I’ve considered transferring my beloved old analog styles to the Digital world for a while now, since drawing and painting in Procreate feels surprisingly much like the real thing! I didn’t quite know where to start though, partly because I haven’t used those techniques ina long time, for practical reasons (mainly because I didn’t want to completely redraw my commissions for every single correction…), so I’ve been putting it off for a long time.

Besides my usual projects, I’ve sketched a lot lately (and slept too little :)), and instead of participating in #Inktober or #Frightfall as planned, it looks like this is more #Figurefall for me! It’s good not to invent and construct for a change, but to simply “just” draw reality, and I notice how my visual library, slightly dusty after the long break, profits from it.

Part I – Digital Alcohol Marker and Crayon

Recently, I meant to sketchvery late at night (as usual) this amazing model, whose name, as indicated in her pictures of Grafit Studio, could be “RS” or not. My head always comes up with names for her when I draw, from Ares (so appropriate for a warrioress!) to Ruz or Rayisa… Anyway, somehow, and without giving it much thought, I started coloring them, and then there were these marker brushes at the ready. And so the adventure began.

I was so fond of the mixture of fierceness and vulnerability that I see in model and pose, her serene calm and almost heroic dignity, that I really wanted to capture this in my sketches. The reason that I spontaneously reached for the colors just here very likely has to do with the fact that her fierce-yet-vulnerable attitude corresponds to my own position towards the translation of my techniques into the digital, and this very much encouraged me.

So this is where it started, with the KolorMarc Brushes from True Grit. They feel so real to me – like copics on marker paper, not standard paper! – that in between, I actually had the impression, for a moment, to perceive that special scent of alcohol markers! In both digital and analog, I enjoy the slow, light layering and translucent skin tones. What I miss digitally though is the partial dissolving of crayon lines on marker contact, but maybe I’ll find a trick there?!

Part II – Digital Watercolor and Crayon

After this first try, I’ve chosen RS’s series of images (aka “the lady with the spear”) as playground for testing more analog styles, with the brushes I couldn’t resist buying but have hardly used so far – and I love every minute of it!

For my second study, I used the Watercolor MaxPack from Max Ulichney. Color application feels less natural than the markers, but of course this is their nature, and once you get used to trick it, Digital Watercolor is a lot of fun in its own unique way! I especially like that slightly overboard effects in combination with my line make a “Schiele effect”.

I think I still have a whole lot to learn, and I can hardly wait to find the time, because it is so much fun! But for now, once I had started, I decided to go and try out some more of my old techniques and brush sets…

Part III – Digital Oil und Chalk on Canvas

For my third study, I used Max Ulichney’s Oil MaxPack, which I first struggled with, very similarly to how I struggle with analogue oil and acrylic paints – which is exactly why I haven’t used them in decades! In the end, however, this only made my experiment all the more exciting, because I approached those oil paints much more freely due to the lack of comparison, than I did with techniques that had been tried and tested for many years.

After decades of drawing with outlines and constructing flat areas of color, it feels very brave to not go without shapes (I made my first attempt at digital painting a few months ago, in a summer night!), but also somehow…. indulgent?! I like these oil paints surprisingly much, even if I – admittedly – still have very much much to learn!

If I didn’t like the “element of human error” increasingly more since AIs appropriated all our works and spit out over-smoothed and prettified imitations of what’s human, I probably wouldn’t post these studies… My studies are far from perfect, but they’re happy, making them made me happy, and that’s much of what human-made art means to me.

Great Thanks to RS of Grafit Studio!!!

Likewise, many thanks to the unknown photographer and to Matthias Klesse and Angelika Luckhaus for the – as always – extraordinarily good advice, even if I didn’t take all of it. But most of it! :)