What to Practice First When Learning Digital Art

TLDR: Making the jump from traditional to digital art? This guide covers:

• Why starting simple is the fastest way to get comfortable with new tools
• How to master line quality and why confident strokes beat slow, deliberate ones
• Layering — what it is, why it matters, and the key layer types to know
• A beginner-friendly approach to color that won't melt your brain

If you have some experience with traditional techniques, a formal art education, or just spent hours of your life drawing, chances are you have some pretty solid skills in the bank. 

But when you transition to digital artwork, can you expect all your hard work with pens and brushes to translate to a virtual canvas?

In some ways, yes, but there will also be plenty of adjustments to make—and that takes practice! No digital brush is going to feel and move like its real-world counterpart, software can be confusing, and there are a few digital art techniques that don’t have any analog in the real world at all. 

Where should you put your energy to get the best possible start in digital art? Glad you asked. Here are some of the most rewarding things to practice when you’re first starting out. 

1. Start with Simple Techniques

Regardless of the software you choose, you’re going to be given a lot of options that can easily overwhelm you. Start with some basic, 10-minute sketches that utilize universal tools, such as pens, erasers, and brushes. 

These exercises will help you master the interface, gain familiarity with how pressure and speed affect your lines, and build an understanding of how techniques like shading translate to digital formats. 

If it feels like you’re taking a few steps back, don’t worry! With consistent practice, you’ll quickly gain a feel for the tools and be back to creating freely in no time. 

Find Your Starting Place. Whether it’s learning new software or practicing your basics in a digital format, there are plenty of helpful resources from experienced creators to get you moving. 

2. Concentrate on Shapes and Line Quality

One of the advantages of digital software is that you can create perfect geometrical shapes in an instant. This is a huge time-saver for beginners and pros alike—if you know how to use them effectively. 

You’ll definitely want to experiment with these quick shape features, but a perfect geometrical object isn’t always the best answer. They can easily give your work a sense of artificial symmetry that clashes with true hand-drawn elements, so you’ll want to spend plenty of time creating them by hand too. 

What you’ll quickly discover through practice is that digital art software tends to reward confident, bold strokes rather than overly deliberate motions. A slow stylus will almost never give you as clean results as a swift gesture, so you’ll need to experiment with a creative rhythm that gets the most out of your tools and software. 

Want to walk a fine line? Take a look at how other artists handle line drawing digitally, and find some brushes that give you that perfect hand-drawn feel. 

3. Learn about Layering

Before digital art existed, layering was a technique confined largely to the world of animation. Known as cel animation, artists would draw various foreground and background elements on transparent cellophane sheets so they could animate a character without redrawing the whole scene on every frame. 

Today, layering is a foundational component of digital artwork that every creator will use on a regular basis. By understanding how to layer their work properly, artists can work efficiently, avoid destructive edits, and create a clean, finished product. 

Common layers to experiment with include:

• Raster Layer. Artwork on this layer is created on a digital grid and doesn’t scale well. This is where you’ll do your painting, drawing, photo editing, and detail work.
• Vector Layer. Unlike raster layers, this is a scalable layer that won’t lose quality. 
• Correction Layer. This layer sits on top of your artwork and allows you to adjust colors, contrast, and brightness without affecting your originals. 
• Fill Layers. These are often backgrounds of solid colors. 

Looking for tips? A tutorial on layering for your preferred software or a full project walkthrough can give you instant expertise. 

4. Experiment with Color

You’ve probably seen Bob Ross mixing phthalo blue, alizarin crimson, and titanium white like mad on his palette to find the ideal color. Keep the hair if you want, but digital artists have a completely different approach to tweaking their values. 

Every color on the screen can be adjusted for hue, saturation, and color balance to perfect its relationship to the whole composition. These elements can create warm sensations, dusky shadows, and any other effect you can dream up… if you know what to adjust. 

Start with 3-5 colors in some simple compositions and play around to find out what works well. Using too many colors can quickly melt your brain, so give yourself a chance to gain a solid understanding of some basics. 

Got a query about color theory? Color is an immense subject for digital artists in all genres, and there are an extraordinary number of valuable resources to help you crack the code.

Level Up Fast with Cubebrush 

Learning digital art in a vacuum can be extremely frustrating, and that’s why over 1.5 million artists have joined the Cubebrush community. Our forums and online resources can help you answer any question you might have, whether it’s about workflow, color balancing, or where to meet like-minded artists in your genre for inspiration. 

And when you need a little help or the perfect tool to elevate your work, the 12,000+ sellers on Cubebrush offer tutorials, reference images, curated brush packs, and many more assets to give you great results and save you time and hassle. 

Check out the Cubebrush Marketplace and connect with the people and products you need to dive into digital art.