FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN WITH TRADITIONAL ART

WRITTEN JUNE 18TH, 2024

After finding a ton of traditional art supplies while tidying up my space a couple months back, I've been playing around with it in a way that I honestly haven't in years and it's... really really fun!! The last time I worked with traditional for realsies (so not including things like quick sketchbook doodles done during like, class) was circa 2009-2010 so in some ways it feels like coming home after well over a decade. Despite having so many hoarded art supplies, I've been an exclusively digital artist for nearly two decades at this point and I'd sort of forgotten just how wonderful it is to work with art traditionally.

I feel it's enriching the digital side of my art as well, because working with traditional is forcing me into accepting being a bit messier with my work which is. something I've been struggling with in my digital artwork lately. I tend make my digital art reallyyy clean and tidy, which is useful for finishing things fast (especially comics, and I have a bunch in development rn) but I've been feeling like maaaaybe I go a bit too overboard sometimes and reach near neurotic levels of trying to make things clean. Which sucks! Because I actually really like it when I can see things like brushstrokes and a bit of messiness in other styles! I don't know why I ended up with such an aversion to that type of thing! So in addition to adding a bit of texture back to my digital (with noise brushes and gritty, pencil-like brushes) I'm also forcing myself to play it a bit looser and messier with traditional, because I don't have CTRL-Z or layers or the same level of brush control I do on CSP. It's honestly such a great time!! I'm going to have a lot of fun figuring out how to combine my digital and traditional work too. I've always kept them separate (I've also never 100% figured out how to replicate onto a screen a certain type of coloring I used to do traditionally), so having them interact in that way is super exciting. I'm really enjoying entering my mixed media era! Yay art!!!

...I may or may not have acquired a bunch of new interesting supplies (+ things I needed to work with the paints I have, like water-based varnish for my acrylic paintings). In my defense, there's a lot of really cool watercolor and pencil materials out now that are super accessible through Shopee...