the meta is very different now than it was a year ago. in fact the media i use right now changes often but the meta is traditional. i moved to using pencils a bit during june of 2022, until i began doing it more frequently. sketching and lines were the most important thing in my work. it simply felt more intuitive how much freedom or elbow room you get in traditional instead of ctrl-z'ing all the time and concentrating on accuracy with digital sketchwork. trad sketching made me think more ahead of time how things ought to appear rather than putting it straight to digital and constantly adjusting it to how i see fit. i can see better in my head how to execute BEFORE it happens. i felt ive also improved in some posing and other things by going traditional. more perspective, or more unique things in general.

i use a 6h to lay down sketches. my scanner can't read it. but if they do, or if i want to omit some lines in general, i will use a curve filter in GIMP to adjust the darkness accordingly. sometimes it is done for effect, sometimes it is done to make line art more visible over sketches. one unchanging absolute i always do is sketch in 6h. that is the very first thing i do and i don't proceed unless ive done that first.

i line art over the sketches with a 8b pencil. using pencil allows you to change things if too many lines are around (use the eraser). I can still darken these with curve filters but if i want something more permanent and more applicable for digital coloring i will ink it with a fine sharpie or a pen. I can change the color of it if i'd like when i move it into digital. pens and sharpies have much cleaner lines but you wont be able to change it so you have to be careful.

sometimes that will be the end of it. i can shade with pencils of lighter or darker shades. if i want to experiment with shading i will hatch with pen. digital however is good for flair and pop and color. i'll scan the drawing and import it into paint tool sai and use the fuzzy select to color as i typically would with any other fully digital drawing. the rest is history. there is not much to this process other than to treat the traditional art as i would digital. but if i have to add some markings or things i forgot in digital i will have to approximate it with a fuzzystatic brush or a paper texture on the brush to emulate a pencil.

there are maybe 4 different variations i could have made for mar 2023 iyo, considering what ive just told you. i could have inked her, shaded her in pencil, added digital colors, or any combination of these, but i chose to keep it just to pencils since they form the basis of my work now. fully digital works are a rarity now. line art is rarely digital. even so, a traditional sketch is used to create the digital line art.