I haven’t been drawing much for a long while, but after finding a new open-source (comics) drawing program I’m finding my way back to the drawing table/tablet!

Here’s my experiences with MediBang Paint Pro:

First, I needed to test the program’s response to my drawing tablet. And was the available brushes any good? And how about the general set-up and ‘feel’ of the interface? Was texting effective?

I was delighted to find the menus very simple and intuitive (at least when being used to Adobe Photoshop beforehand). Also, the easy-peasy way of making and adjusting comic frames directly on the drawing was niiiice (now I don’t need to make and import them from Adobe Illustrator).

I needed to test the colouration system more, as it was new to me: 1bit and 8bit layers are lightweight, hold only one colour, but can be changed and adjusted easily.

Now I know how filters work!

While looking at the ‘how-to’s at the MediBang website I came across a comment on what blur-effect to use when painting food… That made me want to try my hand at drawing food…

That is officially the first time I’ve ever drawn Danish ‘smørrebrød’!

This was also where I encountered my first real problem with the program:

Those shrimps are not big enough! But could I choose several layers (line art layer + colour layers) at once and enlarge them together? Noooo!

And enlarging the layers one at a time is not going to work when you cannot set a fixed percentage to enlarge by… It would take a stiff hour to make them all fit together again…

But look how creepy my shrimps are without the lineart! Ha ha!

And, well… I’m still having fun and want to train drawing other stuff I never or rarely draw.

14 July 2020

So here's to not just drawing generic trees anymore:

I present to you - the birch!

She's wearing her favourite green dress, her festive yellow dress – and NOTHING AT ALL!

15 July 2020

Staying botanical (in honour of my sister’s garden):

Common foxglove.

I admit I could have used a bit more time to get the colour combinations to look more natural, but… Well… I guess I’m just that lazy!

Uh! And while doing this drawing, I finally realized how to resize and flip several layers at once!

You’ve got to put all them layers in a layer-folder!

Jeez! I’m such a newbie!

So here’s the Danish ‘smørrebrød’ again – drowning in shrimps! Ha ha!

I’ll hopefully be making more illustrations soon, but life has a funny way of being... difficult.

We'll just have to see!