Hi everybody,

I need some advice. Last year I decided to pick up drawing again, learning about the human anatomy (both males and females) and I'm happy enough with my current results that I want to try digital next to it. I have a Bamboo play and touch tablet like this one and have tried Sai, Fire Alpaca but I keep falling back on my trusty buddy CS6 (I have a legal version) who I get along the most.

Only my problem is when you draw on paper it's grab a pencil and draw but with these programs there are so many choices I get confused and I don't know how to get along with it. I just want to open it and go! Not to mention my art looks very....Let's say it doesn't make me happy as I draw with a pencil. I do want to learn how to do digital art. I really do and I love CS6 (We have been through so much. Pretty much a love and hate relationship).

Does anyone have tips for me how to get used to this with all those options and how did your experience go from traditional to digital?

I had that problem for a long time (and I still love to draw with my loved pencils :> ) yet I wont miss my wacom intuos. I also work with CS6, in my opinion the best programm (also tried out Sai, yet I always fall back to photoshop :) ) Getting along with it, requires practice, it's a different handling with it, so try to doodle a lot, draw some studies or stuff like that :) Maybe, to make it a bit more "handy", you have the possibility to "rotate" the canvas like you could rotate a piece of paper (without the rotate option itself I mean), press 'R' and drag the canvas into the direction how it should rotate. At least it helped me to get more into digital drawings :) otherwise you have different pencil settings (like this) and depending on the pen pressure of your tablet, you can also play around with that (just like normal pencil, the smoother you imprint on the tablet, the smoother the lines become :) ) Otherwise you have to work for it several times till your brain is able to rethink all the actions you actually did with drawing traditionally :) I hope this helped a bit ❤️

I've almost noticed that my style is a bit different from traditional to digital. I think chi made some very good points. The only other thing I can offer is, if you're feeling bogged down by options then maybe just focus on one thing at a time and after you get comfortable with it, then add in some more tools. Like maybe at first, just use the brush and eraser. After you get confident with that maybe add in using another layer or two. Then after you get down how layers work out use another tool you'd like to try, like the transform tool. That's about all I've got, Hopefully that was in the same vein as what you were asking about ^^;

I have to agree with you on that. CS6 is perfect and has everything I need but I just need to find it. I have the feeling it's playing hide and seek with me. Today I have been doodling with it and I will keep doing so but it was still a weird feeling but after I used the link you posted here. It's so much more fun. I have changed the settings and used the the rotate option and my tablet feels almost the same as my pencil. Thank you so much for that ❤️ You're a very big help. It's a whole different feeling now and my lines look more nicer (and flowing which I love). I tried to color with it as well but I think I will wait after I practice some more with my lines (tomato people haha. Picking skin color is so weird).

I'm so curious about the program's functions that I'm getting a bit distracted but I'm trying to focus on my lines for now, to keep them flowing and straight and not a bunch of scribbly lines. The link chi posted helped me a bunch as well and making the experience much nicer now my tablet acts almost the same as a pencil. I do know how the layers work thanks to my school (but not for drawing more for editing pictures and such so this is a whole new experience for me). But still it's a good reminder together with the transform tool (that I forgot until you mentioned it) which saved me a couple of times today so I don't have to forget either of those (:

@ Dunja As CS6 is a professional programm people who are drawing just as a hobby might feel lost with this programm :) You just have to play around with all the functions, trying out different settings and see what comes out of it^^ When you want to start colorizing keep in mind, that you can create layers, which do have nearly the same function as normal trace paper/transparent paper. So doing lineart on one layer, create another layer (shortcut: ctrl+shift+n) and drag it under your lineart. Like this your lineart wont be touched, wont be painted over and is clearly visible Yes, picking skin color is really wierd :D Maybe this pic can help you? I saved it to my computer as it helps me to pick the fitting skin tones when I draw humans :) For the perfect shadow and hightlights I really really recommend this tutorial by Jesus Conde (yes, it's really long, his accent is quite funny sometimes, but he is very talented and it helped me a lot to do skin shadings) Watching tutorials in general helped me to improve my art :) Feel free to chat with me, whenever you need some help/advise/good tutorials I found (I am no a pro either, but I draw with photoshop programms for several years now :) )

Oh! I'd forgotten, too, if you'd like to experiment at all with taking lines you've made on paper and then coloring it digitally, this might help http://kaiami.net/post/43733095107/tutorial-from-paper-to-digital. I know sometimes when I'm fed up with not getting something to look right digitally but I know I can get my lineart done better on paper I go this route. If you don't have a scanner you could always take a photo of it, too, but in that instance you'd want to make it as clear as possible, like with a light shining over the whole thing.

I changed a few settings but I kinda panicked when things stopped working or I couldn't get things right anymore but still I will keep trying. (Even if I have to reinstall CS6 to get things okay. I did't go that far yet). Thankfully I got everything right again. I didn't know that! I was using ctrl+z every time I went over my lineart haha. I'm going to use that way from now on! I will keep that pic saved and I love the video. It's very clear and he is indeed very talented. This is going to help me big time. Just out of curiosity. Do you know Proko? He helped me out with human anatomy. I'm trying to do his quick sketch thing but I'm failing that one a bit. (I can draw in 10 min but underneath I begin to stress haha). Thank you so much again, I really appreciate your help.

I do have a scanner so I definitely going to try that one out! I'm learning so much from the both of you! I never knew this was all possible. I'm going to be quite busy for while with all of this. Thank you for your help as well (:

I enjoy downloading several brush packs from different artists, trying them out, keeping what I like and deleting what doesn't suits me. I pretty much never use the standard photoshop brushes, you have to play around with their settings to make them good to use. Getting traditional brush packs might help. I personally enjoy using a pencil brush to sketch. I really enjoy this pack: http://ibenkrutt.deviantart.com/art/Iben-Krutt-s-Traditional-Media-Brushes-575539312 and this pencil brush seems to be a lot popular too: http://andantonius.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-Pencil-Brush-105284502 I couldn't find a link to my favorite brush, thought. It's a very traditional looking blue pencil, very nice for sketching. If you want I can try to upload it somewhere for you :)

Also!! if you are having problems picking colors these might help: http://pheberoni.deviantart.com/art/ayee-440242186 http://pheberoni.deviantart.com/art/rad-447207168 http://pheberoni.deviantart.com/art/Swatches-516982304 (these are swatches and they can work like a pre made palette)

Sorry I respond so late. I never got your ping! Thank you so much for the links. Some of them are quite useful (I love the second one of color picking which I tried out and worked!) and I'm going to try some of those brushes. They look quite fun to try out (: