Even if you don’t have a decent beginner drawing tablet yet, that shouldn’t stop you from creating cool works of art. With a mouse in one hand and a keyboard in the other, you can start learning and making 3D art in Blender.
If you are looking for an affordable drawing tablet, check my top picks that won’t break the bank.
What is Blender?
Blender is a 100% free and open-source application for creating 3D work on your computer. You can use it for modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, and more. If you want to get into video game art, then it’s worth getting familiar with software like this.
Is Blender good for art?
Many people create their artworks entireley in Blender. It’s often used in conjunction with other applications as well to do paintovers and texturing for example. Using Blender can really speed up the concept art process by being able to more quickly rough out a scene in perspective, test different lighting and viewing angles, etc.
You can also create your interior design and exterior architectural models using Blender.
Is Blender difficult to use?
It’s can be intimidating when you open Blender up for the first time. You’ll be confronted with some busy toolbars and blank cube staring at you from a 3D space. That said though, learning the basics is not too difficult.
Getting familiar with the countless shortcuts and the different tools that Blender offers will take some time. It can also be challenging to understand how things work in three dimensions. Like all things though, it just takes some time, patience, and persistence. There’s no shortage of tutorials out there to help you get started too.
Do you need a drawing tablet for Blender?
While a drawing tablet is pretty much essential for most forms of digital art, a mouse and keyboard are all you need to get started in Blender. If you only have a trackpad on your laptop and no mouse, you’re going to have a hard time.
When it does come time for you to get a tablet, you don’t need to fork out a huge amount on a fancy pen display. For around $50, you can get a decent graphics tablet that will work well for Blender without taking up too much desk space.
While Blender is not available for mobile devices but you could use your iPad together with Astropad as a pen display for your computer to work in it.
As an alternative, you can get Nomad Sculpt for sculpting on your Android tablet or iPad.
How to learn Blender?
The first thing to learn in Blender is modeling, and the default workspace for that is what appears when you open up the program.
There are more freely-available resources beyond the Tutorials section on the Blender website. One of the most popular courses out there is Blender Guru’s donut tutorial on YouTube. This will take you through the process of learning to model out the shapes, the icing, and the sprinkles, and then rendering it all.
Sculpting in Blender
Over on Artstation Learning (which is currently free), Rico Cilliers takes you through the process of sculpting rocks. This will be much easier to do if you have a drawing tablet.
Rocks are an excellent thing to sculpt and paint as a way to learn and warm up. They are incredibly varied in how they can look in terms of shape and texture, so you can have a lot of fun with them.
Can you make comics in Blender?
You can make comics in Blender now thanks to the mighty grease pencil. This will let you draw in your 3D viewport so that you can create 2D illustrations and animations, use it for storyboarding, and even making a comic.
CG Cookie artist and instructor, Paul Caggegi, takes you through the process of using Blender to create a comic in this course using one of their own internal game projects as the inspiration for it.
Do you need a good computer for Blender?
You’re going to need a decent computer to run Blender. It certainly doesn’t have to be top of the range for you to get into it though. You should at least have 8GB of RAM and a graphics card with 2GB of RAM though higher specs are recommended if you’re going to get serious.
Blender art inspiration
People are out there making some really incredible art with Blender. From cute characters and dioramas, to weapons and chests for video games.
These stylized 3D illustrations by software engineer, David Lettier, blew my mind a bit.
People also made some awesome swords during #Swordtember in Blender which excited me. This site is called DrawYourWeapon after all.
Wrapping up…
With software like Blender, you can definietly start making digital art using only your mouse. It’s still recommended that you grab a pencil and paper and keep refining your drawing and ideation skills as a beginner. But while you’re at it, you can still get familiar with digital tools by modeling sweet baked things, swords, and cute dioramas.
