Tablets are hard.

I went from traditional to digital and its like..ow no. I dunno if I can do this. Coloring is fine cause I suck at traditional coloring cause I like coloring outside the lines. {Such a rebel}

I feel your pain though.

I hear ya, I know people who have been drawing for a long time refining and perfecting their style and have people bitch at them as to HOW they do their art.

If you have a way that you're comfortable with then who cares? that's YOUR style and it's YOUR art not theirs.

I OWN a Wacom Bamboo and rarely use it...it really is difficult to teach oneself how to use one. Or, rather, it's difficult to accept the fact that you're going to have to relearn how to draw, and your art is gonna suck for awhile and even hen it does get better you might end up with a different style. It's an assload of work, and a task that I myself have shelved for the time being.

Also, pencil work is rad. And if you say it stops there, it stop there. The artist decides when his shit is done, nobody else. You are the creator. You make what you want. Fuck everyone else.

I've been following your stuff for ages. Pretty sure I can at least partially blame your K-Girl monsters as well as the Dorats triplets for my finding/falling into the furry fandom.

If you're going to try digital arting more power to you. There's definitely a learning curve. Not sure how much it changes one's original style, or how much is just learning and growing as an artist in a new medium.
Digital has it's positive points, but IMO nothing beats a sketchbok for keeping the doodling skills sharp.

Anyone who says it's easy to go from traditional to digital is wrong. Or they just have no clue what they're talking about, period.

It is easier if you use MS5 or Paint Tool SAI because of the stabilization features within, but it's still re-teaching yourself how to draw essentially.

The transition is more difficult than the process of relearning drawing on a tablet... I can't say it's easy, I would best describe it as trying to draw with numb fingers, you just can't control it as delicately as with a real pencil or pen on paper. But that may have had more to do with the default sensitivity on my tablet, which thankfully can be customized for the individual artists preferences!

I actually sympathize with your point, it seems that these days people seem to critique sketches based on whether or not they're digital or traditional, rather than judging based on skill. It's certainly made me consider going all digital myself, simply because the quality usually can surpass pencil art on paper. It's certainly cleaner looking, and for me it's also the only way to create any sort of decent colored art.

I wish you luck on your new artistic endeavors, and hope to be doing the same myself next year!

I'm self taught myself, and I can totally relate to the frustration. Hell I am still shaky on my inking and don't get me started on texture. You have better skill than me when it comes to furry texture.

It took a good long while to get the hang of digital coloring, but I am really eager to see how you do. If you want, I can show you a few tutorial sites.

Please, and thanks. I could probably use the help.

I was thinking about this recently when I gifted a traditional art set, complete with micron pens, to a kid relative for Christmas this year. I even found myself wondering if I was doing the right thing. Learning at first is probably easier on paper, but everyone seems to have gone digital these days, at least in cartoon related arts.

Candidly, I don't think it makes much difference whether one's skills are digital or traditional in terms of the value of the art or the skills. But cartoons and comics were always products that, even when they were done traditionally, relied on various publishing tricks from resizing to various tones and stencils to achieve a look that computers happen to mix with very well. The Internet embraced this, and the rest is history.

However, some artists have had success with skipping the step of computer inking, such as the maker of that Dreamkeepers comic that seems to be so popular, who just colorized uninked pencils using layers on most of the comic pages. It still looks fine to most people, though there are compensating factors, like the artist's uncanny skills with perspective and ability to cleanup the line art just enough to not look too sketchy. But you can still tell it's all based on the original pencils, or at least it was for the first few volumes.

Also, though she eventually became fond of using computer effects more over time, Ashryn was initially known as an impressive traditional inker. It may seem like a lifetime ago now, but there was a time when she was one of the top furry artists in the field, commanding high commission prices etc, all based on traditional art techniques. It's also worth noting that her work looked like shit though until she discovered the joys of inking. Working more precisely seemed to improve both the initial look of her stuff and, later, forced her to focus more overall, tightening up her technique in only a couple of years to be hugely better than it was earlier, with tons of attention lavished on it by then too. I'm sure this required a lot of work and, evidently, a lot of output. But it was a quick process in the overall scheme of things. Of course, now people don't know who you mean when you mention her. All Internet glory is fleeting - so you shouldn't get TOO wrapped up in pursuing it.

You could do the same though, whether it's in traditional work or digital. Of course it wouldn't be easy, nothing worthwhile ever is. But tighten up your work, using whatever approach works best for you, then just produce at least one amazing image for each week of the next few years, and you will be popular in no time. Easy peasy.

Well, OK, maybe more like something nearly impossible for those of us who work slowly. But that's just it - that's the one thing you have going for you as a sketch artist. You and folks like Jolly Jack (Who never did really get the hang of inking in some ways, digitally or otherwise I think) can work faster than most us by far. If you use that to your advantage, popularity could result. Nobody becomes long-term popular on the Net by posting a masterpiece every few years after all. You have to produce a lot consistently. You can do that if you strike a balance between sketchiness and precision that works for you.

If you do go digital, some things are actually slower, and maybe even harder, using a tablet, so be prepared to struggle through that reality. However, some things are easier too, like certain kinds of precisely detailed line work. So, approach it with an open mind. As you may have noticed, there are some artists on here who, oddly enough, make work that doesn't look much different from a tablet from when they were on paper, and not in a good way... So be ready to work past old habits and take on new ones if moving to a tablet, or you could end up back where you started. That said, tablets can be very rewarding. I envy those who adjusted to them overnight, with or without a display. I never really even started to get the hang of it myself until using a display tablet though, truth be told. The display tablet approach helps some of us a lot, while the display just gets in the way for others. So you may want to consider trying both if you get a chance.

I still can't draw with a tablet. Color yeah, but even with inking I gotta use the tools and stuff. I gotta have that hand done linework.