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Know the Basic 2d Digital Art Techniques!

Now that you have your tools and knowledge of perspective, time for some digital art techniques that will launch your digital painting hobby or career.

Even before that, you should already have some basic drawing abilities that you can use. All we are going to do is apply these real life techniques and translate to how the computer would handle it.

Think of these digital art techniques as an extension of existing skills on a new medium. That is, on top of some drawing skills, it does make it easier if you have experience with real media paint brushes and pencils.

That way, you know how to simulate your digital brushes to match your real media experiences.

Without ado, here are the digital art techniques that you should be focusing on:

Digital Painting Techniques
While there are many digital painting techniques available, this introduction will focus on techniques that cater towards creative learning through a strong artistic foundation.

Contour Drawings
Here is where we translate simple contour drawings from pencil into your digital canvas. It’s basically practicing some basic drawing skills and getting to know your digital stylus.

Gesture Drawings
Once you’re familiar with your digital stylus, speed up your lines by doing some gesture drawings. This is a technique that focuses on motion of the lines rather than methodical slow lines.

Digital Brush Strokes
Using skills learned from contour and gesture drawings and a little bit of direction, this is where you control the lines farther and focus on digital brush strokes common to any digital painting.

Color Gradients
Color gradients is your ability to see different color values from dark to light. Here’s where you set up and test your stylus’ pressure sensitivity options so you can create a nice range of values.

Digital Inking
Digital inking involves taking an old real media technique and translating it to how it is done in the digital medium. Luckily, there are a few tips and tricks to get that effect.

Drawing Light
As a digital painter, you have to think a little bit different. Instead of drawing shadows, you will learn how to draw light digitally. It is a regularly used technique in painting in general.

Drawing Shadows
Learning how to draw shadows requires knowledge of art perspective. Thankfully, we have already covered this in previous lessons of this site. Use it as a guide for correct shadows.

Drawing Complex Objects
Apply what you know about light and shadows to draw complex objects to create even more depth. The goal is to paint inside the object without altering its shape.

Color Wheel
Start off learning the RGB color spectrum, color harmony, and color contrasts. These concepts of the color wheel will be important to how you will see and blend colors in with each other.

Color Properties
After the color wheel, here is where you will learn the four color properties of hue, temperature, value, and intensity to help you color your digital paintings.

Adding Digital Colors
Let’s say you have a black and white picture that you really like but you want to have it in color. This lesson will teach you how to add digital colors with your digital brushes.

Painting Landscape Backgrounds
Your first digital painting. Using just your understanding of color, you will paint landscape backgrounds with just one color.

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