Digital art can be created in many different ways using different hardware and software.
Drawing tablets are one of the more popular and intuitive tools to create digital art. This is for good reason as they are better for it overall but digital art can be made without a tablet as well.
There are two main ways to create digital art without a tablet by using a mouse. You may create art traditionally first then scan or photograph it to proceed to the digital stage. Or you may create art digitally from the start. The first method can require you to edit or learn how to draw using a mouse, similar to the second method. This depends on the results you seek.
Let’s discuss in more detail how to go through each of these methods and get you started creating digital art without a tablet using a mouse.
How Can I Draw on My Computer Without a Tablet?
Draw on your computer without a tablet by using your mouse.
Yes, that is the simple answer obviously but in order to do it, you will need a couple more things.
First decide which method you’d like to use to create digital art without a tablet.
For those looking to transition from traditional to digital with a more straightforward approach, you can simply scan and finalize your work.
This method itself can further be divided into two potential workflows to “finalize”.
Finalizing your work using this method can mean editing a scan or photo till it is a completed piece of digital art. Or barely editing just enough so you can trace it digitally recreating it.
With a scan, you have an exact reference and it simply becomes a matter of learning to control the mouse well enough to trace the lines you draw on paper.
While this is straightforward it is only as simple as the art. Drawing is a skill whether your medium is traditional or digital. The more complex an artwork is traditionally the more complex it will be digitally.
I.e it’s simple enough to trace line drawings and add flat colors but adding shading and lighting digitally is just as challenging as it is traditionally.
Likewise editing to cleanup a scan of a more complex piece of art is harder than cleaning up a sketch.
You’ll have to learn how to shade, light, and color digitally to replicate how you do those same things traditionally.
This is the point where a lot of people may find it makes sense to switch to the second method.
Create digital art from scratch without a tablet by using your mouse.
Without the traditional guide of a photo or scan, this may seem like more work but it actually frees you to fully take advantage of your digital medium.
Using a scan to trace will make it very evident why people buy tablets to produce their digital art. A tablet and stylus are made to emulate a pencil and paper.
With a scan, you’re trying to simply copy what you did on paper. Without a tablet, it makes sense that this will be complicated.
Creating digital art without a tablet by using a mouse is disconnected. You are “drawing” on the mouse pad but the result is on the monitor which you are not touching.
With this disconnect at the start you simply won’t be able to immediately recreate the same exact lines using a mouse instead of your pencil on paper.
Drawing with a mouse is a different skill than drawing with a pencil on paper or with a stylus on a tablet. In this post, I will go over specifics that will teach you how to draw with a mouse and without a tablet.
Different programs have different features so you’ll want to learn more about all of the features that will help you with your condition of not having a tablet.
Line, curve, transformation, measuring, shape, selection, color tools are just some tools you will heavily rely on to create your art, especially without a tablet.
How to Make your Traditional Art Digital
Step 0: Contrast the Art and Canvas
The reason I call this step 0 is to understand in order to make your traditional art digital there is a way to prepare even before making your traditional art.
At the absolute start, use as high of a contrasting tool and canvas as possible for the traditional art. For example, use black ink on stark white paper.
Make your art 20% darker than you would normally. This includes all your line-work, shading and coloring.
The more contrast you can get between your artwork and the canvas, the better.
Now that you’ve finished creating the traditional art it’s time for the next step.
Step 1: Scan or Photograph Art
Scan the traditional art at a setting of at least 300dpi. You may scan at 600dpi for the maximum resolution and preserving all the quality of your art.
Scans are better than photos for the purpose of making your traditional art digital.
For those using scans skip the rest of Step 1 and proceed to Step 2.
If you do not have a scanner take a photo using the best camera you have. Smartphones these days have quite advanced cameras and can work for this.
To ensure the best photo for making your traditional art digital use the following steps.
Take the picture in a well evenly lit room. Window light would be optimal if possible, then white lights, and finally any regular lighting as long as it is the best lighting you have.
Lie your canvas on a flat surface like a table, hard floor, or the wall wherever lighting seems most even.
Hold your camera parallel to your art. Make sure you’re not casting a shadow over the art, if you are it will ruin the point of the lighting.
Use a tripod if you have it. Some tripods/ tripod heads even have a level on them to ensure you’re perfectly straight.
Snap the photo and save it. For those using photos proceed to Step 1A. You might need to do some light editing before moving to Step 2.
Step 1A Correct Lens Distortion & Perspective
Some photos will need to be corrected with some quick editing before the next step. The bigger the artwork the more likely you will need this. A lack of a tripod or steady hand will also be causes for this.
Lens distortion is what happens naturally as camera lenses are made curved to capture a wider angle in the shot. This curves causes the bend or distortion to the photo.
Perspective and angles when relying on taking a handheld shot simply occur as we are only humans our eyes also exhibit somewhat of a lens distortion as they are curved too.
That along with our own imperfection in judgments of the exact parallel angle to hold the camera at can cause our art to be skewed and angled.
The great thing is almost all programs for digital art will have some sort of transform tool that is capable of correcting these flaws by simply scaling or skewing the photo.
Once you’ve evaluated your photo and confirmed it is ready move onto the next step.
Step 2: Create Digital Art Using The Scan or Photo
Now that your scan and photo are flat and correct from here you can decide how to proceed to “finalizing” your digital art without a tablet.
Do you want to start tracing and recreating your art digitally? Or do you want to preserve as much of the traditional look as you can and simply edit and clean the scan or photo?
Step 2A will detail a complete cleaning edit for the scan or photo to produce your digital art.
For those tracing and recreating their art, you can technically skip this and proceed to Step 2B now or whenever you feel the scan or photo is clean enough for you to proceed.
Step 2A Complete Clean Edit of a Scan or Photo
Open your scan or photo using your digital art program.
For art without any colors, the first step will be turning its color into black and white, most programs should have this ability.
Next, create a selection that is an outline of your art excluding any unused parts of the canvas outside of it. Start with a rough outline then zoom in and work as precisely as needed.
Make a copy or mask of the selection as your program allows.
Now begin to edit the contrast of the art. If your program has the ability to edit levels or blacks/whites/greys use that instead for finer control.
Most programs will use sliders so scrub it around and choose the most balanced point that gives you the best contrast without ruining or removing your shading and values.
This should be enough for those looking to just trace and recreate the art digitally so you can skip to Step 2B if that is you.
However for everyone looking for a full clean proceed with the following.
Different areas of your art may be darker or shaded than some and as such will require editing separately. Especially if you are using a photo and not a scan as photos are almost impossible to evenly light.
Unless you happen to be of the lucky few with a perfectly lit room with floor to ceiling windows or multiple white lights and white walls your photo’s lighting will vary across the frame.
By editing each section of the photo or scan based on lighting or values your ability to increase the contrast will be better. Increasing your blacks and whites without losing the greys.
Those with colored art can also work on each individual color separately to maintain the exact colors you want in the finished artwork.
For colors, use saturation and hue in addition to contrast to dial in the specific shades you need.
By dividing your scan or photo into sections to edit you will be able to really clean it up and make it pop as digital art once you are finished.
Make sure to zoom out often after each section to confirm that the sections all are blending together with the same overall lighting you are aiming for.
With this, you are finally done creating digital art from your traditional art scan or photo!
Step 2B: Trace & Recreate Traditional Art Scan or Photo Digitally
Using your scan or photo as a guide trace your traditional art using your mouse.
To get smooth lines use fast sweeping movements just as you would with a pencil.
One of the greatest benefits of creating digital art is the ability to zoom so make sure to take advantage of this to handle any difficult small lines or parts of your art.
Especially with a mouse, you will find zooming in and out will help immensely for getting smaller details.
Another great feature is your ability to now undo digitally. You don’t have to stress about the more than likely beginner mistakes when you start using your mouse to trace.
Undo will be one of the greatest time-savers especially while you’re getting used to using a mouse to draw.
Using just these tools you can complete tracing & recreating your art scan or photo digitally with your mouse.
How To Draw on Your Computer Without a Tablet
To create digital art without a tablet you can use the previous method’s last step to get started. But you will notice the difference in drawing with a mouse versus a tablet as I mentioned previously.
Even without using a scan or art reference to trace you will naturally be able to tell that your lines are not as good. There will be some wobble and inconsistencies.
You will have to adjust your muscle memory of mouse use from your regular use of the mouse to now drawing with it.
Use bigger movements from your elbow and shoulder as possible just as you would with a pencil. Make your movements quickly with purpose to create smooth lines.
Getting more technical, take advantage of the digital tools we mentioned. Most digital art programs will have some version of these.
Line tools will allow you to quickly create perfectly straight lines with two clicks. Bezier curves handles will allow you to precisely control the curve in any lines.
Shape tools will allow you to create quick constructive sketches for your forms and shapes with perfect circles, squares, and other shapes instantly created to your specifications.
Both line and shape tools are actually easier to use with a mouse.
Brushes are a staple tool you will be using. A simple brush can be used for any drawing but you can create tons of brushes for different things.
You can create brushes to emulate your preferred traditional tool, watercolors, paintbrushes, calligraphy pens, etc. Patterns and textures can also be made into brushes enabling you to do unique things you could never do traditionally.
Finally, the last tip for creating digital art without a tablet is a big one: Use vector instead of raster for your art.
Vector art uses algorithms to render graphics while raster art uses pixels. The main difference here being pixels are limited while algorithms allow vectors to be resized infinitely.
The reason this is relevant to digital art is that vectors use algorithms to render this means you can modify these equations to do things like line smoothing or simplifying.
Smoothing and simplifying the number of points in a line in a drawing will allow you to draw with a mouse but get the same smooth lines you could get drawing on paper, with no extra work!
The other benefit is the resizing which means when you do all that zooming in and out to work on the art you won’t get any blurry pixelization.
With vector art, you can resize your art as large or small as you want while keeping it crisp and smooth.
You can create digital art without a tablet as I’ve explained. Drawing with a mouse is different than a pencil and paper and ultimately more difficult but definitely possible.
Types of Digital Art to Make Without a Tablet
Besides simply drawing with your mouse, there are of course just other complete genres of digital art that don’t require a tablet.
Digital art you can make without a tablet includes Photo Editing, Geometric/Fractal Art, Pixel Art, 3D Modeling & Animation, and Programmed Art.
1. Photo Editing & Manipulation
To get yourself started photo editing and manipulation will allow you to explore your creativity as much as you’d like with the endless library of images on the internet.
This is actually easier and better on a mouse for the most part as you will be quickly clicking through layers, tools, and effects rather than manually drawing, coloring, and lighting things.
Using photo-editing alone there are many artists who have developed huge followings on platforms like Instagram but also work professionally on commercial projects.
2. Geometric/Fractal
These are two different types of art however they both do not require a tablet as digital art because of their foundation being lines and shapes.
Lines alone allow you to create some truly magnificent pieces. Every program I know of can create a perfectly straight line all you have to do is pick the points or click and drag.
Adding shapes into the mix you can go even further with beautiful patterns and designs.
Using a mouse allows you to create these types of artworks easily whereas drawing some of these using a tablet would be more time consuming and less accurate.
3.Pixel Art
Pixel art is a fun unique type of art that has risen in popularity with games like Minecraft and more indie titles like Undertale and Stardew Valley.
Luckily this nostalgic genre of art is based on being blocky with pixels. Making pixel art using a mouse is totally doable with everything based on squares.
4. 3D Modeling & Animation
3D art is actually mostly done using a mouse and not a tablet. This is because 3D art is based on using existing 3d objects and modifying them.
You don’t have to worry about manually drawing, shading, and lighting anything 3D as it’s all done using settings.
Professionals looking for an upgrade to their tools actually will go from a regular mouse to a 3d mouse instead of a tablet so that is something you could explore as well.
5. Programmed Art
Using coding and certain programs like Processing which I used in college to create the example above you can actually automate art.
Now it sounds funny and at a basic level may seem like just plugging in different random variables but if you learn a little coding you can actually use this to create some beautiful art.
Not only that but depending on your code this can be code that has an infinite number of resulting art pieces without even needing even a mouse for the most part.
Some programmed art would actually take a ridiculous amount of time to recreate by drawing with a tablet or mouse, even with the result as a reference.
