Drawing is an activity I’ve always enjoyed. It’s fun and relaxing and helps take my mind off of things that I’m anxious about. I started when I was young, scribbling with a marker or pencil on paper. Currently, I mainly do digital art with my iPad, and it’s so much more efficient than pencil and paper. Not only is drawing faster and easier, but working with a digital device allows for other features like video editing and animation.

It took me quite a while to get used to digital art as I only did physical drawing until the age of twelve. My brother introduced me to digital drawing with an app called Ibis Paint X. When you start a new drawing there’s a blank white canvas. You can choose from many pen textures and start drawing! There are also different layers you can add and delete, which I’ll explain later. I tried doing a drawing on that app six years ago, and it felt so unnatural at first. So, I went back to physical drawing after that. After looking at how clean and amazing my brother’s digital art pieces were, I decided to try the app again. It still felt unnatural, but I decided to stick with it. After years of practice and tips from my brother, Ibis Paint X has become my main platform for drawing. I’ve now made over 1,000 pieces with that app! Some are simple doodles while others are fully colored and shaded.

One of the things that confused me at first was the layers. Layers are different sections that allow you to draw over and under stuff, and you can also make them visible or invisible. For example, I use one layer to sketch and then add another layer for the line art. When I’m done, I just delete the sketch layer. Layers make digital art much easier than going in with an eraser and physically erasing some pencil marks. Layers make your piece look less messy compared to pencil and paper.

Coloring is another thing that’s easier and less time-consuming when doing digital art. To color, you can simply fill part of your drawing with whatever color you want by using the “bucket” tool and clicking on where you want to fill with color. You can also change the color if you don’t like it, which you can’t really do with paper. Another benefit of coloring digitally is the wider variety of colors. When doing digital art, you can pick from the many hues of the entire color wheel! Paints, pens, markers, colored pencils, and other art supplies only come in certain colors. In contrast, digital art provides ways to blend and change colors for each layer. For example, I mainly use a certain blending mode called “Multiply” when I shade. When I shade, I pick one color that I think matches the general colors of my piece. However, it would end up looking a little weird if the shading was all one color, considering there are probably multiple colors in the art piece as a whole. To combat this, the Multiply blending mode takes the one color I shaded with and changes the hues slightly so it blends more with the non-shading colors.

Moving things is also much more convenient when doing digital art. Instead of having to erase, move, or resize something, you can just use the “lasso” tool. This tool allows you to circle any part of your drawing, and only that part will be affected by what you do. For example, if you want to make a nose bigger or smaller you just make a circle around just the nose, and only the nose will be affected by resizing and rotating. You can do this to your whole drawing too-you just don’t need to use the lasso tool!

Due to its increased efficiency and variety of features, I prefer digital art over traditional art. Though I like them both, doing art digitally is much easier, allows for many more options, and is less time-consuming. If you like to draw, I definitely recommend trying digital art if you haven’t already!

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