How I draw my art requests

Fungirl99000

Hello everybody! So, I'm not sure if this is supposed to go in Bess's Art Lesson, but I wanted to share with you how I do my art requests. If you don't have a drawing tablet (one of those black screen computer thingies), then this is how to do it with a mouse.
Now, I use a Microsoft Trackball mouse. I've been using it to draw for years and I've gotten very used to it.

This is what one looks like. Yes, it looks like it'd be terrible to draw with, but this is just what I use. I've had a lot of practice :3
The art program I use is FireAlpaca. Its absolutely free and I love it. Its simple to use and you can make the kind of art that Paint Tool SAI people do.
So, what I do is grab a piece of paper. I take a pencil and sketch out the drawing, so that I can trace it with my mouse. After I'm finished, I scan the drawing and open it up in FireAlpaca. I use the regular brush (set at 2.5 size) and turn correction to 40. This gives me ultra smooth lines and they're not messy.
Tip: to make tracing the drawing fun, pop on some headphones and listen to tunes. Trust me, it makes it worth the while :3
After tracing the drawing, I open up a picture of the fairy in another FireAlpaca window. I use the dropper to get the colors I need for filling the drawing in. Before filling, I make expand pixels set to 1. This way, it won't look messy.
After filling everything in, I look for spots that were too small to be filled and fill em myself. Also, I always make layers for each thing (e.g., layer for the trace, skin filling, outfit filling, wings, and so on). This is important, because some things have to be in front of another.
Next thing I do is add details. I make this a separate layer. I add skin shading, outfit details like leaf and petal type things, lines in the hair, and so on.
Then I do the wings... I make the drawing layer visible (by clicking the button beside the layer) and trace the wings in a new layer. I set the opacity of the layer to 42% to make the wings see thru. Then I fill the wings in.
Next thing I do is add a glow. I make a layer behind all of the others and use the airbrush to make a pretty, yellow glow around the pixie. Then, on the outline layer, I take the Star brush and add some fairy dust!
Now, I choose a background. I go to somewhere like google images and search up Disney fairies backgrounds. I find one I like and put it in the picture! (Click select, select all, copy, go to the fairy drawing, click paste, transform and adjust it to the way you want it. Put the layer behind them all)
And voila! I hope this helps a bit... unless this method is so generic that everybody knows it XD. also, sorry I couldn't add pics. I'm not on the computer right now.
Anyways, that's all for now. Fly with you later!
I may delete this bad post xd

Emily

Me with a mouse: LOOK I CAN WRITE MY NAME!!!!!!!!!!! I literaly can only write my name with a mouse.

Jasper

Sounds fairly close to what I do. I drew on my computer with the regular mouse for years until I got a tablet. I'll try to make one of these soon. Thanks for sharing, Grace!

MoonFields

| An interesting post! I actually started art with a mouse too and I just bought a tablet so I can make "better" 3D edits. After awhile, I found out that I can do more with it!
| Thanks for sharing~

amethystdayglow

Hopefully some new artists will be inspired by this, Grace!

catcatherine

RIP I don't do art

Pumpkin

Nice informative post. Thanks

Lavender-Marie

I've been starting to try out digital art, so this has been helpful

toadstoolivy

Cool! I don't have a tablet either :\

Villiana

This will help many people I'm sure, thank you for sharing. As I too, do not own a drawing tablet.