Hey hey!

I just purchased a Wacom tablet and I am new to the world of Digital Art.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips and tricks for newbies. :)

I'm gonna risk getting yelled at by an over zealous forum mod about "necroing" this thread because I really enjoy helping people out.

Anyways, I'm curious about what digital art program you use. Regardless of which program though, one thing that I HIGHLY recommend is learning your hotkeys. Your undo (Ctrl+Z), Save (Ctrl+Z), Redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z in most programs I've used), Mirror if you have the ability to do, rotate, New layer, etc. A lot of programs will let you set up and customize your hotkeys to your comfort. My first tip is to get familiar with your hotkeys and use to them so you barely need to think about which hotkeys do what.

Also with a lot of programs you can actually hold down a hotkey and use that tool as long as you're holding that hotkey down. For example say your tablet pen doesn't have the ability to flip the pen over to use the other end for the eraser tool, you can hold down the hotkey for the eraser (In most programs I've used it would be the E key) to erase something, then let go of the key and continue drawing.

Another tip, CTRL+S, CTRL+S, CTRL+S, CTRL+S!!! Save often. I probably don't need to tell you, but no matter how stable your program is or if it has an autosave, anything can happen. If there's only a single hotkey you can learn and remember, make that one be CTRL+S.

Uhh let's see when drawing something, if you have an option to mirror your canvas, do so to check on what you've drawn so far. Sometimes things will look fine because you've been staring at it for a long time and then when you mirror the canvas parts that are off will become more clear. On that note you should zoom out, rotate, and flip the canvas every now and again to get a different perspective on your drawing. Maybe even stand up, take a few steps back and look at your drawing. When you're zeroed in on your drawing and focused some things that either look off are more likely to slip through the cracks.

Using References is very important. Don't EVER let anyone convince you that using references is somehow bad for your growth art-wise. Also there isn't a one way fits all for how to use references. If you want to practice drawing what you see, pull up an image and try to draw it. Most of the time though when I use a reference it's more so that I pull up several different refs for an idea I have, but will sample different parts from each ref to help flesh out the idea I'm trying to get onto the canvas. For example the pose from one image, the position of the hand from another, an object from a different one, etc. There are actually some digital programs (some free, and others where you purchase the license once and it's affordable) that actually let you pull up 3d models to use as references that can be rotated and viewed from different angles. I'd highly recommend taking advantage of those.

Let's see, Throwing out some random stuff that comes to mind.... Ah, Never use the dodge tool to highlight nor the burn tool to shade when doing digital artwork. Dodge and burn are fine for photo editing, but look HORRENDOUS when used to shade and highlight on a digital art piece. This is because dodge essentially just adds white and Burn adds black. Very few things in this world are black and white, and this very much applies to shading and highlighting.

Get familiar with some of the ins and outs of your drawing programs. Organize your workspace in your program with the tools, swatches, and tabs in a way that's comfortable and efficient to you. You'd be amazed with how much some people can do with simple MS paint. It's kinda like that myth about how humans only use a small percent of their brains except this isn't so much of a myth about drawing programs. I'm willing to bet that most people (I myself and extremely guilty of this) only know how to use a very small part of their drawing programs. It's good to explore your brushes, brush settings, guides rulers, filters, Layer options, mask layers, multiply layers etc. Even if you end up using a specific few brushes, it's still good to know what options you have and how to take advantage of them.

You can drag and drop guidelines onto your canvas by clicking on your rulers and dragging it down onto your canvas. This is good for making some perspective guides and lining things up.

NAME YOUR LAYERS. I know there are a lot of big artists that wind up not doing this, but they will be the first to tell you that it's a bad habit and have suffered for it in the past. When you get up there to 10's of layers, you'll want to know what you're drawing and on which layer. If your program lets you, organize your layers using groups. (Also don't forget to name those groups as well)

Work smart, not hard. Now that you have digital tools, you have shortcuts that you can use now. There's no shame at all in it and no one is expecting you to draw every blade of grass, every book on the shelf, every link on that chain or every star in a night sky. Use custom brushes, stamps, copy and paste, layers and filters. This isn't cheating, these are just tools that you have access to now with digital art. It's fine to challenge yourself and keep some of the muscles in shape, but for the sake of your sanity, take advantage of these tools you're provided.

These are just some general things that come to mind for me. Hopefully some of it was helpful. Feel free to ask me for any clarification or if you have any other questions.

I enjoy playing around with programs, exploring things for yourself but never underestimate the power of watching other artists do things. I have learned a lot of things just from watching people drawing and taking on a few tips here and there and applying them to my own drawing process :)

Don't judge your digital abilities until you truly feel comfortable using the tablet, and be sure to warm up a lot before you do anything that requires confident strokes like lineart. It takes practice time and the ability to relax to make good lineart, haha. For each good thing I've drawn, there were many hideous warm-up drawings to get my hand loose and the poses perfect.