What do you use to draw?

[Solse]

I want to know what the Playground uses to create their art. I prefer pencil on paper to do my sketches and I sometimes use GIMP + keyboard, but I'm not that good. I'm wondering if any Playgrounders use anything that they feel allows them to draw/make art better.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I started out drawing with pencils on paper, then gradually switched over to the digital medium via a tablet.

Nowadays I have a Samsung convertible tablet/UMPC with the pressure-sensitive S-Pen, so I draw on that. Programs-wise, MyPaint suits my style the most, since I still draw mostly in pencils, and Krita complements it very well for more complete drawings.

MyPaint I like especially for its pencil brushes (the deevad set), and its infinite canvas, and its lack of digital editing tools (like copy/paste, transform tools, etc) only makes the "pencil on paper" feel more realistic.

[Solse]

I started out drawing with pencils on paper, then gradually switched over to the digital medium via a tablet.

Nowadays I have a Samsung convertible tablet/UMPC with the pressure-sensitive S-Pen, so I draw on that. Programs-wise, MyPaint suits my style the most, since I still draw mostly in pencils, and Krita complements it very well for more complete drawings.

MyPaint I like especially for its pencil brushes (the deevad set), and its infinite canvas, and its lack of digital editing tools (like copy/paste, transform tools, etc) only makes the "pencil on paper" feel more realistic.

Did you feel like the transition from paper and pencil to that tablet was hard? I had a Wacom Bamboo tablet (I lost the pen) and I felt that it was a lot different from using paper.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Did you feel like the transition from paper and pencil to that tablet was hard? I had a Wacom Bamboo tablet (I lost the pen) and I felt that it was a lot different from using paper.

I started with a Genius WizardPen. :P
The transition was... not smooth. I had to relearn a lot of things, and a lot of it was due to the fact that pencils on paper are a very distinctly different tool than most digital brushes. I started out drawing in Photoshop, and was struggling with it for quite a while, unable to work with the harder edges of digital brushes.

However, I soon got a hang of the hand-eye coordination required, and was able to use most of my usual skill. Upgrading to a Bamboo Fun (later Intuos 4 M, then the Samsung convertible) and finding MyPaint helped me a lot in that regard. If you're transitioning from pencil&paper to digital medium, get MyPaint. It's one of the best sketching and painting tools in existence, and the lack of digital manipulation should feel very natural.

[Solse]

Part of me likes being able to use layers and things, but I'll consider using MyPaint. I just have a hard time drawing things like an arm overlapping the body without using an eraser, for instance.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Part of me likes being able to use layers and things, but I'll consider using MyPaint. I just have a hard time drawing things like an arm overlapping the body without using an eraser, for instance.

No, it does have basic layer support and undo, and some other things. It's just very basic in that regard. No copypaste, no area selection, no rotation, transform, scale, anything. Only the barest of necessities. Lots of great brushes, infinite canvas.

I should note though, there is no official build for the latest version for Windows. There is, however, one here, that I am using - http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuma...1a.7z/download
It's sort of a side branch, but it works well.

[Winter_Wolf]

On the computer I use Manga Studio 5 EX, which I got on sale for a very reasonable price. It took 99+% of the things that I liked about Photoshop and other graphics programs, and thankfully left out all the stuff that I never, ever used. So it's a lot leaner and runs a bit faster. The rulers suck, though. They only go by 10 inches, anything less is just a hash line. This is problematic when working with page sizes of say 8"x 10", A4, or US letter sizes. For some reason it also won't anti-alias vectors, but it's not terrible. I've been trying to wrap my mind around Blender to shortcut a little on sequential art, but frankly it's just a lot easier to do it frame by frame the old fashioned way. Bloody 3D. I tried an Yiynova graphics tablet, but it was terrible and I can't afford anything like a Cintiq, so I rock the ancient Wacom Graphire3 I got more than a decade ago. Luckily the old drivers still work in Win 7!

Physical media, I use a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with either HB lead, photoblue, or red and do inking with a few different kinds of black ink pens. I have a graphite stick and a few tortillions (i.e. tightly rolled newsprint) for when I want to do shading. When I can afford it I try to buy paper that's got the textural qualities of bristol board. I avoid anything more than fine tooth paper because I detest it and it tends to cause bleeding ink which has ruined more than a few drawings. I've been lucky so far in that when I really truly need a new sketchbook I can find archival quality stuff specifically made for ink drawings on sale, but I still life with the perpetual (minor) fear of running out of good paper when I really need it.

[Alent]

For physical mediums I use .5mm pencils with HB lead for everything, along with a staedtler 2mm lead holder with non photo blue lead and ink with fine tip felt markers. For smearing I use Staedtler plastic erasers- terrible erasers, best smudge tool you will ever buy. For actual erasing I kneadable erasers or these super cheap soft white erasers. (General's, I think? They feel like foam almost.) Prismacolor pencils for most coloring, although I mostly stick to greyscale when doing physical media.

On the digital side, I use Clip Studio Paint and a Surface Pro 3 with the HTC Scribe stylus. I tried a Wacom intuos but I could never get used to the stylus/art disconnect. After that I got a Samsung phablet with an S-pen and used Autodesk Sketchbook, which works really nice, but I ended up moving to the Surface because I wanted real desktop art apps.

For straight pixel art I use either an emulated Deluxe Paint 5, Cosmigo Pro Motion, or MS paint.

[Remmirath]

I use a .5mm mechanical pencil for nearly all of my drawings, as it's what I'm most used to. I'll sometimes use other sizes of mechanical pencil or non-mechanical pencils, but that's fairly rare. I use kneaded erasers for erasing. For pens, I've been using black Faber-Castell pens, because they're easy to find and not horribly expensive. I'll probably try some other kinds at some point. I don't really do anything with colour that isn't painting, so I don't make use of coloured pencils or anything (although I have tried some experiments in that direction at times).

I tried digital art for a few years, but it never had the right feel for me. I'll do it sometimes for fun, but not for anything very serious. I use Painter for most digital art and Photoshop for pixel art (because, well, I've had Photoshop for a long time). I have a Wacom tablet that I've had for upwards of ten years now that I use with it.

[scurv]

So far blender only for 3d. I can do some (very little) technical drawing but that is ether drawing in an orthographic view or drawing box's with perspective. Say what you will but a sketch can be worth a thousand words in a passdown sometimes.

[Cuthalion]

Pen and ink is nice.

[Leviting]

I use a very specific .7mm mechanical pencil and preferably my drawing pad for physical, and a wacom intuos something and Krita for digital. I really like layers and ctrl-z, and I never color on physical paper.

[darkscizor]

For art with fine detail, I use a .5mm Zebra M-301 mechanical pencil, all the other stuff I do is with a Ticonderoga.

[Lycunadari]

Mostly a 2B pencil from Faber-Castell, occasionally a 2 1/2HB pencil, and Schmincke watercolours with synthetic brushes ranging from 0 to 11. I really should get some more pencils, I'm thinking of a 5B and a 8B, but I'm always just buying new brushes.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Lots of stuff; Grafstone sticks, other graphite sticks, pencils 8B to H4, cheap disposable biro pens, ink bottles and pen, watercolour pencils, regular colouring pencils.

I need to try charcoal.

I use Biro and 6-8B the most due to buying cheap sketchbooks, water colours get used the least due to the paper for them being so expensive.

[Mazeburn]

Traditional - usually the cheapest sketchpad I can find and super cheap disposable mechanical pencils. I lose/break art stuff a lot and get through sketchbooks at quite a rate, so I don't bother with fancy materials unless I'm working on something special. :) Lately I've also been using Japanese Pentel brush pens a lot, which are LOVELY though a little messy. I've also been doing a lot of stuff with manga screentones since they're really easy to use and have a cool effect. :3

As for digital, Cintiq Companion and usually Photoshop, sometimes mangastudio for inking and/or comics. For 3D, usually Maya, right now I'm also learning Zbrush which is super fun.

[smuchmuch]

Mechanical 0.7 hb pencil and old sketchboobks of recycled paper or paper stolen from a nearby printer. A long time ago I used some lead pencils (you know the kind that are entiely made of graphite. They are a pleasure to try to shade things with while geing a lot less 'crushy' than characoal.) on canson paper.

Inkscape for vector art.

I used to do a bit of 3d modeling with 3ds max a few years ago.

Strictly amateur stuff in both case of course.

[karaRobert]

I am use pencil for drawing and airbrush for painting

[shawnhcorey]

I use Inkscape for my art but sometimes I do touch up with GIMP.

Here are some free software for digital art:

Raster based:
• GIMP http://www.gimp.org/
• Krita http://krita.org/
• MyPaint http://mypaint.intilinux.com/
• Pinta http://pinta-project.com/

Vector based:
• Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/

3D:
• Blender http://www.blender.org/

[Necris Omega]

Like the old geezer using dialup, I still use an ancient edition of Jasc Paint Shop (7 to be exact). Yes, I know I should switch over to Photoshop or at least GIMP, but I find I'm just too adverse to switching.

That and a WACOM Intuos tablet.