Digital paint and pencil

I've recently been exploring the possibilities of digital art, from a non-iPad perspective. I have a small, inexpensive tablet and pen that I can use with my laptop; it came complete with a freeware drawing application called Artweaver, which has a variety of brush/pen/mark options.


The drawing action works very well, and it is a huge impovement on any kind of mouse or touchpad that I have ever tried (have you ever tried to draw with a computer mouse? It doesn't work very well).

I have had a lot of success with the basic "pencil" option. This is based on a circle that fades out towards the edges (illustrated right), softening the potential harshness of the digital marks.

I used this mark to draw my digital hats, as well as a couple of self portraits that I have been using as avatars (profile pictures). The latter have been quite popular, and I may do some portraits, in the same style, of one or two friends. Portraits of other people! Wow.

Those two are both me.

 So, anyway, I decided that I really ought to try some of the other marks on offer, and this morning, I "painted" a candlestick in digital "acrylic".

It was nowhere near as much fun as real acrylic, and not, I think, terribly convincing as far as fake media go. It doesn't help that I'm using a pen, with a (pressure sensitive) point and not a brush, which has sides and is, therefore, a truly three dimensional tool.

Other ways of making digital paintings may be better, but my set-up seems inherently slanted towards drawing. Which is not a problem. Just how it is.