Affinity Photo 1.9 for Digital Drawing

This artwork of an assassin schoolgirl was drawn using Affinity Photo v1.9 and is the result of following a Domestika course by the artist Thomas Rohlf. 

I first purchased both Affinity Photo and Designer several years ago. but have never actually used them. Currently I use Adobe CS 5.5 which was released way back in 2013. So far the Adobe programs still work on my Windows 10 PC  but I'm aware they are no longer supported by Adobe. Already they crash without warning every so often. They could in theory cease to function entirely one day. Hence I felt it was time I should prepare myself and learn how to use the Affinity suite of products (since I do not wish to sign up to Adobe's subscription-only model). 

More about Affinity later but first, the Domestika course that I used to create my artwork:

Thomas Rohlfs 

Thomas creates line-art based human characters. You can see his work on Instagram.

In his Domestika course (Dynamic Character Illustration) Thomas shows techniques for breaking down human postures and poses into easy to draw stages (line of action, rhythm, weight distribution, stick model then cylinders). Thomas emphasises his use of photo references and encourages us to do the same. The methodology is very easy and it allows complete beginners (or untrained artists like me) to tackle human anatomy without any prior experience.

Using lines to analyse human posture from photos

A suggested correction from Thomas on the Domestika forum

Progression from pencil to line art to basic colours

Using photo references is not the same as tracing or copying photos. In fact, as evidenced by my practice sketches, when one does try to copy a photo very closely, it never seems to look quite right. Thomas's methodology allows us to capture the essence of the pose in the photo yet still gives freedom to adapt and modify it to make it our own.

It was interesting to observe how, during each stage of his drawing videos, Thomas goes through a lot of trial and error when roughing out his characters. I mean even his first draft attempts look really good but the fact that he will erase lines and re-draw them many times over goes to show how much self critique he goes through. This kind of constant analysis of the drawing is something I need to be more conscious of. The end result for Thomas is that his characters are always full of life and energy and on a technical note, always perfectly proportioned yet still uniquely stylised.

Working on composition, adding props helps tell more of a story to the image.

Ideally, I would have liked more information on depicting the characters from different angles, perspectives, foreshortening, extreme action poses etc. but Thomas explains these are not his strength and directs us to find other sources to learn these aspects. He did mention that he has a lot of tips on drawing faces, so maybe that alone would make for a follow-up course.

I also really enjoyed receiving feedback from Thomas in the forum. He has such a sharp eye and was able to pick out things I missed in my own work.

Overall I really enjoyed the course and it helped me build my confidence in drawing human characters and bringing more life into them.

The final artwork

Affinity Photo
In case you aren't aware, Affinity Photo (AP) is a photo editing program and Affinity Designer (AD) is a vector drawing program. Actually Designer also offers raster drawing functionality - a feature they refer to as their 'Pixel Persona'. They are available on both desktop and iPad versions. I used the desktop version. 

AP is intended mainly for use as a photograph editing program but just like Photoshop, many artists like to create digital art using this program. I wanted to see how close the drawing experience was using AP compared to PS. 

The first thing I noticed with AP is how familiar the interface is - as a long time Photoshop user, there is a lot of cross over. But there are also some quirks specific to Affinity products - the most obvious one is the idea of 'Personas'. But I didn't really need to worry about that, since all I wanted to do was to use the brush tools and colouring tools both of which were incredibly easy to use.

Affinity Photo offers a lot of brush options, in my piece I used Christi's Comix Tookbox brushes.

AP comes with a lot of brush tools built into it from the start - from standard fixed line width brushes through to brushes that simulate oils, acrylics, watercolour, inks, pencils etc etc. On top of that, I bought a couple of cheap brush sets from the Affinity website. The brushes I used for this project were ones from the Christi's Comix Toolbox. I noticed too that AP offers a stabilisation function - switching this toggle on allows me to draw very controlled smooth strokes with any brush. It's not suitable for everything but could be great for lettering or outlining a smooth object.

You can how I applied noise and drop shadow - AP offers nearly all the same core functions that Photoshop has.

Honestly, for the basic ability to just ink and colour a piece of digital art, AP offered me everything that could be found in Photoshop or any other raster drawing program. It was so easy and intuitive to use. The brushes could also be tweaked and adjusted but I did not explore that myself. Other very commonly used functions eg Layers, layer blends, masking, etc are all there and again, very straightforward to use.

Of course AP also offers all the core photo editing functions that Photoshop offers - the ones I use a lot include: Levels, hue-saturation-brightness, selective colour, curves, and some of the filters (noise, blur, distort). For more advanced functions, like Photoshop Actions which Thomas in his course likes to use, then I believe AP does have them too. They're called Macros, but I did not use them myself.

Another key benefit with AP is that the 1.9 version is bang up to date and perfectly suited for use on my Windows 10 PC whereas my ancient Adobe CS5.5 isn't and actually has sometimes stalled or crashed without warning. With Affinity, the one purchase price also gains the user all future updates.

So far, so good. I'm pleased with AP as a platform to do digital drawing and inking. I'm not a digital painter so I guess it might not be as slick as other dedicated painting apps, but for core drawing function, it's really just as good as Photoshop in my opinion.