I have featured art made (exclusively) on the computer before —just this year, even and I've periodically used computers to enhance projects, especially when I belonged to the apa, and had to print multiples out anyway. —But despite buying not one but two wacom tablets, I never got very far with digital art.
sketch made on an ipad using the procreate app. Ugh, the anatomy... 11?aug2020
The pinnacle, at that time, were the extremely expensive cintiq screens, on which you could directly draw. They cost thousands of dollars, but were entirely worth it—for serious digital artists who used them every day. I, however, had glass and beadstringing to keep me busy every day. Drawing was a hobby. I'm glad I didn't spend the money for yet another expensive tool that I wouldn't’ve used enough to justify its purchase.
2nd sketch made on the same ipad, a couple of days later. You can see I'm having a much easier time: the anatomy is better, though the figure's left arm's elbow joint is a bit high. This drawing is still unfinished, btw:)
Part of the reason I never got very far was that I was so poor at setting up the wacom to work with my linux based apps. Linux users tend to be geeky types who enjoy futzing around with their equipment, but I'm linux user only because that's my tech support —left to my own devices, as an artist, I'd be in the apple ecosystem—as indeed my glass daughter, recently graduated from Parsons, is.
She let me try her iPad, and a $15 (!) dollar app called procreate. You can see I was struggling a bit with the first time I used it[1] but I was impressed with just how intuitive the interface was. Apple products, however, are out of the question: I simply haven't the chops to move stuff back and forth between them and the rest of my equipment and don't feel it's fair to ask the wizard to work with software made by a company he doesn't like.[2]
But! It turns out my little laptop—which just had its failing hard drive replaced— also had a stylus and hard screen, and krita to run it. Krita is certainly more geared to drawing than gimp, if not as easy (or, I suspect as powerful, judging from the little banner ad on the procreate site) as the mac product, but it has the essential thing I must have, pressure sensitive driven line width variation, and it's much less frustrating than trying to draw on a wacom.
IOW, technology has improved to the point where I'm willing to tackle the learning curve:)
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
