Drawing digital vs traditional

[Walril]

Do you guys do both? I'm kinda conflicted. I like drawing traditionally but love the fact that digital allows so much flexibility. I have like 100 art boards and feel like that was a waste. I feel like at this point 10 art boards would be a waste.

I feel like I'm cheating on my pencil and paper with my intous. I watched a live stream with our very own JAR and it saves so much time doing it digitally, but like he and others have said, youre left with no originals. Only prints

[Ugga Bugga]

Now that I have an IPAD, I am drawing on it with reckless abandon. Love it, though it has its limits. The only problem, is that there are no originals, which means no originals to sell (not that there is a demand for my originals).

I have been doing some digital painting, and that has me hankering to try some traditional painting.

The flexibility with digital, and the ability to change things is wonderful.

However, there still is some fun in just putting pen to paper.

I think you need to find a workflow that suits your style, and that allows you flexibility, and speed.

[Mashiem]

It's a matter of taste. Not a very good answer, but doesn't stop it from being true.

My interrest in drawing started for real a few years ago when I got my first tablet (Graphire 4). I really loved to play around with it, but didn't feel like I really LEARNED anything with it. And so I bought a few books about drawing and some pencils.
I progressed and gradually got better at drawing and created a few comics using my tablet. Then, on a whim, I decided to draw one of my strips using a nib pen instead... And I LOVED IT!

Since then I've drawn using pen, brush and markers, only using my tablet (a wireless Intuos 4 now) for coloring and adding text/speechbubbles. I occationally experiment "inking" digitally, but it just doesn't FEEL right.

I'm drooling over a Cintiq 24HD and suspect that might change my mind somewhat, allowing me to create 100% digital art more efficiently, but for some reason I just don't feel I have the same amount of control over my brush strokes with the tablet. I like to look at what I draw and where my hand is moving, something you just can't do with a tablet.

As for cheating; You're not. Drawing digitally requires just as much skill as drawing traditionally, you're just using a slightly different skillset. It's like playing tennis and baseball: You whack at a ball in both sports, but you use different rules and tools.

[Symson]

Digital is just another drawing tool in my belt. There's no either or; just what's best to accomplish my goal.

If a tree twig works best, I'll use that.

I'm also not a purist. I'll mix media in a minute.

[ArtOnStuff]

I do both, althou I muchly enjoy drawing Digitally more. I find it so flexable, I just recently wore out an art board because i had to re draw a certain part so many times LOL!, I love to paint and colour on the PC, it's by far my fav, I love to draw don't get me wrong, But if i could get away with just colouring I would in a heart beat LOL! I own a cintiq 21UX and it's worth every penny i paid

Don

[50%grey]

If you are in comics you should really be doing both imho.

A) Traditonal art stills sells very well at cons and on ebay. For most artists you will be making more then your current page rate.

So if you go all digital, you may be halfing your income in the long run.

B) Comic Book artists are traveling more then ever, and I'm noticing allot of the pros working while they are at cons.

C) There is allot of sketching at cons, the more established pros are making 100 dollars per bust.

Its something to think about, because inking your pencils traditionally is a different skill set then being able to have infinite undos via digital.

That being said, as an artist you need to learn digital skills because of the amount work out there that caters to that pipeline.

[ArtOnStuff]

If you are in comics you should really be doing both imho.

A) Traditonal art stills sells very well at cons and on ebay. For most artists you will be making more then your current page rate.

So if you go all digital, you may be halfing your income in the long run.

B) Comic Book artists are traveling more then ever, and I'm noticing allot of the pros working while they are at cons.

C) There is allot of sketching at cons, the more established pros are making 100 dollars per bust.

Its something to think about, because inking your pencils traditionally is a different skill set then being able to have infinite undos via digital.

That being said, as an artist you need to learn digital skills because of the amount work out there that caters to that pipeline.

Great point , but i ant no pro, so my orgs arn't with the paper there drawn on LOL!.

Don

[Nickelhead]

Don kind of made my point in a way. Drawing consistently digitally can create bad habits and laziness in your working method that you don't realize until you pick up a pencil again.

It's kinda like a couple years ago I wanted to see Kobe Bryant play so I finally got tickets and caught a game in ATL. Every time a great play happened right in front of me, I was instantly looking for a replay etc because I was so conditioned to watching on tv. I was still watching basketball in both cases, but in person I had to pay more attention because there were few re-do chances to catch what I missed.

Same way with drawing. Digitally you are able to quickly make changes and move things that are wrong but sometimes it becomes a crutch that you don't realize until your drawing with a pencil again and notice an eye in the wrong place and it hits you you can't just lasso it and fix it. That's when you start wearing out erasers. Lol

My suggestion, do both or if you do digital mostly then try to draw and paint with it as traditional as possible pretending there's no easy edits. This will cut down on developing bad habits.

[Anton Chigurh]

.. but like he and others have said, youre left with no originals. Only prints

You can do your pages Ryan Ottley style.

From November 4, 2011 journal entry, http://www.ryanottley.com/page/2 :

From layout to pencil, here’s what I do these days. I have a Cintiq, it speeds up the layout process immensely. The first 2 pics are digital, the 1st pic I sketch loosely in Photoshop with a thin pencil, I re-size things and move them around if needed. This is the part that REALLY helps, while drawing by hand sometimes I’ll have to re-draw whole poses because it doesn’t fit in a good composition or it’s just plain weird, so being able to move things around and re-size is amazing. Then the 2nd pic I go over it with a thicker size pencil(in Photoshop), then change it to a very light blue, print it out on 11×17 paper and do finished pencils over that with a 2B mechanical pencil. Then I scan that, send the large file to Cliff Rathburn who prints it out in blue again and inks that on his own paper. So yes, there are two originals for every page, pencils and inks.

[50%grey]

That's pretty much the perfect marriage between digital ,and traditional.

And if you are inking yourself you can omit the super tight pencil stage, and go straight to inks.