For
Evolved1 - this is very late, but if you're still looking around for PS alternatives, there's a free alternative to Manga Studio aka Clip Studio Paint that I like; MediBang Paint. Both desktop and mobile versions exist for this, with free cloud storage if you so desire. I still use MediBang Paint because it's got an extremely good way to extract lines from a scanned drawing.
For everyone else -- I thought it might be good to drop in this very nice Permission Slip that I keep in mind while I do my art stuff. This is courtesy of Ursula Vernon, who is an artist I quite admire:
For more explanation, see here:
https://ursulav.livejournal.com/1595179.html
But basically to get through to the good art you gotta keep doing the art even if it is terrible. I know I gotta draw a kind of thing multiple times before I get it right---sometimes due to the specific tool I'm using, sometimes due to not being familiar with the thing---so even though I'm getting decent at drawing I can still have sessions where I'm not very awesome.
I still keep going. Not every day, because chronic illness sucks, but I do art when I can.
Anyways, I'm starting to draw some Svalbard Reindeer. They're cute and unusual for reindeer. I've drawn a young elk before but not much in the way of elk or similar animals, so the first couple are gonna be rough.
Ballpoint pen is a very good sketching tool; I use a cheap Bic Stic that responds very well to pressure. With a Bic Stic and a small sketchbook I can draw anywhere, and that's one of the reasons I stopped using a computer--well, that plus the eye strain of owwwwwwfuck. I know none of them are stable/lasting/archival, but they're for practice and I photograph them anyways.
I'm playing around with how to render the coat, among other things. What kinds of pen strokes work best to portray antler velvet? Also what is the 3-d form of the reindeer? They have such tiny short legs, a very distinctive feature, and their bellies are very round and kind of adorable.
I switched over to a Uniball Jetstream ballpoint pen, and unfortunately that hybrid ink is not responsive to pressure and blots a lot. It flows a lot more like a gel ink than the oil ink in most non-gel ballpoint pens. The results are not as good and also I don't have the best handle on the reindeer:
This is still an interesting effect I can keep in my back pocket for a future project but it's difficult to control for now.
I'll still need to do more of these little quick studies to get a better idea of the reindeer. And I'll probably do them in different mediums as well.