Tools of the Trade

While it is true that you can paint by utilizing a wall of your cave as a canvas and mud combined with blood or ashes on your finger, it is undoubtedly simpler to use modern tools. Or even to make things a little bit smoother for yourself.

As Vilppu once said: "There are no rules, only tools."

To feel the form. To bash your head with when things go wrong. To see contour lines. To see perspective rules with your own eyes. Deceptively simple yet very powerful for a beg. Build them yourself. Toilet paper roll for a cylinder, paper for a cube (9cm side will fit nicely into A3 paper). Make sure to properly bend the sides otherwise the cube will have "round" walls.

For hardcore figure drawing. To properly learn how to draw people, almost everybody recommends to learn how to simplify human figure into basic geometrical shapes like this. These cheap, basic poseable wood manikin figures can make the learning easier. They are surprisingly cheap (i got mine for 11€ per figure), large and you can easily use them as home decoration once you no longer need them.

Of course if you want to break a bank then go for the more expensive ones like Figma Action Figures, Figma Archetype Next, Bodykun Drawing Figures, TOA Heavy Industries Synthetic Human, Armaturenine SMALL BIPEDS or magnetic Stickybones

Keeps your hand warm during harsh cold winters, reduces friction between tablet and your hand and during hot summer saps away sweat which would otherwise hopelessly glue your hand to canvas.

The only downside is that if anyone sees you using these, your social credit score will plummel down. Oh well, art demands sacrifices!

There is this one classic proverb: Whatever isn't in the head is in the legs on the sticky notes. This mighty technology is found in literally every single corporate office. But do you have it in your home? I use it to write keyboard shortcuts in order to hopefully increase productivity over time. Is it working? No measurable results yet.

After a first few months i noticed my hand is gaining permanent damage to the nerves (dull ache while sleeping). To instantly solve that i got a pen gripper. And in two weeks the pain in hand went away despite me kept drawing. This piece of rubber forces your hand to hold the pen under correct angle and as such it protects your own hand.

Nowadays i dont use it since i learned how to draw more relaxed and how to adjust pressure curve in the drawing software so i dont have to push as much to get thick line.

The more you draw the more "dull" the nibs in your stylus get. This makes it more awkward to draw. And it gets even worse: the dull nib typically produces very sharp edge which can strach your tablet (that actually happened to me!).

With simple sandpaper or nail file you can give your nibs second life and make them smooth and tip round again!

Put something perfectly round on the tablet. Trace it. If it won't produce perfect circle in your drawing app then you have a problem (usually solved by forcing aspect ratio between tablet:monitor). It took me 3 weeks before i noticed that my tablet is skewing proportions on the monitor.

My first tablet was XP-Pen Star G960S. It's drawing area was about A4 paper (ideal in my humble opinion). At the time i didn't really knew if i will even like drawing so i went for cheapest model which wasnt super tiny. Lasted me 6 months before i upgraded.

The price was 40€ (i overpaid lmao) and it got the job done: i liked drawing and scratched it via my brute strength and ignorance.

My second and current tablet is XP-Pen Deco L. It is direct upgrade of the old one in every aspect. Stylus is way more sensitive and has tilt detection. More buttons. Same drawing area.

The price was 80€ (i overpaid AGAIN lmao). I can recommend this one to anyone. PRO or BEG, this will get the job done.

DogWatcher Work Timer Watcher: Simple app which tracks time you spend in up to three different apps. Made in AHK. Ideal to counter procrastination or at the very least: to measure how bad it is.

Always on TOP: Simple app which sets up current app window to be always visible. Useful for drawing from reference. Made in AHK. If Windows were better OS then you wouldnt need this app.

Greenshot and a script: Not so simple app for taking screenshot. Very useful, not just for drawing. Script made in AHK. If Windows were better OS then you wouldnt need this app.

Weeny PDF to Image Converter Simple app to extract images from PDF files (art books) without losing quality in original resolution. If Adobe Reader was better then you wouldnt need this app.

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program. I still use it as my go-to app for editing existing pictures. Compression for web, resizing, quick edits, pixel perfect sizing. The only reason why i used it at start was because i already knew the app prior to drawing.

Rebelle: Phenomenal oils and watercolors with traditional pigment color mixing. Amazing app which is as close to trad drawing as possible. It's only drawback is bad performance. Goes very often on sale at places like humblebundle.com

Krita: Professional FREE and open source painting program. This thing has everything you will ever need and much much more. Phenomenal brush engine. Very solid performance. This is at the moment my main drawing app!

LibreOffice Draw: Eye-popping graphic documents. This isn't exactly drawing app per say, but you would be foolish to ignore it. It is free and can create nice vector graphics with a few mouse clicks. What takes ages to set up in GIMP or Krita can be done in few minutes here.

Aseprite: Animated Sprite Editor and Pixel Art Tool. Simple, fast, cheap yet quite powerful tool mainly focusing on pixel art. Good pixel art is simply timeless and this tool has everything you need to make it! There is also free fork version (without tablet support).