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?

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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

Re: Warning: long and a bit overshared

[mific]

It’s great that you’ve been able to adapt to use larger format and digital techniques, and sorry to hear about your eyesight - that sounds frustrating. With me it’s carpal tunnel affecting my hands badly if I draw or paint too long.
Honestly, for what you want I think Photoshop is too unwieldy and excessively complex - it also tends to pack a lot of small detail into the screen, re tools, icons, etc. I vastly prefer my old PS 5.0 version but it only runs on my old PC now and both their days are numbered! There are probably other programs out there midway between MSPaint and PS that’d suit you better. Maybe someone else can recommend something? I looked into options recently but the only other alternative I’ve tried is Rebelle2, which might work okay as long as you have a big monitor. You can certainly scan art then work on it there. Rebelle3 is just out, I think.

Re: Warning: long and a bit overshared

[minoanmiss]

Thank you a lot for the information about the Rebelle programs, and just generally for responding to me so Kindly!