technology is advancing so rapidly the process of making art is more efficient now than ever
before but at what cost I've been an artist for a long while now and sometimes I find
myself focusing too much on trying to get to the finished product as quick as possible art
has been my job so sometimes time is money but recently I found myself not having as
much fun with the process so I wondered what the most satisfying process would be for me
and I found a really fun one that I'm going to show you in this video obviously this is just
my preference but I would love to hear what you think the most satisfying art process is
so I'm going to be drawing my character Lumber's house in a
comic book style which I originally designed in this concept art video
I'll be using brush pens just some standard black ballpoint pens some alcohol markers
these are the ohuhu brand you might have heard of Copic alcohol markers which are
the popular ones but I didn't really fancy selling any of my organs to be able to try
those out I've got some basic colored pencils and some basic paper you can get some more
specialized paper especially for alcohol markers but I didn't know that yet [Music]
foreign first part of this process is the digital sketch I do this on clip Studio paint using a
standard drawing tablet I used to use a 13 inch cintiq screen tablet but I had a couple of issues
that bothered me too much to use it I'd get crazy back and wrist pain using this I'd always ignore
my posture and the color calibrations between my monitors was super annoying so I ended up getting
a second hand Wacom introvers medium it was super cheap second hand if you want to get into digital
drawing you don't need any fancy or expensive tools I keep my eyes on the monitor so my certain
habits are a bit better no more back or wrist pain and there's only one display that I need to worry
about though this is all personal preference I know some people who love screen tablets and
I know some people who hate the standard tablets because it can be a little bit awkward to get used
to so you might be wondering why I'm not sketching traditionally and that's because I think sketching
digitally removes a huge amount of pressure from this process so when I finish the digital sketch I
color it all in blue reduce the opacity and print it out now I can move on to the inking stage with
the brush pen and if I don't like it all or if I mess it up then I can just print it out again
so for the inking these are the two main brushes that I'll use I find the Pentel
brush pen to be a little bit too thick we do get a huge Variety in line weight which
is nice you don't get as much control with it at smaller sizes and I typically draw small
in an A4 A5 size or less so this tombow fudanoski's soft tip is my favorite for
inking it just gives so much control over the line weight and it is super satisfying to use
so with my sketch printed out and a slight hesitation as to
where I'm going to start with this I make the first stroke
and the satisfaction starts right away I don't know if this looks satisfying that feeling of
using a brush pen on paper the way it bites the way the line has some variation where the ink
runs onto the page my goodness if you have not tried out brush pants you need to try brush pens
I find digital inking can be really frustrating at times I always find myself trying to get the
perfect line constantly undoing and redrawing and undoing and redrawing over and over again
but with traditional inking I just go for it no second guessing and I actually end up
really appreciating the little mistakes rather than trying to hide them you know maybe I could
disable the undo button when I try digital inking next time perhaps that would be a fun challenge
to try and maybe that would make that process more satisfying the good thing about having a
rough sketch that's really light and not super defined is I can also improvise some details as
I do the inking you know it's not just Mindless following the lines I'm thinking about the line
weight maybe I can make the lines thicker in the darkness and thinner to indicate a
reflection of light and also wondering what little details and textures I can
add along the way basically problem solving as I draw but it's not all problem solving
I think maybe satisfaction in art could be broken down into a nice balance between problem solving
familiarity and exploration familiarity in the process can be quite meditative but too much of
it and the process can become stale and boring problem solving is fun it helps you learn but
if there's too many problems that need to be solved you don't make as much progress and it
can become frustrating an exploration in art can lead to happy accidents and discovering new Styles
and techniques and ways to do things but too much exploration and you lose a sense of direction and
to me I prefer a little bit more problem solving than familiari what do you think this little graph
would look like for you do you prefer problem solving or familiarity let me know in the comments
and with this Incan there's a very comic book in cartoon style and that really works for me
because I definitely prefer stylized over realism there's something about simplifying subjects and
expressing them in very basic shapes that I find to be just really satisfying and
I think this is why I also find working in small pixel art sizes to be more satisfying
than larger pixel pieces as well breaking it down into the small shapes maybe some
super satisfying anti-aliasing to soften out those hard edges yes small beautiful
cartoony shapes that's what I like what kind of style do you prefer to make cartoony or realism
so to color this in I'm going to be using alcohol markers which I've always wanted to
try but I've never actually used before you get to make these cool little swatches so you can
see how the colors look when you dry and with that you can plan out your piece accordingly I
found it super fun to do a little Doodle of the house and test out the color sections within
that before I commit to actually coloring it there's a learning curve that comes with any
new tool or process but I find that learning matches perfectly with the exploration and
problem solving nature of satisfaction for these alcohol markers in particular I learned that the
fine point in chisel tips have very different application techniques and are trying to get
used to them there are still multiple ways to blend these markers too you can do a light to
dark process you can use a blending pen but I found I preferred blending dark to light figuring
all of that out is part of the fun these weren't the only tests I did by the way I was doing this
for an entire video which is already out so you might have already seen that but for that video
I did a huge amount of these drawings which was super helpful to get used to the new tools
I was really happy with the line drawn and I really didn't want to mess it up so it's
definitely a little bit of pressure now this time the color on top of it but the cool thing about
traditional art is I can just scan it in and preserve it if I want to if anything goes wrong
with these next colors I could just color it in digitally but I decided to color this way because
I want to learn the markers and it's super slow you know keyboard shortcuts layers and fill tools
make coloring digitally super quick and completely risk-free but because of all those things I've
over optimized that process for Speed rather than for fun and this hard coloring process was a huge
contrast to that I'm beginning to understand why coloring books are so popular right they're just
super chill because I figured most of the colors out from my tests earlier on for the most part
during this I could just sit listen to music and enjoy it became really relaxing and this is where
the familiarity portion of the triangle kicks in wasn't all familiarity there's still some problem
solving and exploration here I was adding some color variation to the wood with different hue
that I wasn't expecting to use just seeing what interesting colors I could get out of that and
also a problem was some of the colors weren't as dark as I was hoping for so I had to improvise a
little bit and add some darker colors and I never done a rock path before but I found a super fun
process where I could add little blotches of rocks in different colors and I went over that
with a solid color you could see all of the little blotches come through because of that
opacity of the alcohol marker which gives some really interesting Variety in textures as well
I mentioned earlier that trying this out is for a video I was making and actually I was
really apprehensive to share this artwork in that video sometimes I find it difficult to put that
new stuff out there you know I kind of fear that I'm not good enough or that people might
respond negatively to a change so I was really thankful actually when skillshare decided to
sponsor this video skillshare has a bunch of classes in art animation video production and
a wide variety of other technical skills but did you know skillshare also have hundreds of
career-focused classes as well out as I've shared in this video my goal with creativity now is to
get back to having fun and trying new things and skillshare has been helping me learn some
creative confidence silencing that nightmare in a Critic I particularly enjoyed taking the
creativity Unleashed class by Nathaniel Drew I found it really helpful to hear his experience
learning that uncertainty frustration and doubt is a completely normal part of the creative
process and I learned that trying something new and the fear of criticism that comes with
that can be overcome by being kinder to yourself and focusing on the things that you can actually
control like enjoying the process and that's exactly what I've been trying to do with this
video I would definitely recommend checking this out the first a thousand people to use the link
in the description will get a whole one month free trial of skillshare there's a whole bunch
of classes to choose from you'll easily be able to find something that suits you and your goals but
there's no need to be overwhelmed either because no goal is too small huge thank you to skillshare
sponsoring this video and enabling creators to do their thing to finish this piece off I was
experimenting with that black ballpoint pen adding subtle wood texture to the house with
Grain Lines and Spirals and also little Tufts of grass I think those little touches really bring
it all together but we're not done yet the awesome thing about physical art is I can scan it in and
create some awesome things I turned the line work into a coloring page that you can get for
free there's a layered digital file and an image file if you want to print it out and color it in
if you do definitely send me the final result I'd love to see I also put a print of Lumber's
house and a sticker pack on my store if you want to support the channel and because I had no idea
what to do with all the little loose pieces I had I created this simple collage I don't
really need it so if anyone wants it I'm going to put it on eBay for 99p so I guess get your hands
on the first ever soultoons original art I don't know you can burn it if you want hope you enjoyed
watching this process as always thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one