Where and how to get started with drawing? (using a wacom tablet)

B055F0X said:
Interestingly, I also just bought a Wacom tablet and am also trying to figure out how to effectively use it. In my case, though, I am an experienced artist in more traditional media, so I'm just learning the digital side of things.

Congrats on taking the first step toward learning to art (bad English intended)! Since you are still trying to develop early skills, I recommend copying other people's art. Look at what they drew and try to reproduce it. This is a really great learning experience because you will be able to see the things that people drew and it will help you notice them in real life as well and add them to your drawing (or purposely exclude them if you so choose). It will also teach you about stylized drawing, which will help you to develop your own unique style. Make sure you copy a lot of different people, though, for the optimal learn-from-copy experience. Otherwise your style may end up just being the exact same as someone else's, and you may miss out on learning from other great artists.

Aside from copying, drawing from life is probably the best way to go. If you are even CONSIDERING a career in the art field, employers will always want to know how well you draw realistically. Being able to draw realism will also make your stylistic drawings more accurate as well, and it will make it easier to bend drawing rules when you know what rules you are bending.

In terms of using the tablet or a pencil, I can't speak on that very well. I've used a pencil my whole life, so I automatically want to say it's best, but many people draw every day on tablets without using a pencil first. Since Photoshop has a pencil tool, you can still easily achieve the same effects. You can sketch it out with a pencil, make a new layer, and add the ink lines or color or whatever on top so that you can hide the pencil lines later if you want. In this way, Photoshop is great compared to a real pencil and pen, since it's harder to fix mistakes that are in ink.

The option of sketching with a pencil and then scanning it into Photoshop is a good option too, honestly. It's really just your preference. Try both and see what makes you more comfortable!

If your freehand skills aren't great, practice is the primary thing most people would recommend. There are a lot of great YouTube tutorials out there that could help you with everything from proportions to technique.

Hope this helped, and good luck!