Despite AI art being abundant nowadays, nothing still beats the creation of art by hand, it’s therapeutic and the resulting work is something you can call your own, and nothing can take that away from you. If all these utilities used to generate AI art disappears, so does the ability to generate art.
The creation of artistic works is an expressive act, whether it is music, visual arts, writing, or dancing. What makes art genuine are the emotions running through the artist and the meanings attached to the work during the creation process. Append along the perfections and imperfections to the work that gives it its charm, and these become part artist’s signature.
![Lake artwork.](https://designeramic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/lake_sketch-800x800-1.png)
The image of a lake above uses a rough sketch as its starting point and colored in digitally.
![River artwork](https://designeramic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/river-sketch-colored-800x800-1.png)
A night scene for a river, sketched by hand and colored digitally.
![Field artwork](https://designeramic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/field-800x800-2.png)
The sunset lights up a grassy field with a small pond at the bottom.
My Process
The process begins by taking a compact disc (CD) and using that to trace the circular border for the landscape sketch.
A mechanical pencil was used to create the sketch, followed by inking with a gel pen. I erased the penciled sketch to leave the ink behind while making corrections.
Finally, I scanned the works using an Epson L3210 at 600 DPI with brightness and contrast values of 190 and 111, respectively. The resulting image below is the image quality.
![](https://designeramic.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/upload_scan-samples.png)
Notice in the second illustration, the sun is not present but is on the colored version above. I opted to not include it in the original so I can add it later. This gives me the ability to color this to change the time of the day. I can also position heavenly bodies anywhere. For coloring, the software Krita was used to digitally paint in the colors onto the sketch.
Tools and Software Used
- XP Pen Pen Tablet (Deco Mini7)
- Mechanical Pencil
- Sketchpad
- Epson L310
- Krita Version 5.1.5