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Hello Kitten! New work, new tools.

Lately I've moved to using different tools for my digital paintings. For years I worked on my trusty wacom Bamboo, followed by Intuos and I always found the separation from the screen frustrating! I never could manage to get the linework the way I wanted and chose to use the line tool instead - which for those of you who use photoshop can imagine was absolutely painful. After many years of working this way I grew to hate making digital art as it caused me a lot of pain (my hands hurt!!) and I could never get my digital art to look the way I wanted - it never seemed to flow (to me anyway).

Just Recently I have moved to a Wacom Cintiq and Manga studio (I still use photoshop and move between the two). It's taken a bit of getting used to but now I think it's absolutely marvellous! I can sketch directly onto the screen and it's all very natural, it's made me want to return to the digital medium.

Here's my latest image 'Hey Kitten' Inspired by the wonderful Gil Elvgren - my cartoon take on it anyway :)

Starting from a quick sketch...

In the past, I would sketch on paper and scan the image in. This is much faster and saves paper.

And then to the finished image!

This is the first cartoon pin up that I have painted entirely in Manga studio (It's taken me a while to get used to colouring in Manga studio as it's very different but I love it and now I start the journey in finding all of the tools in the program! (Photoshop has only taken me 7 years and I still don't know the half of it).

I know that often people who aren't familiar with art or digital art are often unaware of the time involved. Every little detail is drawn by hand as you would on paper or canvas and it can take many, many hours and days to complete an image. This one took me nearly three days. I have been known to spend 70+ hours on photoshop works.

I have also been using the Wacom for the draft stage of paper works. This is an example of a commissioned piece I drew for the lovely Jennifer - starting with a digital sketch and then hand drawn and coloured using Ink and Copic markers on manga paper (I seem to be getting into the Manga tools since Supanova!).

I have been asked many times by other artists about the mediums that I use and I'm always happy to chat about this so if you have any questions, feel free to comment, email or message me.

I will try to keep my blog updated every month if possible. If there are any topics that you would like to read about, please do let me know. I now have a mailing list on the website as well as an app on my facebook page.

'till next time!

isobel xxx

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