Digital Art with a Tablet! (Chloetehbanana fan-art)

  Heyo, folks!  You know how for my last post I wrote about doing digital art with a mouse, since I didn't have a drawing tablet?  Well, I finally got a drawing tablet (a Huion 680s, to be exact)!  I've been wanting a drawing tablet for so long (ever since I discovered they existed, basically), so I was super happy to have finally gotten one.  However, I've been sick for the past 2 weeks, so I haven't really been able to do much with it.  I'm better now, though still super tired (but hey, I'm always tired, so that's to be expected, I suppose...)

  After a week of being sick and having mostly recovered, I'd tried to draw a bit in Krita, a new drawing program I got since I was sick of using GIMP.  But after several attempts to draw things that I honestly don't really know how to draw very well, I decided I should try and draw something I know.  Thusly began to try and draw an AJ animal (Chloetehbanana's arctic fox, to be exact) in the Animal Jam Art Studio.

  First, of course, I got some references from the internet, including this random arctic fox photo and a couple screenshots of Chloe's AJ avatar.  

It took a lot of sketching, erasing, redrawing, and frustrated remarks, but eventually, I managed to get a sketch of the arctic fox's pose that I liked.  (Looking at it now, though, it's a bit off-center, but that's not really a fixable thing in the AJ art studio... sigh...)  

  I continued the rough sketch, adding in Chloetehbanana's avatar's accessories to the base of the Arctic Fox.  This part was the hardest for me, I think, since it's been so long since I've drawn an Animal Jam avatar, and at first it was pretty difficult to interpret the small screenshots I had of Chloe's arctic fox into a more realistic drawing in a different pose from the screenshot.

  Once I was (finally) satisfied with the sketch, I blocked in the colors using the airbrush tool, starting off with the background.  Approaching the drawing as if it were a painting rather than a digital piece made the drawing a lot easier to do, and after a while the whole process felt so natural, I felt as if I really were painting.  I've been doing mostly watercolor paintings for a while, since I felt like the effect of watercolor paints was the closest I could get to the smooth, even color of a digital drawing.  It's kind of funny, honestly- I was painting to try and imitate digital drawing, and now I'm drawing digitally to try and imitate painting!  The similarities really did make it easier to figure out, though.

  I added in some final details, such as minor shading and detailing to the fur, and here's the final piece!  As soon as it's approved in Animal Jam, I'll be gifting it to Chloetehbanana.  She's an awesome artist, so definitely visit her den if you can to view her art (if she has it in her den, that is...  I believe she wants to make an art gallery, but I don't know how far she's gotten along with that).

  I really like how this piece turned out.  The simplicity of the Animal Jam Art Studio program has always frustrated me in the past, but using a drawing tablet in the Art Studio was actually really nice, and the simplicity made it a lot easier to figure out how to use my drawing tablet itself, compared to trying to figure out the drawing tablet and a whole new drawing program at the same time.

  I still have about a month of membership left on Animal Jam, so feel free to comment below what you would like to see me draw as a Masterpiece in AJ (as well as your AJ username), and I might draw a few of your suggestions!  Though once I run out of membership, I doubt I'll ever get any more.  I rarely play the game anymore, so I feel like investing in art supplies would be much more worth it than buying membership to a kid's game that I'm no longer really interested in.

  Anyways, that's all for today's post.  Hope you have a fabulous day full of bright colors and fluffy foxes, and this is crazcatlover, signing out!