Your Top 3 Tips or Product Recommendations for Art Creation

[pixelsnplay]

Hello~
I've picked up a lot of great tips and products randomly because of finding gems on different blogs and sites. So I was hoping to get together a list of DIFFERENT tips, product, and or application recommendations. Hopefully it would be a unique list of things we could all benefit from- especially if your recommendations are for something not well known (yet!).
So if you would be so kind- please post your top 3 that maybe people don't know about or that haven't been mentioned yet!

Ok here are mine:
Product: Ugee 2150 (monitor pen tablet)(around 600$)
This is a great Cintiq alternative that is relatively cheap. I bought mine about 3 months ago on Ebay for about 600$ and it is lovely! I paired it with a cheap Samsung monitor and I've been amazed by how useful it is to have two monitors- one to draw on and one to use for reference (watching/listening to other things). You can find a more complete review of it here: and here. I've used Wacom tablets in the past but still the whole drawing and looking up at a screen never felt natural but within a couple days of using my Ugee I was using it almost as naturally as my real sketchbook.

Art Application: MediBang (free!) website here
I only recently discovered this app but within 10 minutes of using it it felt even more comfortable to use (in some ways) than Manga Studio 5 (and this was free!). It has a lot of tones and is free across pretty much any device you may have (Android, iOS, Mac, and PC). Another great feature is free cloud storage (unlimited I believe-not sure how a free app does that but hey~) so in theory you should be able to take all your art with you and keep working no matter where or what you are on. Did I mention it was free?

Pinterest here are some to start you off...
Haha please don't kill me for this kind of obvious one BUT besides faving your fave outfits and pictures- have you tapped into the gem Pinterest is for art tutorials (in any medium) and glorious glorious references? If you need help drawing hands- type in hands and you will get a gazillion hits of really great quality (giving you the evil eye dA and Google) because these are ones that others have already sorted thru and picked the best. Plus it is amazing for finding out about art related things you didn't even know you didn't know about yet.

**tl;dr
Ugee 2150 pen tablet, Medibang (universal free art app), and Pinterest (art tutorials) - 2 thumbs up!**

[abbastudios]

Wacom tablet
Better than drawing with a mouse.

[ArtRage]
A drawing and painting application built specifically for artists. Their tools closely approximate natural tools with the digital advantage. Very easy to learn and costs less than $50.

Adobe Illustrator
Greta for creating vector art.

[SethJH]

Wacom Intuos Pro 5
It's a step up from many tablets in my opinion, but it's a bit costly. It was worth the investment for me. I wish I could afford a Cintiq though.

Blender (free) 3D modeling software
If you're like me and appreciate having good 3D reference while working, having a 3D modeling tool helps a lot. The upside to blender is that it's 100% free. It's a VERY comprehensive tool, it competes with Autodesk Maya (in my opinion, it's better than maya, but that's neither here nor there). Downsides are that it's got a complicated interface and a steep learning curve. Otherwise, I'd use Google Sketchup, but I haven't ever tried that tool. Personally, I use blender to set up architecture and backgrounds, and also to figure out what something would look like being lit at a certain angle.

I'd recommend photoshop but I'm sure everyone already expects that, so instead I'll recommend:
Paintstorm Studio ($19)
It is a decent digital painting program with some nifty features. Brushes act like real media, and can do even more weird effects to make some interesting results. It also has a built in perspective tool, which can even scale your brushsize for you as you "draw in the distance". In terms of comic making, I think it would do great for painting backgrounds.

[ToonDoctor]

Paper, pencil, and a pen.

[getsuart]

Just thinking about something about erasers :
Regular eraser for big surfaces and a pentel clic eraser for little details. it's strictly a personal thing, but when I jsut want to correct slightly the only little pencil stroke I left on a tiny surface, I end up frustrated because most of my erasers are not that accurate.
It depends about how you handle a drawing, but for me it's really useful !

[sophiekaldinski]

Huion GT-190 : http://www.amazon.com/GT-190-Inches-Digital-Tablet-Monitor/dp/B00LA0NONE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1438085022&sr=8-2&keywords=Huion+GT+190
It´s normally around 449 $ without shipping but additional costs are possible because you have to pay custom (for me it was around 90 $ extra).

I have been using this tablet since February and I´ve to say I´m super satisfied. It´s a monitor tablet and therefore a reasonable alternative to cintiq. I needed a bit to get used to the tablet but now it feels nearly as natural as drawing on paper.

For those being reluctant to try out a Huion because they ship from Hong Kong : Customer service is super helpful and reacts very fast.

For drawing digitally I use Clip Studio Pro. During sales it is normally under 20 Dollars : http://www.clipstudio.net/en
Recently I stumpled upon Medibangpaint: http://medibangpaint.com/en/
Customer reviews are very positive, some describing it as a mixture of Photoshop and Mangastudio. I wasn´t able to try it out yet but it´s for free and might be helpful for some of you guys!

[pixelsnplay]

haha I guess if they were good enough for the art masters before us....

[nobody]

1. Sculptris is a FREE 3D sculpting program. No trial period, it's completely free. It's from the same people who make zbrush, but it's much easier to learn, and considering it's free it's an incredibly powerful tool! If you have a very complex character design that's hard to get right from different angles, you can make a 3D figure of it to use as reference, and then you can see it from any angle you like

2. Senshistock Sketch. A timed drawing tool with plenty of various poses to practice drawing, and you can change the timer length from 15 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, 2 min, 5 min, 10 min, 15 min up to 30 min. Better yet; you can skip poses you don’t want to draw, and if you see a pose you would like to work on in greater detail you can pause the timer and use it as reference for as long as needed! AND if you take a look at the SenshiStock Licence Agreement that she posted on deviant art, this is what she has to say about people using her photos as reference for original art: Credit is greatly appreciated when the stock is used for solely pose reference, but it is not required when making original art using the stock as reference. Please be advised that DA's FAQ suggests linking to stock used to avoid any "confusion or misunderstandings." A link to this account in your comments is appropriate credit if you would like to include it.

3. makingcomics.com. If you're a comic creator, just check it out

[nobody]

Hadn't heard of blender before, but it looks promising! I sometimes use Sculptris for creating figures, but I don't think it works that well for architecture or scenes. I've used Google Sketchup, and it's okay, but I feel like I don't have the level of control I would like on how things turn out in that program.

[SethJH]

I sometimes use Sculptris for creating figures, but I don't think it works that well for architecture or scenes.

Yeah sculptris is good for character sculpting (It's the free, less advanced version of ZBrush, afaik). I couldn't imagine trying to use it to model architecture though, that'd be really really frustrating lol.

Hadn't heard of blender before, but it looks promising!

Back when I first started playing with it in like 2009, the community for blender was much smaller, and any learning documentation was few and far between. I believe I learned more about how to use it following a TES IV: Oblivion modding tutorial than any of their official doc. Today though, it looks like there's tons of resources for all different approaches, so learning it should be a lot easier now.

[pixelsnplay]

Thank you especially for those last two @ingunn I didn't know that Senshi had a website too- that is really useful. Makingcomics looks like a library of useful info. I'll definitely be back on both sites in the not too distant future

[doktormostro]

Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
This is a complete and entertaining comic/guide/course that really help me when i was learning, and not so many young people know it or read it. I keep reading it sometimes because is really good.

Winsor & Newton Series 7 #02 Brush
Traditional inking is something that feeds my soul, i love the ink smell and paper texture.. But it would not be a great experience without this brush. I found it to be perfect but it demands practice.

Degreed
This site hasn't a direct art creation relation. Basically you mark everything you learn from articles, videos, books, courses, etc. Into your profile, and serves as a learning guide so you can know how much you study from what you're interested. It's helpful and i feel that helps me to better time manage my activities. (If you register, it would be nice to share accounts. Mine is DoktorMostro lol)

I didn't knew MakingComics, i will check it out tomorrow =o

[oliviasstephen]

1. Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. If you love traditional inking, but you're like me and you're too damn clumsy for a brush and need some extra control, buy this pen. Good dark ink, and it glides across the paper with a great amount of 'spring' in the tip for varying line widths.

2. Prismacolor Col-Erase Non-Photo Blue Pencil. I don't want to be bothered with erasing my pencils, so this makes it easy to remove the blue underdrawings in photoshop after I scan. Also smooth and waxy against the paper, which is something I like and need.

3. Manga Studio 5. It's the only program that I'm comfortable drawing digitally in. Can lag if you're running video simultaneously but overall I love the lines you can get out of it...no wobbliness here.