Play Digital Art With Me

I’ve been experimenting more with digital art lately. I got my iPad & have been using Procreate for around 5 years now—I often drew fanart & self-inserts, & while learning my way around the not-so-humble Apple Pencil, I enjoyed studying other similar art styles & seeing what I could learn with them. Other than the occasional surrealist or animal doodle, I pretty much stayed in my niche.

This past year, though, I’ve been pushing myself to try new things with digital art. There were a huge array of brushes I completely avoided, and by experimenting with them, I realized that some of my favorite digital art to make is not the classic sketch-lineart-color-render kind!

My favorite technique so far is to start with a photo collage. I put together a bunch of pictures in my camera roll (I’m not short on photos—there are over 67,000!) (deep sigh… 6/7…), and once I’m satisfied with the composition, I block out the shapes with the color palette I’m looking for. Then I go to town!

I found out I love to use painting techniques rather than pen. Laying colors of different opacities & blending & carving out details is so fun. I’ve been using this technique & these digital paintings in my local community care & art zine!

Speaking of zines… I never realized how many different things I could do with digital art! I never even thought about using it for zines until I stumbled upon a template while reading articles about cartonera. In only 2 days I had my first issue of ROOTS ready for distribution.

I also used digital art to create my own postage stamp templates, a postage stamp charm I sold (until it sold out), and personal FROM THE DESK OF: watermarks for my penpalling. 

I’m beyond excited to see what else I can do with digital art in 2026. What are your favorite ways to practice digital art? Are there any techniques that you found surprising? Come play digital art with me!