These are simple, but done with different techniques and programs. Up above is purely digital, drawn and painted in Photoshop.

The guy below was drawn in Adobe Illustrator according to a pencil sketch, then coloured in Photoshop. I’m happy with the ink lines I’m able to create, and they’re fast to do, too.

This strange woman was painted in black wash on paper, then coloured in Photoshop. Nifty! I want to be able to blend the colours more.

Still, all things considered, they look good to me, and my pics will continue to get only better.

I’m still adventuring in colouring sketches, and hence, cartoons. Difficult to figure out what’s too much, because I like the original drawing, done in roller pen in the sketchbook, just fine. But these flat colours with subtle gradations are all right. I also have to work on my colour sense, to let things blend into each other, and advance and recede as I like them. Much of it’s a question of confidence. I’ll play other little tricks as I gain it. Nice, as I’ve been saying, to have another skill.

More cartoon colouring. I’ve noted that few people are visiting the blog on Sunday, so I can post today in relative obscurity.

This took me a bit of time, but taught me a lot about digital painting, and making clean lines in illustrator and photoshop. It started life as one of my silly little sketches, so it’s not a real kind of airplane. I’m experimenting with different lines to see which ones are the prettiest and fastest to create. I think hand-drawn ones win in the end, but I’m more comfortable with the digital ones now.

All six of you regular blog visitors may have noted I’ve got a new, expensive toy — a Wacom Intuous 4 tablet, which has replaced my Wacom Bamboo pen pad for working on graphics with the computer. The drawing surface on that older device had gotten shiny and worn, but no serious scratches, and I had never replaced the nib, even though the thing was in use every day for about a year.

When it arrived a couple of weeks ago, the new Wacom was more complex, but very precise and smooth-feeling. I didn’t get the jagged lines that the cheaper, less “high-resolution” product made. At last, I had something that worked almost as well as my traditional pens and brushes, with the colours and changeability that you can get with computer graphics.

After going through a bunch of youtube tutorials, and figuring out how to tweak Photoshop (a process still ongoing), I felt ready to go as a digital-type artist, as my experiments on this blog have been showing.

One feature of the new pen is a selection of removable nibs, nestled in the inkwell-shaped pen holder. There are actually 4 different kinds. But generally you have the black ones, which are standard, then the white, slightly rougher-feeling ones, which according to the manual will give a softer, more brush-like stroke.

Nora (AKA the Black and White Tornado) is investigating them here, as you can see.

I watched yet another online video showing me how to remove and replace nibs, then with happy anticipation, performed the operation on my own device. I opened a new drawing file.

Didn’t notice any immediate difference in the stroke, but imagine my horror when the first pass or so of the new white nib across the tablet caused a nasty gouge in the pad. You can see it in the shot below, now that I’ve shooed away the cat. And though she has claws and was sitting on it, I swear she is NOT responsible.

I hadn’t pressed particularly hard, and already my expensive tablet had a groove on it I could feel with my fingertip. Was it even going to be useable after a month or two of use?

I did a web search on “Wacom Intuous 4 pad scratches.” Didn’t come up with advice on my exact case, but read a lot of online complaining about how nibs wore down quickly, and were expensive to replace. I signed up with the Wacom.com website, and then had to do a second registration to search the users’ forum.

That contained the usual half-literate expressions of puzzlement and panic (which of course never affect Yours Truly!) and finally a link to a third-party site selling plastic protective covers for Intuous 4 tablets. I picked up one of these via Amazon, feeling annoyed at paying the extra $17. What was also annoying is that I saw that the price of my tablet on the same site had dropped by about $70 since buying it, probably because of the number of complaints.

I typed a slightly passive-aggressive note to Wacom customer support. They responded quickly and with a friendly e-mail, offering to replace the pad surface for free. They told me that both the nibs and the pad are “wearable surfaces” and a replacement pad would be in the mail.

This morning there was a knock on the door at 8:30 am. I had been drawing and blogging until three that morning, but collected the envelope containing the plastic shield. It’s a rectangle of mylar with adhesive on the edges.

Anyhow, the regular nibs don’t seem to scratch the surface much. Think I’ll wait until the new pad arrives until applying the cover. And then there’s the fun of figuring out how to replace the pad. Does it pry out with a sharp tool? Is there a screw in the back?

I still like the new stylus, and hope it helps produce many drawings in the years (or months) to come. Perhaps if there was more competition, another stylus maker to keep them sharp like Mac vs. Microsoft, they might have done a better job.

Still playing with the digital painting. I think I get so carried away with the technical challenge I sometimes forget to make an interesting picture. Hence this horse, not doing much of anything. George Stubbs I am not! Actually, without the “ink” lines, this looks a lot like one of those paint by numbers kits. I promise I’ll get better with the digital painting soon. Still think you might be interested in seeing the process!

Of course, it would have looked better had I used a photo reference instead of drawing it and the reflections out of my head, but that’s the way I am.

Meanwhile, here are a few real ball-point pen drawings I did. It’s a medium I enjoy. Again, sort of frowned upon by the finer galleries, but I like doing the tones with crosshatching.

Painted this digitally at a friend’s, after her feline companion. Still working on brushes, colour mixing, etc.

Young Nora was being obstreperous, as is easy to see from this photo, and she got my little finger this morning as I was trying to take something breakable away from her. So I’ve given her a new identity, as below:

So there.

Yes, she’s in a bikini, but she’s got a personality, so I don’t think she’s just being an object. This is another drawing, in real ink this time, which I coloured with the computer.