Art lesson 1: Intro to digital painting

I am treating my art lessons as if I am a beginner, as my last instruction was in high school, which was…awhile back

I have chosen to start this particular adventure with Ctrl+Paint, a site featuring copious free lessons provided by freelance artist Matt Kohr. It helps that Matt has a really calm, soothing voice in the videos, as opposed to say, Bobcat Goldthwaite’s.

I have completed the first set of lessons, Digital Painting 101, which comprises six videos. It introduces you to some key functions, features, and handy shortcuts in Photoshop.

The Ctrl+Paint videos highly recommend using Photoshop for ease in following the lessons, so I have temporarily renewed my subscription. I also dusted off my Intuos tablet and so far things are working as expected.

In time I will drop Photoshop, and transfer what I’ve learned to Affinity Photo and Procreate on the iPad. For now, I am following dem rules to keep things simple.

The initial lessons are traightforward, but the next set is where it will get interesting, as it goes back into traditional drawing instruction–using pen, pencil and paper. I have all three, so I am ready to start scrawling. I never practiced much in school because my attention was split among a bunch of stuff (as I mentioned in a previous post), so I may get somewhat better results this time. Or at least know sooner when to give up and go back to writing haikus.

I plan to start the next lessons tonight, so another update should arrive soon™.

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