So I haven't been posting since September, but I have a good excuse. I've been lurking, but not posting drawings because:

1) I had been without a computer for the first two months.

2) I had accidently broken my tablet pen and could not afford a new pen or tablet to my liking. So I have just been doodling butts in my sketch book and giggling to myself when I realized. Why don't I just draw with a mouse.

This was the first attempt at that. Using microsoft paint. It felt like I was trying to draw with an etch n sketch. None of the lines had any fluidity, any deviation was treated not as a smooth wiggle, but a sharp straight spike in the line work. This could be fine, but I'm bad enough at drawing without my piece looking like I had arranged it by copy pasting a bunch of 3 pixel lines together. That being said, there was a some merit to the process. It reminded me of when I was a little tot, using line tools and circle tools to try and create some MADNESS and Invader Zim ocs. So I continued.

I had procured myself a copy of Paint Tool Sai again and began practicing in that program, and here are a few things I've come to find out.

1) Lowering your DPI can be really helpful. Confidence is hard to get with lines, but I find that when I need to get a curve, it's easier to do the shoulder movement if I turn how fast the cursor goes with each minute movement. I have a mouse that can cycle through different modes, so it's really quick for me to make the changes.

2) You have access to more shortcuts. Usually, on a tablet, you only have like 5 buttons plus the 2 pen buttons to do whatever you need without reaching over to your keyboard or manually clicking the tool with your pen. But since the mouse only uses 1 hand, I am able to enjoy the luxury of saving .3 seconds every time I need to change brush size or brushes entirely, which is good because. . .

3) Unsurprisingly, you need to do do any semblance of line weight but manually changing the size of a brush as you do your stroke (or going back over the line with progressively bigger brushed). I barely decided to bother with line weight at all because of this, as I am a mostly focused on just drawing my stupid ocs and don't really care if I'm using advanced techniques. As long as the subject gets the idea across, I'm usually happy.

would I recommend drawing with a mouse? Fuck it, do it. It's like, better than not drawing at all man. You seriously could get a lot better than me at it, the possibility is there and it doesn't cost anymore than you already spent to play flash games on this site. In the end, if you have excuses for this kind of shit, then you don't really want to do it and you should stop tormenting yourself about it. Either do it bad or don't do it at all my dude.

Here are the two pieces I've posted here using the mouse, and a few more I haven't posted for funsies.