HGG Community Forums

One question - would it be easier to draw with one of those special drawing tablets or whatever they call it? Right now I just have the standard keyboard and mouse

Hmm, would you happen to know the standard going rate for an artist?

Artist’s rates are all over the board. It depends on how good they are. You can commission pieces from artists with only a few years of experience for possibly $10-$15 for the piece, all the way up to professionals that have honed their skills for decades costing $100+ per hour of work.

As for doing it yourself, on a computer a tablet will definitely help, but there’s no excuse for practice. Someone more experienced in art will be able to use a mouse to outshine a beginner on a fancy tablet.

For program, Krita and FireAlpaca are both free and great programs for a cpu. For mobile, look into ibispaint. It’s free, or a couple bucks to get rid of ads, and it’s a full mobile program. The advantage of that is that you wouldn’t need to get a tablet, as you can draw with your finger or a stylus. It’s my personal favorite because I feel as if I have extra control with my finger directly on the screen.

I use an ipad, as the bigger screen and memory allows me to work on a bigger canvas and therefore get more detail, but any smartphone will work, and you don’t need wifi/data for anything but downloading it. I use ibispaint on my phone for recording concepts to work on if my ipad isn’t with me, and I learned the program on my phone before getting an ipad.

Just know that if you’ve not much prior experience with art, it’ll take a while. Art is a craft that takes a lot of practice. This is not to dissuade you, but encourage you - keep practicing! You’re gonna be your own harshest critic, especially when you start looking at what other people can do. Just keep in mind that most of the awesome and amazing art you see comes from people who have thousands of hours of practice. Oh, and don’t start drawing stylized first. It’ll give you a huge boost to focus on real anatomy before you let yourself go to cartoon/anime. A lot of beginning artists start learning by copying someone else’s style, and then they have to unlearn that later. It’ll be much better for you to start trying to draw photos instead. :)

If you want any more tips or advice or examples, don’t hesitate to PM me! I’d be happy to do anything I can to help.

Yup! There’s all sorts of tutorials online - just make sure you’re finding ones for realistic anatomy instead of cartoon how-tos for now.