Current Events > PSA: Black Friday Deals and Art

(+) Yeah! (+)

Over the last couple of years, art has become a major hobby of mine. If you've sort of tossed the idea of learning some kind of digital art around in your mind but haven't settled on anything, I'd like to lend a hand by pointing you to what you nee and the great deals that are going on right now. I would have gotten into art sooner, but the stuff can be kind of expensive and I never bought the stuff on sale. Worse, I bought the wrong stuff because I didn't understand what I needed for where I was at.

If you want to do digital drawing, painting, or sculpting, you need a pen and tablet. Wacom is the standard professional brand, but I've found them to be way overpriced at every level. I have zero complaints about the XP-Pen brand, and they have a Black Friday sale on now:
https://www.storexppen.com/

Check Amazon too because they might be cheaper for the product you want.

If you want to draw comics or draw as close as possible to physical media, you can't go wrong with Clip Studio Paint:
https://www.clipstudio.net/en/

If you want to work with photos, videos, or serious graphic design, you can get a big discount on the Adobe Creative Cloud:
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html

If you want to work with photos, do graphic design, or do basic desktop publishing and you don't have the money for an adobe subscription, you want an Affinity product:
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/

If you want to do vector art (things like logos, perfectly crisp 2D, icons, etc.) and have no money, Inkscape has you covered:
https://inkscape.org/

If you want to paint or draw or do basic animations and have no money (or just don't like Clip Studio Paint or Photoshop), Krita is what you want:
https://krita.org/en/

If want to do any kind of 3D art, go download Blender. It has a weak video editor and texture painting that is just OK, but it's modeling and sculpting tools are powerful enough that it is starting to be used by professional artists at big studios. Tutorials are plentiful, and it contains fair to excellent tools for all parts of 3D art. For any part of the process, there are professional tools that have an edge, but it'll be a good long while before you hit any kind of limit or know that you might prefer something else. Like Krita and Inkscape, Blender is completely free.

https://www.blender.org/

Finally, if you want to get into pixel art, Aseprite is the tool of choice for most artists, and you can snag it for $13.99 on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/431730/Aseprite/

I hope this list helps somebody! =)

Bump

Id like to try and draw my own waifus but I couldnt even draw a stick man properly so I doubt professional software would help me >.>

@Kloe_Rinz
Kloe_Rinz posted...

Id like to try and draw my own waifus but I couldnt even draw a stick man properly so I doubt professional software would help me >.>

If you want to do traditional art, buy some good pencils (Staedtler Mars Lumograph Art Drawing Pencils on Amazon are the best), buy a pencil sharpener, buy a sketchbook (for drawings where you try, so you can measure your progress), and a stack of copy paper for practice exercises, and learn the fundamentals of drawing. You need to learn things like lines, shapes, 3D, and some perspective.

I feel like this is the best video out there for getting started if you take it seriously:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpqEE9yU474

Then you want to study anatomy and figure drawing (anime characters are exaggerations of human form). You can learn that piecemeal or try an online course or a serious book. I can't offer a suggestion for this because I haven't studied figure drawing yet---landscapes are my jam.

If traditional art isn't for you, buy the largest pen and tablet that make sense for you and download Krita. If you feel really serious about drawing, grab Clip Studio Paint instead. If you have an iPad, you can just use an app and one of those pencil things for drawing (don't have one, so no comment there) Then just go and study the same things. If I can do it, so can you!

tag

---

Bumping once more in case anyone is interested, since the sales are all still going for a few more days!

Hey, thanks!

---