Back to basics.
Artsifartsi stuff

[ Tuesday - January 29, 2018 ]

It's been a while that I purchased the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3.


Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

Why bother with a tablet that is Wifi only?  Why not 4G LTE?  That's because I don't want a cell phone replacement.  My Galaxy S7 works perfectly fine as a phone.  The primary purpose of this tablet is for me to get back to basics.  An activity that I use to do a lot back in my youth.  Art work. After so many years of hanging up the paint brush, pen, quill, etc. I decided to start again.  There has always been yearning to do something creative with my hands and my mind.  But as always, other things get in the way.  Things like work.  It's really not a strong excuse to blame work, but I do it anyway.

I've done my fair share of the traditional oil painting, oil pastels, chalk pastel, water color, charcoal, Intaglio (zinc plate printmaking).  There are some that say electronic/digital art is not art.  "Sayz you."  In the end it requires a pen.  Yes it's not the same as media.  Yes it's also much more forgiving with undo and cut and paste.  In the end, the same can be achieved with traditional art materials and supplies it just takes more time and effort.  The one thing that a digital tablet has over traditional art method, it doesn't dry out on you.  Let the purist have their day.  I'll do what I do.  There is nothing that says I won't pickup a brush later.  I still have plenty of Gouache, acrylic, and oil paints.  More than a handful of prismacolor for kicks.

The gripe I have with the Tab S3 is the stylus that comes with the tablet is pathetic.  It's good for screwing around with, but it's absolutely ridiculous for any serious art work.  So I bought a Stadler stylus.  It's funny, it looks just like a pencil, but you never have to sharpen it.  The worst of it is you have to replace the plastic lead (graphite looking) tip.



Even the Stadler stylus is a bit small in diameter so I purchase a bunch of foam pencil grips to prevent hand cramps.  Amazingly, this stylus makes sketching and drawing on the Tab S3 feel like real drawing.  I'm impressed.  It was definitely worth the $20 bucks.  Also, the Tab S3 has enough processing power that it's able to keep up with the drawing strokes.  Nice.

The default drawing software from Samsung is OK.  It's good to simulate canvas paintings, but it's not really friendly with anime style drawings.  So I purchased Autodesk Sketchbook.  It works great.  Having layers help a lot too.

So as I get back into the realm of art work, I realize something.  That I sucked pretty bad at drawing female figures.  The one thing I learned about art is that it's hard to draw the opposite sex.  Even my girls say they suck at drawing men.  So I set out to learn how to draw women.  First the face and then the figure.



I use to mimics the Japanese anime drawing style.  You can see the influence in the above character.  Through all of these years of drawing, I developed my own spin off anime style, but you can still see the heavy anime influence.  The above is proof that once you've learned something, it never really leaves you.  It's just a matter of picking up and getting it back.  Like riding a bicycle.  You can be rusty but you still know how to ride.

Next I attempt the female figure.  Having seen some cool fashion sketches, I attempt my version of a fashion sketch.


A lot of legs.

Sketchbook does a great job of replicating pencil sketch.  The above is not scanned.  It's a direct sketch on the Tab S3.  Next, clean up the sketch and add some color.



Next thing I know I'm starting to get a hang of drawing women.  It's slow going in the beginning, but as I make more and more drawings the female form become easier and easier to draw.


You can guess what this sketch is about.  This is already cleaned up.

It's funny how one of my art teachers back in the day didn't like my drawings because I always have a heavy black outline.  He actually asked my why I always put a heavy dark outline with all of my drawings.  The answer is simple.  It's me and that's my style.  If you don't like it, tough.  Like I mentioned before, I've done my fair share of traditional art.  I like my heavy anime influence.



There's something to note about all this, I'm red/green color blind.  Just because I'm color blind, it doesn't mean I can't draw.  It's just means I have a potential to color clash.  But who cares.  Oh, my wife actually likes the shoes the character is wearing.  Completely made up fashion, but sure.  Funny that.

Having drawn this girl so many times over, my curiosity was peaked.  Who the heck is she and what does she look like?  Hmm... I guess I have pickup my fake pencil and find out...



What's her name?  I have no idea...  How about Elizah?  That's the cool thing about this stuff, you just make up whatever you want.

I had fun figuring out what she looks like.  I probably could have done better with darker shading.  I'm figuring out the tablet is a bit darker than the computer monitor.  Now I understand why Photoshop, back in the early days, want to calibrate the monitor.


[ Wednesday - January 30, 2018 ]

Oh the convenience of digital art.  In the end it's still a lot of hand motion and pencil strokes.  The last image has Elizah a little anemic.  Here's the corrected nose and some color to her skin.



She still has this slightly odd look to her, but I like it.  If anything it shows it's hand drawn.


3rd tweak.

Written on: January 29, 2018
Last modified: March 19, 2018