Once you've got the clean linework done in the computer, you can then go on to colour.

tnks, would you recomend to user the bezier for the lineart or the brush tool?

Depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to get a super smooth, then use the pen tool in photoshop (guessing you have photoshop). Millions of great tutorials out there. This one's not bad for anime: http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=lineart%
20tutorial&order=9&offset=24#/d1542ct

I tend to use a brush, but that's because that suits what I do I suppose *shrug* use what you enjoy using. You'll get better at these things the more you do them. It just takes a little while (:

[kakalxlax]

tnks for the help, as you can see here i avoided using lines as much as i could :P and the few i used are not very nice, but as you said, practice practice

[J-qb]

At 10/10/11 08:20 PM, kakalxlax wrote: tnks for the help, as you can see here i avoided using lines as much as i could :P and the few i used are not very nice, but as you said, practice practice

Well this is already ten times better than that first one; don't be afraid to be a bit bolder in your shading, try to use darker darks.

[Ramatsu]

You know what they say about big socks... Big feet, you know what the say about big feet? Big shoes.. But yeah like everyone else says just practice, I was pretty much always good at drawing hands but when it came to feet I would just cut them off from the picture. But I been practicing my feet alot making most of my characters barefoot. Just put things you need to improve on in the majority of your pieces, and I'm sure you'll improve quickly.

[kakalxlax]

still having problems with linedrawing, but some of the colors (hat and parts of the hair) changed when i converted to jpg, is there any way of avoiding it?

[Wivernryder]

Don't convert it to .jpg
Personally, I prefer .png files, or even .gif files in a pinch. Only reason to convert to .jpg is for posting in the forum...

[kakalxlax]

At 10/12/11 03:58 AM, Wivernryder wrote: Don't convert it to .jpg
Personally, I prefer .png files, or even .gif files in a pinch. Only reason to convert to .jpg is for posting in the forum...

tnks for the tip, but just tryed those formats too and still no better result

btw im using photoshop cs5

[J-qb]

check what settings you are using; in photoshop: Image> Mode
for compatibility reasons you will probably want to set this to rgb color.
Furthermore you could change your proof setup: View > Proof setup
and then have a few tries to see which one works for you; be sure to check View>Proof colors (ctrl+Y) or the setup won't work

[TheDownwardDog]

well I actually over the years have come to prefer digital because flash is really my favorite cartooning software however because I doodled constantly in class and never did work I have semi-decent art skills! although i used to draw on my tablet constantly for awhile... like for weeks at a time but i didnt draw for like a year... i dunno man. I learned with flash, that's what worked for me. My paper stuff isn't bad either i just feel a lot more limited. Plus you usually want to control Z on the paper and you can't and it sucks. i say just use whatever you want to use at the time. whatever works best for the picture. just feel your shit out while you're drawing it if you know what i mean.

[kakalxlax]

At 10/12/11 08:50 AM, J-qb wrote: check what settings you are using; in photoshop: Image> Mode
for compatibility reasons you will probably want to set this to rgb color.
Furthermore you could change your proof setup: View > Proof setup
and then have a few tries to see which one works for you; be sure to check View>Proof colors (ctrl+Y) or the setup won't work

tnks for the tip, now the photoshop looks a lil more similar to the jpg, but is there a way to make the finished file to look more like the original photoshop without having to repaint it?

At 10/12/11 01:57 PM, TheDownwardDog wrote:

Plus you usually want to control Z on the paper and you can't and it sucks.

ctrl z is the main reason to make stuff on the pc

[Kashi]

At 10/8/11 03:45 AM, kakalxlax wrote: i mean, i want to get good with the tablet but my linedrawing suck with it, i cant get a staight opaque line

ToaS might've solved this problem, but I also know in SAI that there is a setting which will change the opacitydepending on the amount of pressureyou use. So even though you set the opacity to 100%, if that is checked and you're not absolutely crushing your tablet with pressure (sidenote: don't do that), you won't get a solid black line.

Grats on the tablet btw :)

[kakalxlax]

one more question and i know is mostly a taste thing, but ive seen people using easy paint sai as much as photoshop, so which one do you prefer?, and according to the style of the posted pictures which one you thing would suit me better

[Kashi]

At 10/13/11 03:59 PM, kakalxlax wrote: one more question and i know is mostly a taste thing, but ive seen people using easy paint sai as much as photoshop, so which one do you prefer?, and according to the style of the posted pictures which one you thing would suit me better

SAI = vector- good for graphic design n stuff, crispy clean lines, larger filesize, can scale as much as you want :D
PS = raster- better for painting and such, you can scale down, BUT if you try to scale up, everything gets blurry and ugly :/
ALSO:
^note: I'm pretty sure that PS has some Vector thing now, but I think its pretty lame :P; PS can also animate (warning: HUGE filesize)
^SAI also has raster layers, but they don't have a line tool or anything; you can merge vector with raster layers though (this creates a raster layer)
^SAI is considerably cheaper (if you buy them, that is ;) ...), but PS is a lot more in-depth and has more doodads and tools and effects to use. Photoshop is also better at, well, photoshopping :P

---
If you haven't gotten into art programs yet, its good to experiment, get a free 30 day trial of each and do some srting in each, and see which one you like better. If you just go with one, it's pretty dificult toswitch off to the other (trust me, I know :/)
From the style of your art, you got a manga-y thing going on here. SAI is a Japanese program originally designed for manga, but seriously, it doesn't make a difference, and that shouldn't change your decision. Just pick the one you're most happy with :)

errrrrm, correct me if I'm wrong anywhere, guys ;)