Friday, December 26, 2008

New Year's Resolution '09

I'm going to get better at drawing.
I took a class about a year ago where my painting instructor said "Why draw it when you're just going to spend double the time painting over it?" I did this for a while and couldn't understand why I wasn't happy with the results of my work. After taking Seiler's class I have a greater appreciation for drawing in general and working out my problems with a point rather than a brush in particular.
I got a copy of Sketchbook Pro for Christmas and this is my first drawing with it. I love it so far. I've worked in Painter and Photoshop since I started this and I like them both. I don't think you can get any better than Painter with the feel of pushing paint and, for some reason, I still take my paintings to Photoshop and paint a little in there. But for drawing, there's another level of "feel" with Sketchbook Pro. There's actually a setting for lightly pressing the tablet and another for when you press hard. Where Photoshop and Painter are pressure sensitive, Sketchbook Pro is multi-pressure sensitive. It's hard to explain but I like it. It's only $100 from the Autodesk website.

4 comments:

Richard Watts said...

That's one of your best sketches yet - nice technique.I downloaded a trial version of Sketchbook Pro which I've still a few free goes left on,but haven't bought it yet.I like the drawing tools, the concept seems similar to photoshop. I'm still on a learning curve with photoshop though - brain can't handle too many things at once.

Doug said...

Thanks Richard. Sketchbook Pro has been pretty intuitive so far. It didn't even come with a book. I can't get my stylus eraser to switch from the hard to the soft but other than that it's been great.

Brett W. McCoy said...

Very nice!

I've been thinking of getting Sketchbook Pro, but still tend to do most of my sketching in TV Paint or ArtRage. Maybe I should download the trial and see how it stacks up.

Jon Moss said...

Awesome sketch Doug, I like the looseness of it and how it retains so much of its traditional media appearance in your finished piece. It inspires me to keep persevering with SBP, although I'm currently flicking between PS and Painter, training to discover what suits me best.