Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Digital studies and the next generation of artists: a brief interview with teen Insun Chong

Insun Chong is a magical young fellow who attends Caddo Magnet High in Shreveport. He is ranked in fencing, in math competition and is a National Merit Semifinalist. Insun also loves art and has been working on serious drawing as well as fun graphics for several years. Recently I queried him about diigtal sketching.

"The programs that I've used are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Corel Painter. I've mostly used my tablet for fine art studies.

My time originally was spent more on traditional media such as oils and charcoals. However, after time, my time spent on the tablet has dramatically increased. Even though digital work isn't quite up to par with the actual stuff, the benefits, I believe, far outweigh the cons: there is no mess, waiting for paint to dry, or fear of damage to the work.

The most important factors are that a tablet should be big enough to get a comfortable representation of the screen eg. similar to the screen's size. That way, the user is given the best experience in terms of speed and ease of use. Also, a good tablet is a tablet that will sense the tilt of the pen. Most advanced drawing programs such as Photoshop or Painter will support brushes that change shapes based upon the tilt of the pen.

Another point is that software is pretty important. Different types of software can be used for different things and can really change the user-experience.

The Bamboo tablets (editor: a new line by Wacom; I bought one for $67) are good for recreational use, but if you're actually looking at serious drawing, the Intuos line (starting about $370, acc to my quick search) is probably your best bet. The Bamboos are a bit lacking in sensitivity and features, making them hard to use for fine art."

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