Discussion: Different art media

[mekare]

So, a thing I thought about just now, after having done the recent challenge in pastels...

What is your preferred medium of choice? What exactly do you like about it? Is it special techniques or effects that other media don't provide? Is it the haptic experience? Is it the cost? Childhood experiences? Art from artists you admire? The "comfort zone" due to practice?

What brings you to push yourself into trying a less practised/or new medium? (Is it a mood, a character/situation, just variety, inspiration from other artists using that medium ...)

Do you ever play around with a mix of traditional and digital media?

---------------------------
For example, I just did a smallish pastel drawing (will post tomorrow when I have good light for taking a photo) because I miss working with colour. The format isn't really great for using pastels or even pastel pencils because the medium just isn't so great for detail work. (I think I remember a post by Alby Mangroves, for example, where she had a photo of her works on huge formats. There you can put in detail more easily).

Yesterday I tried using coloured pencils (which I rediscovered for a challenge piece this week) and found that things I do in other media don't work with them). It got a tad frustrating and I wished I had done the art on watercolour paper so I could used those instead.

Media I use (roughly in order of frequence): pencil, watercolour, pastels, ink/felt pens and the like

I'm just really interested in your experiences with or feelings about the different media we have available for drawing.

Comments

[mific]

Hah, this turned out to be tl;dr! I’m in between traditional and digital at the moment, and likely to stay there, I think. Drawesome has been a wonderful boost for me in exploring - or re-exploring I should say - traditional media. I used to do gouache-type pics many years ago using kids paintbox paints. Then did some years of digital art and blended manips/smudge-manips after I discovered fandom.

These days I’m always drawn to traditional media first, mostly watercolour or gouache, but as I almost never use the finished pic in RL I often tidy up details digitally, or add a layer with a background painted separately, etc. I’m not a purist about a pic that’s in traditional media having to be solely done that way - I’ll go with whatever works. For occasional real-world gifts or xmas cards there’s no undo button, of course, so I have to do all of those traditionally and take more care about the borders abd details. Gouache is very handy for RL edits :)

I want to get better at traditional art techniques but I’ll never be selling it so it’s basically about having fun. Niffer had a good tip as well, that stopping a trad watercolour and finishing it off digitally can help stop you overworking it, which is a fault of mine. I’m a bit of a control freak so my style’s never going to be loose/rough/free-flowing, and I tend towards overworking details. But my greatest satisfaction at present is when I manage a watercolour with okay luminosity and shading without messing it up and needing to muddy it with corrections, so I don’t want to use the “I’ll fix it in post” (post-production) thing so much that I stop learning how to get it mostly right first time. I just can’t see the point in not using digital techniques where necessary, or where they can add something different or special.

With media, I found watercolour pencils disappointing - maybe mine weren’t such a good brand (Derwent Academy), dunno, but I prefer not to still see all the pencil marks, also I should swatch them out to be clearer about the real colours. I like watercolours and gouache a lot. I discovered inking with markers and black paint/ink in Inktober but I love colour and am lazy about practising drawing so my fallback system is to digitally collage a pic then use that as the ref to draw from, then to paint that. I used to use oils many years ago but can’t be arsed now as I have no studio and they’re smelly and messy. Pastels also don’t interest me due to the mess factor. Have tried copic markers but I have limited colours and found them hard to blend - don’t think they suit my style as I’m not really into lineart. I love the ink-resist technique I learned on Skillshare - more about that soon! :)

[mekare]

I find the combination of traditional and digital techniques fascinating!

I’m a bit of a control freak so my style’s never going to be loose/rough/free-flowing, and I tend towards overworking details.

sounds familiar ;-)

Re watercolour pencils, I found that they mostly work if I use them only sideways for shading larger areas (instead of keeping them upright), that way you don't get the distinctive lines, but this doesn't work for really large areas you want coloured with an even layer. I sometimes take a wet brushtip to the pen-tip and take colour off that way (esp. if it's a colour I don't have in a pan). But mostly I use them for details (like I would 'normal' coloured pencils) on a watercolour painting done with the colour from pans. Sometimes I don't even put a wash of water over those details, esp. if they are small. Don't know if that helps you.

I'm looking forward to your skillshare review!

[amberdreams]

Your development path sounds very like mine!

I've got some Inktense watercolour pencils, the colours are really gorgeous. I don't know if there's a way of using them that means you lose all pencil texture, I haven't used them that much yet, and I actually quite like that graininess thet you get with pencil.

[goss]

I'm so delighted that you've gotten back into exploring traditional media and that the community's made an impact in that respect. :)

I also found watercolor pencils to have a lot of limitations, but it was my stepping stone from pencil sketching to watercolour paints. So I guess it does have its uses, for those like myself who need to get their feet wet before diving into ~scary~ media.