Painting Digitally

  • Started
  • Last post
  • 7 Responses
  • face_melter3

    If you want to see a nice range of brushes available for Clip Studio and Ps, check this page out. I rattle through it occasionally if i'm looking for something different - it's one of the few sites that actually shows examples of the brushes rather than just stroke thumbnails.

    https://digitalbrushes.tumblr.co…

    And avoid the artstation marketplace - the tags system is fucking garbage because people lump in their shitty faux-leather Substance brushes or their repulsive horse vagina ZBrush modifiers in with all the reg. 2D stuff making it nigh on impossible to search for decent paint brushes.

  • face_melter2

    Clip Studio is definitely worth trying. Built from the ground up to be an illustration / comicbook application - it can simulate numerous paint styles and is hugely popular because of its price (regular sales) and feature set - including importing 3D and turning it into line art, a figure posing tool, and page layout options. The number of brushes and additional tools available is bananas - it has a massive community behind it.

    The interface is a little ~esoteric~ but totally customisable and the latest version allows you to
    fully import Ps brushes - although some might need tweaking to get the same results or effects.

    I like it a lot as the drawing 'feel' is excellent (thanks largely to it still using WinTab and not shitty shitty shitty Windows Ink) but I stick with a WinTab-enabled Ps because of various workflow and QoL kinks - mostly keyboard modifiers that are unavailable in Clip Studio. If they fix those I would probably move over 100% as I have got my brushes working pretty well.

    • Never heard of this but after some digging it’s quite robust and impressive going to try it_niko
  • PhanLo1

    What tablet did you get?
    I remember seeing the early versions of Rebelle, but it looks like it's improved a lot. Price is pretty decent too.
    You'll never be able to get the interactive watercolour elements in Photoshop but there are some good brush sets out there for it.
    For Grutbrushes you can get the whole set for $20
    https://www.grutbrushes.com

    Rebelle defo looks fun.

    If you do get it, it'd be great if you could post the results. Look forward to what you come up with.

    • cheers will check out those brushes.microkorg
    • that's pretty bad-ass_niko
  • monNom2

    Recommendations:

    https://krita.org/en/
    Free, opensource digital painting program. It's pretty darn good!

    https://www.blender.org/
    for SCULPTING. you haven't truly sculpted in 3d until you've done it with a pressure sensitive pen tablet. It's extremely intuitive once you get a feel for navigation. If XP pen has an app to set custom shortcuts, you might want to figure out what works best for you. Usually some combo of CTRL/ ALT/SHIFT to zoom/pan/rotate
    also free and open source, and has some new 2d animation capabilities too

    Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
    https://www.autodesk.com/product…
    This used to be a really reasonable priced software. Now it looks like it's completely free. Great brush engine, especially the pencil. The entire UI is made for pen interaction so you don't need to rely on a keyboard as much. Feels most like drawing on paper, somehow.

  • microkorg1

    Got an XP-Pen Deco01 V2.
    They've reduced all their prices on amazon so down from £60 to £50. Seems really good for the money and all reviews proper decent.

    Was tempted by the pro thats down from £130 to £100 but will see how I go with this one. Never had a tablet before. Kinda fancyseeing what its like for design work in general instead of usng mouse.

    • Nice! I reckon it'll help even just with your wrist, using a pen is way easier. Pressure sensitivity will be fun to play with too. :-)PhanLo
    • My wife changed over to a pen tablet for doing design work a few years back, she never went back to using a mouse.PhanLo
  • monNom1

    ^ pressure sensitivity is pretty important. I wouldn't recommend one if those rubber nub styles. There are a few android tablets with a Wacom digitizer in them or similar. Samsung s-pen is Wacom tech, I believe. The 9.7" Tab A from a few years ago had a good pen.

    Any new iPad is great with the Apple pencil.

    If you want to go budget, get a used Wacom Intuos 3 and hook it to a PC laptop or better yet a desktop. I think drivers for intuos 3 no longer work on Mac but I still use one of these with my laptop. The laptop (Lenovo yoga 14") has a Wacom pen built in but I find the external tablet works better given the small screen area. This gives you a huge suite of software to paint in.

  • cherub0

    I looked into getting something like this as a gift for someone I know who has an amazon fire 7 and wants to do basic illustration.

    Of course this is a huge step down from what is available on a dedicated wacom-like device. Because the devices talked about here have a digitizing layer.

    That being said, anyone try the mobile offerings on ios or android? Apparently autodesk sketchbook and artflow are the good ones for android.

    For styluses, this website helped me figure stuff out.

    https://www.howtogeek.com/177376…

    For a cheap android device you can only have a capacitive/passive stylus, or maybe a bluetooth stylus if they make one for your device.

    Does all this sound about right? Still new to this, and not an artist myself.