#30×30 2026 : Time for Something New

Some years, I’ll take the opportunity after I’ve crossed the thirty-painting finish line, to goof off and do something new.

This year in particular, I’ve been dying do take a break from watercolor, and invest some time into – – – digital painting! <— crazy I know!

ADHD much?

But if you want to dabble in a new media, working on a series of low-stakes, one-a-day projects for a decent chunk of time is a great way to start.

I’ve been looking for a long time for a digital painting tool that doesn’t leave me feeling cold. Even though I’ve done a lot of it – I’ve never really loved painting on the computer.

Digital can leave you with a flat, overly-perfect look that just ends up – boring me?

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people who make it work – but it’s never quite clicked for me. And there’s no guarantee it’s going to this time either – but!

I might have found something really cool –

Today’s sketches are done with a relatively new app called HEAVYPAINT – which is a labor-of-love from the artist/animator Vaughan Ling, who has worked on some impressive projects including Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Tron: Uprising, and the award winning netflix short The Witness.

Ling seems to be hooked up with art director Alberto Mielgo – who is something of a pioneer in current animation, helming all of Ling’s projects listed here, and more besides. He’s also an interesting painter in his own right, and is one of those guy’s who really knows how to make digital paint sing.

I was a huge fan of The Witness in particular. Here’s a showreel of some of Ling’s work on that one. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth using the Netflix free trial, and looking for their short-animation series “Love Death and Robots” – The Witness is Season 1, Episode 3.

Then jump over to Mielgo’s other project Jibaro, (Season 3, Episode 9). if you haven’t had enough amazing animation!

So, back to my little test paintings! (Nothing special here compared to those guys! Hah! But this is day one and two here! Don’t judge me yet :)

I would say, if you want to dive in to HEAVYPAINT, watch a basic tutorial first, because the interface is a little obscure. But you’ll quickly realize that’s because – it really is that simple.

Everything you need is right there, and as soon as you’re shown what’s what, you can get to work.

What I like about HEAVYPAINT is how much it feels like the knife painting I do in oils, (except with the power of layers).

Color of course will blend freely within a layer, but not down to a layer below, or above – so you can do things like paint the hair separately from the head, or the figure separately from the background. Which is pretty awesome when it comes to making small changes.

Another the core concepts of the app is ‘color jitter’ – most noticeable in the model’s shirt (above). This is a very digital-ish mindest – in which the software tweaks the color automatically as you paint.

You have a slider right under the color picker, that controls how much ‘jitter’ or ‘complimentary-color-drift’ will be applied to every brush stroke.

I love this effect – because this is exactly what I do when I paint in oils. I will purposely not-quite-mix a color, so when I pick it up on the knife, I’ll get a multi-colored stroke, composed of all the colors that go into the master color.

Digital paint is never going to look like traditional – and that’s fine. I doesn’t need to. This color-jitter effect is an example of what we used to call ‘Truth to Media’ back in art school. You should use a given media for it’s strength.

Watercolor is best when it’s spontaneous and flowing (imo)- because no other media behaves this way. It’s a shame to use watercolors to paint tight fidgety things that would be better in colored pencils. Or to try and make deep dark paintings that would be better done in oil.

So, it’s neat to see a digital painting tool do something interesting, which is completely native to this artform.

HEAVYPAINT isn’t the only software with color jitter – but at first glance I’m a big fan of their version of the concept.

So that’s today’s #30×30! Moving into my BONUS ROUND!

By the way: The rest of my posts for the month are probably going to be more investigations with this app, so you have my absolute apologies if that’s not what you’re here for :) I’ll understand.

But if you’re curious to see a person flail about in front of you, trying to learn a new thing – well – maybe it will be fun to watch :)

Take care!

~m