Digital Art Experience
by Vivian Ongosari , DP2 Student
I would like to share one of my CAS creative experiences, which is learning digital art. I focus on drawing human bodies and emotions, and produced two illustrations based on different vibes, such as sad and happy. I am very proud of this experience where I improved a lot in understanding how to use the tools in the digital art program, Krita. I started with very limited knowledge, using about 3 art layers and in the end, I used 54 layers.
For my first illustration I created a depressed vibe. I made a sketch, by using the right hand poses and strained facial expressions, I am able to make the atmosphere sad and depressing. There were many challenges I faced, such as making the folds in the sweater, drawing hands with the right size and gesture, and drawing hair by balancing a mix of thick, medium and thin strands to make it look as natural as possible. To overcome these challenges, I used internet photos of real people and illustrations done by other artists as references. This helps me to understand the structure of the body and the fabric.
Finally, I completed my first drawing. I learned a lot in this experience on how to manipulate color. The darker hair gives a gloomy feel, the white shades on the tips of the hair help to show light reflection, the lighter highlights show the parts that are more illuminated by light such as the cheeks. In addition, the gray background helps to make the environment dark and red hues symbolize pain. What I like the most from my first product is that I successfully conveyed the emotion that I wanted.
For the second illustration, I created a wholesome vibe. This is completely opposite to the first illustration. Through my second illustration I want to improve my coloring, shading and blending skills. I decided to do a fireworks scene where a boy is pulling someone’s hand, bringing them to see the fireworks at the beach together.
In the process, I sketched and coloured the character first. This will make it easier to color the background later. I experimented with a few colors to see which would fit the character and vibe the most. It was challenging to draw the hands and decide the colors as I changed them multiple times. An improvement was that I learned to use the lasso and bucket tool instead of manually coloring everything using the brush. This made the coloring process much faster and easier.
In my final product, I experimented with various brushes such as the ‘Blender Basic’, ‘Dry Brushing’, ‘Ink-3 Gpen’, and others, allowing me to achieve different strokes and textures. I added a lot more layers for shadows and lighting; I also experimented more with color blending. I used mainly 3 types of layers, which are – ‘normal’, ‘multiply’ and ‘overlay’. ‘Normal’, as the name suggests, is just a usual paint layer. The ‘multiply’ layer darkens the color, making it useful for shading. ‘Overlay’ is the opposite, it brightens the color, making it great for highlights or lighted areas. In total I used 54 layers, including various shading and lighting layers. I am proud of my improvement in using the various tools in Krita. I was committed to making an illustration that conveyed a wholesome vibe and I think I succeeded in doing so. My knowledge of digital art improved a lot from the first illustration.
Overall, I am much more confident in my digital art skills, though there is always room for improvement. I want to be able to convey more emotions through art, other than ‘sad’ and ‘wholesome’, such as anger. Anger emotions will be interesting as it will force me to use different poses and styles. I look forward to drawing more and better illustrations in the future.
