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Hi, I am an artist used to realistic drawing on paper with pencils. I am trying to make the switch to digital. I have watched about 30 Affinity Designer Tutorial videos. I have already made some decent stuff in designer, but not near the level of my work on paper. I want to find out how I can get the same effect in the software as on paper or better. Does anybody have any knowledge on how I can draw like this in Designer?

Some helpful info:

  • tools to use for shading
  • how to get the effect of graphite pencils
  • how to blend values
  • how to view photos as references
  • process for a composition

Thank You, your consideration is appreciated

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Hi, artisticperspective

 

I can offer some info.

If you can afford it, get a graphics tablet and pen. While they don't equal pencils/pens/brushes on paper, they are more subtle than mouse work, and much more spontaneous.

 

Take a look at both Designer's vector brush in the draw personna set, and the brush in the pixels personna.

For the vector brush, look at the textured set of brushes. Personally, I find the vector brush really interesting. What it does is record a vector, and stretch a bit-map texture along that. One can go back, and change the shape of the line, the width of the stroke, its color, etc.

 

The pixel brush has quite a few samples of drawing and painting brush styles. While each pixel layer it makes can be adjusted in various ways, once the lines are laid down, that's it except for erasing as in traditional media.

 

You can make your own brushes. I've made a few. I haven't been very happy with them, but with some work, I think I could come up with decent ones. There are 3rd party brushes available that are a good bit more subtle. 2 forum members offer some for sale, under the name Daub brushes and Frankentoon. Not too pricey, and it saves the time of having to learn and create your own.

 

Shading in a digital medium is quite easy if you take advantage of the opacity/transparency settings. You can, of course, us a traditional approach of cross hatching many fine strokes, layer over layer. However, by controlling a pixel layer's opacity, you can get just the amount of effect you want from one broad pass. Another reason I like the vector brush is that one can make a set of strokes, group those, duplicate the group, and then use the transparency tool to fade the upper layer away, giving a dramatic toning of the under layer.

 

You can place any photo as a background, use an adjustment to fade it in some way, and lock the layer. Then create new layers on top for tracing.

As far as composition goes, what would you ordinarily do? If you want, you can display guidelines or grids to use as a visual framework. Or you can draw simple vector shapes (think comic strip boxes) that are snapped to the grid/guides, and confine drawing work to strokes nested inside those.

 

Lots of stuff to try out.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

Huion WH1409 tablet

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11 minutes ago, artisticperspective said:

Thank you. I already have an Intous Pro. You were very helpful.

 

You are welcome. Have fun.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

Huion WH1409 tablet

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On 26/07/2017 at 1:14 PM, gdenby said:

You can make your own brushes. I've made a few. I haven't been very happy with them, but with some work, I think I could come up with decent ones. There are 3rd party brushes available that are a good bit more subtle. 2 forum members offer some for sale, under the name Daub brushes and Frankentoon. Not too pricey, and it saves the time of having to learn and create your own.

 

Jef Brown ('WREN') sells brushes, and he offers a free sample pack. Craig Deeley and Stuart R have shared brushes here; I don't know if they also sell some.

 

Edit: Brush wizard Paolo Limoncelli (creator of the DAUB brushes) posted some useful links for budding brush makers here.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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