New Tricks

Ages ago I got a drawing pad to make digital art. After a month or so I gave up trying to use it and it got put in a box and forgotten about. I lost a lot of chances to learn a new skill with that pad. If I had stuck with it I would have been really great a using it by now. Sadly, I have come back to using this drawing pad years later and I have no experience and no skill with this tool. Now, I am starting from scratch, but this time because I have been scanning my work and spending more time in photoshop, I have more motivation to gain skills in this new medium.

It is not easy at all. I like to learn new things but wrapping my head around the concept of drawing on a screen is much more difficult than I could have imagined. It is why I gave up last time. I don't think of my drawing tools the same way the computer does when I am drawing, and the disconnect is affecting my work. I can use the same brush to make all kinds of different lines and shapes when I need something different. This whole changing brushes in order to do something different is really messing with my head. It makes me feel like I would have benefitted from learning how to draw with pointillism rather than line work. Making a ton of dots to draw the picture makes more sense in this medium than trying to actually get my lines to do the same thing that I can on paper.

All I know is that it is becoming increasingly frustrating to try to put ideas down this way. It is kind of like having a word on the tip of your tongue and not being able to find it for weeks. You really need to use that word, you know that you have it in your vocabulary, but things are just not connecting for you. You know that you have the capability to use the word, and the opportunity to put it to good use, but for some reason it is just not there for you when you want to use it.

I don't plan on giving up on this endeavor yet. I just have to figure out what direction to come at this to make it work for me. Everyone has their own strategy for doing things. If I go to youtube and find tutorials on how to draw in photoshop, I will get a list of hundreds of people who all have different ways of using the tools and techniques. All of them have the same tools, and all of them make great pieces of work, but all of them have different preferences and techniques personalized to their own drawing and thinking styles. Just like them I need to find the function that works best for my own style of work.

I think the hardest part is that the program is so vast and the technique so new to me, that I have become overwhelmed by the possibilities. At the end of each day I find that instead of actually getting work done on the piece I am trying to make, I have spend a good portion of the day doing what kids do in paint, or that cool game kids pics we had when I was kid. I go through all of the brushes and try them out. Then I go through all of the different settings on the different brushes and test them. At the end of the day I have a series of marks of different size, shape, and texture and no actual work done.

I just wish I could get to the point where I know what each setting does, so that I will know what I need in order to get my work done. I just want to know what technique I need. I have this awesome tool and I am sad to say that I am not using it very well yet. I hope that I can learn how to appropriately use it and actually be able to achieve something. I just can't give up while I am still learning. I cannot decided that I am no good at this without giving myself a proper chance get better at it.