If you are new to digital drawing, it can be overwhelming trying to decide what program to use. There are so many fantastic programs with so much capability. There is one free program that I’ve found to be a perfect introductory tool for beginning digital artists…. www.kleki.com!
As an art teacher, I’ve seen so many students fall in love with digital drawing with the help of this program. It has just the essentials and is super user friendly. To compare its beautiful simplicity to food (because why not?), it’s kind of like that perfectly delightful chocolate chip cookie made from just a few ingredients.
Do you need to invest in expensive gear if you want to learn digital drawing? Short answer is no. Any computer with access to wifi will do! I recommend if you are new to digital drawing that you are using either a touch screen tablet or a basic external plug in digital drawing tablet. My personal favorite for beginners is the Wacom Intuos Drawing Drawing. *Note: #CommissionsEarned* I do not recommend drawing with a mouse. That’s non sense. 😉 If you find you love it or want to invest more bucks, there are plenty of options out there.
So let’s get started! Here is a great video to show you some basics of the program. Once you’ve explored the basic features of the program, below are some FREE step by step tutorials I’ve created for beginners.
Activity #1- 1/2 Digital Cartoon Portrait
With this simple guided tutorial, you can learn how to set up layers in Kleki and use a variety of drawing tools. The final product is a portrait photograph of your choice creatively divided into two sections. One section is rendered in a fun cartoon style!
Activity #2- Misty Forest with Atmospheric Perspective
To build skills with using color, values, and blending brushes, this step by step misty forest tutorial is sure to help! It will also improve understanding of atmospheric perspective to create a sense of depth.
Activity #3- Graffiti Tag a “Digital” Wall
This guided tutorial walks you through how to import an actual photograph of a wall into Kleki, and explore creative graffiti fonts to “tag” it.
Activity #4- 1980’s inspired landscape
My favorite beginner’s digital drawing that yields some really cool results is this step by step 1980’s inspired landscape. This utilizes some more complex tools such as the perspective feature, symmetry tool, and gradient generators.
Activity #5- Organic, Overlapping Drip Art
Inspired by the great contemporary artist Jen Stark, this guided tutorial walks you through how to compose overlapping organic shapes. This guided tutorial help artists to utilize the duplication tool, perfect skills in organizing digital layers, and explore the use of color in digital art.
Activity #6- A fall favorite…. digital pumpkins!
In this post, beginning artists are guided through how to draw a digital pumpkin, with an emphasis on importing photos, layers, blending brushes and more. I love this lesson because there is a lot of freedom to great creative with added details, colors, and background! Each pumpkin turns out so different!
Activity #7- A spooky silhouette house!
The concept of a silhouette is so fun to explore with digital art! In this tutorial, artists are shown how to draw a silhouette of a spooky house amongst a glowing moon and colorful sky.
Got the basics down and ready to explore the program more independently?
I’ve created this #birthdaycolorchallenge prompt for digital artists. Using a birthday, artists are given a random 5 color swatch scheme and a setting. Using digital drawing tools, the challenge is to creatively render the place using only the 5 limited colors. Check it out here!
Thanks for checking out this blog post. I would love to see how you utilize these tutorials in your own work or your own classroom. Feel free to tag me on Instagram and possibly get featured in this site! Also, please follow Make a Mark Studios on Facebook to keep up with the latest posts! Thanks in advance!
-Stephanie Villiotis, creator of Make a Mark Studios