Thursday Art Walk 323: Learning To Draw

In Which I Have Been Practicing

So, I was given an XP-Pen Star G430S for my birthday by my incredible partner (who also got me a yarn ball winder and a mug with our favorite bunny Tato on it but we're talking art today lol). I've been experimenting with it, and I'll be sharing my progress as I learn how to use the Paint.net program. I've never used a stylus-based drawing tablet before this year, and my exposure to digital art-making was almost exclusively MS Paint until recently. This has made for an... interesting learning curve.

I know how to draw. I know how to paint. I know how to do both of these things pretty okay. But I only really know how to do them in the analog pen-or-brush-to-paper world. Drawing with a touchpad, which is how all of my previous digital art was produced, is very awkward, but fairly intuitive and fairly easy for me to do. Using a stylus and tablet is a whole different animal from either pure analog or pure digital.

See, if I'm drawing with a pen or a paintbrush at my kitchen table, I'm watching the pen as much as the work, but... that's not the case with the Star G430S. You watch the computer screen, not the pen. The work is not below you but before you, and there is a definite difference in the way you control a writing implement you're looking at than one you're using on a screen separate from the point of contact. It takes a lot of getting use to.

Add to that the fact that I barely understand the program I'm using and you end up with some frustration.

But there's also the joy of discovery! I'm learning something new every single time I play with the tablet, and today I made a multiple-layered, gradient-backed drawing that, while incredibly childish, is still cute and still makes me happy!

"Bunbun" digital art; 2020

Holy cow, guys! I made that!

It... kinda looks like a NeoPet.

Were the NeoPets originally designed in Paint.net?!

But yeah, I'm pretty happy with how that turned out (though the gradient and flowers are a bit low, and Bunbun looks like he's levitating...)!

Would you believe I did all that while my arms felt like they were going to fall off? Because that's how they feel. I think I have a touch of inflammation in my tendons right now because while typing doesn't hurt, gripping and holding and pushing do. The pain is in my thumbs running down to my elbows, far worse on the right (dominant hand) than the left, and it feels like the time I hyperextended my elbow but much calmer. Like my body is warning me.

I guess this means I cannot play Breath of the Wild today :(

Part of the discomfort could be that I failed to stretch before I moved a large, heavy tent outside the other day, then got myself sunburned because I'm stubborn, but it could also be that I've been making test images every day for up to three hours a day using the tablet. Even with regular art, I try to take a day off between sketches because I developed repetitive motion soreness in my college art classes.

All in all, though, the tablet is a dream come true, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. When I'm not drawing with it, I've been using it like a mouse, because you can actually use it as an input device! I love that! I've been using it to play PokefarmQ and scroll through Facebook. It helps me figure out the sensitivity, the maneuverability, and the right way to hold the stylus.

What a blast this has been so far! I'm looking forward to using this inexpensive tablet literally to death.

How about you folks - are you trying anything out this week? Learning a new skill? A new craft? Trying out sketching or something? Let me know!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC