Using digital tools to complete a picture. Yes? No?
The poo-poo saga goes on. We've been feeding him lots of things to get him to poo-poo more. Potty training is still in the works as he refuses to sit on the potty when he feels he has to go. Instead, he wants his diaper on and, well, it looks like this in the picture. My wife is really patient. He would be crying/screaming until the poo-poo comes out, partly out of fear of pain and sometimes, because there is so much, it can be rather painful.I drew this when I had time on my own, not in front of them. Below, I show my original illustration with colour pencils, Neocolor II, and watercolours. I used basically red and blues and I did it quickly and without much planning. For some time now, I've been wanting to keep my pictures as untouched as possible, to try to perfect my natural media stills. But after watching videos by Victoria Semykina on her Patreon (I love her work!), I'm more persuaded that I don't need to be too fussy about doing a picture all in natural media only or only very minimally- It is OK to use digital tweaking to continue working on the picture. I realise that it is much like editing a photo in Lightroom. Photographers use it to crop, adjust the colours, contrast, remove or adjust certain colour hues and saturation, to make a stunning picture. It can be seen as cheating or it can be seen as part of the process as it also takes skill and knowledge to do it right. (I'm not talking about using AI, which does it for you without you knowing how to do it yourself.)
So here, I used Procreate to adjust the colours and even use some of the Proreate digital brushes to paint over my painting. You can see that I tidied up the rough parts pretty nicely. So using this process, I see the original picture as the raw materials, and I work on it using other tools (in this case, digital tools) to continue the process. I do like how the final version turned out. I'd use this technique to do picture books for clients where I'd have to get an image looking just right. The end goal is about delivering the story to the reader through pictures. And most people won't be able to tell how I did anyways. What do you think?
Published on August 26, 2025 20:37
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