Digital drawing is lots of fun, not least because with the right piece of software loaded onto your computer, you have an endless canvas and materials. Digital drawing & illustration are very flexible and it's sometimes difficult to know when your picture is finished. The only limits are your imagination and your computer's processing power.
What do I mean by digital drawing?
Broadly speaking, pushing pixels around on your computer using a piece of image editing software can be classified as digital drawing. If you have ever done more than optimise the colours in a photo, you may have been drawing digitally. At least to my mind, the digital realm broadens what drawing can be.
Drawing, designing and image manipulation, before the computer, were separate disciplines but once you start to use a computer these separate disciplines quickly implode. For example: I can draw on a piece of paper with a pencil. I can then take a photo of that picture with my digital camera and import it into my computer. I can then use my computer and the software on it to change the image, add colour, draw & paint with simulated materials and add text if I so wish. I can even collage elements of other drawings and photos onto this image.
The big challenge, when making images digitally, is to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. It is easy to get lost in the endless choices that are presented to you by today’s software and gadgets.
I usually decide if it's a technique I want to try or achieve a composition that communicates an idea (i.e. illustration). It's then easier to measure when to stop and if I learnt the specific technique or if I achieved a suitable composition.
So there, that's my view on digital drawing.
Next post I will guide you around some of the free design software I know about.
