Digital painting
Digital painting uses software such as Krita (free and open source), Procreate, Clip Studio Paint or Photoshop with a pressure-sensitive pen. The fundamentals — value, colour, drawing — are exactly the same.
Step by step
- Set up pen pressure to control opacity or size, and pick a small set of brushes: a hard round, a soft airbrush and a textured brush are enough.
- Start in greyscale or with a limited palette and big shapes on one or two layers.
- Use layers for flexibility, but merge often — painting across dozens of layers slows decisions.
- Flip the canvas horizontally regularly; it reveals drawing errors immediately.
- Check values with a greyscale adjustment layer set to 'colour' or 'saturation' blend mode.
- Avoid relying on the eyedropper for every colour; mix by eye as you would on a palette to train your colour judgment.
Common mistakes
- Zooming in to detail too early.
- Using the default soft airbrush for everything, which looks blurry.
- Picking pure saturated colours straight off the colour square.
Practice exercise
Paint a 30-minute study of a photo using only three brushes and no more than three layers.