My first experience creating digital art-My entry for Twisted Brush Digital Art Show

This show had to be done entirely with the Twisted Brush paint program. I have always admired digital art but have never tried my hand at it. This last two weeks has been a series of first for me. My first experience with digital art (other than playing around with Paint and a mouse), my first experience with a digital pen, and my first with a paint program. I have wanted to try digital art but have always been afraid of it. Afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it, afraid I couldn’t manipulate and use it to it’s fullest potential, or use it to realize MY fullest potential with it. I just felt inadequate to use it. So, I downloaded the 15 day trial version of Twisted Brush, decided to dig in, and give it my best shot. I got the Bamboo pen and touch which is the cheapest brand although 199.00 is not cheap to me. In for a penny, in for a pound…right? ( See 3 WIP detail images below)

Twisted Brush has so many brush tips and different effects choices it is intimidating to a newbie like me, but I persevered. I experimented on a couple of paintings to try and get the feel of the brush tips. I felt VERY awkward with the pen and getting used to the feel and touch. I did like that it can be set for a left handed person like me, but I’m not sure if that really helped me or not. I felt like I had little control and every time I touched the pen down to do a stroke or draw, the actual paint color lagged behind, and didn’t start where I actually touched down with the pen. So it was touch down, draw, and then eventually the paint would come along behind me. At least that’s what it felt like. I spent many hours trying to fine tune the control and finally got a little better at it.

One thing I did like is I don’t have to wait for good lighting, or any lighting to get a decent photo, or find a scanner to use…it’s ready to go, yay!! And that way my picture of my digital art is truer to color than I can get than just taking a photo outside or on my porch then trying to adjust the colors to look closer to the actual colors.

I found free form drawing like I did in this finished piece was difficult to do as opposed to using the tool that does circles and rectangles so perfectly for you. I had done a similar artwork to this a few weeks ago in actual (not digital or virtual) graphite pencil, colored pencils, and ink. and wanted to try to get a similar look, in digital form. You can choose different blank background effects so I chose “canvas.” So if you look closely at the peach background it looks like it was painted on canvas…that was kind of cool. Then I worked at getting a color that would look like graphite pencil for the shaded areas, etc.

Discovered something after my trial version ended that would have made things easier. I found out I could have rotated the painting while I was working on it. This would have made the drawing part much easier because one of my complaints (to myself) was that some areas were even more awkward to draw because I could turn it to work on different areas like I would have paper or canvas.

Another thing that feels strange about digital art is I felt funny calling it an original because the only way you can sell it is as a print of some kind whether it be a Giclee canvas, or whatever.

Chartreuse Zipperfly Smuggling Fairy. She’s smuggling Zipperflies…kind of like Dragonflies but zippier. She has as many hiding places as a politician has to hide Pork…(-:

With chartreuse, peach, lavender and graphite type colors, and if you look closely she has a sprinkle of freckles on her sun kissed, peach colored cheeks. I even managed to eek out one of my moons to feed my current obsession for moons, orbs, and round things, that runs throughout a lot of my artwork.

The prize for the top winner in this show is a full version of Twisted Brush Pro. My pen came with Corel Painter but it doesn’t have near the tons of brushes and options that Twisted Brush has. If you like my artwork and would like to see how much further digital art can take me, or I can take it…I would appreciate your vote. Now that I’ve got a taste of it I think I could have a new obsession…(-:

If you would like to vote for me here is the link-Twisted Brush Digital Art Show: My entry “Chartreuse Zipperfly Smuggling Fairy”

http://www.ebsqart.com/Art-Shows/Exhibits/TwistedBrush-Digital-Art-Show/313/Chartreuse-Zipperfly-Smuggling-Fairy/689659/

Also, even after you vote, if you are on Facebook, they also give awards now (called the Cloud Awards) for the art with the most “Likes.” So “Vote” and click the “Like” buttons please…(-: