How my digital art is made.
For creating content I use two computers. A generic OpenBSD desktop and a Lenovo Thinkpad x380 YOGA. I only use the x380 for sketching and inking and then color the pictures in OpenBSD with a mouse and keyboard. For the purposes of Fish Alpinism, the OpenBSD machine is unremarkable and only really needs GIMP and ssh.
x380 YOGA
The x380 is always folded into a tablet without a keyboard with a maximized GIMP running at all times. I operate it with computer pens and sometimes a finger.
It runs Alpine Linux and a handful of programs.
Software
- matchbox-keyboard - virtual keyboard (mostl…
How my digital art is made.
For creating content I use two computers. A generic OpenBSD desktop and a Lenovo Thinkpad x380 YOGA. I only use the x380 for sketching and inking and then color the pictures in OpenBSD with a mouse and keyboard. For the purposes of Fish Alpinism, the OpenBSD machine is unremarkable and only really needs GIMP and ssh.
x380 YOGA
The x380 is always folded into a tablet without a keyboard with a maximized GIMP running at all times. I operate it with computer pens and sometimes a finger.
It runs Alpine Linux and a handful of programs.
Software
- matchbox-keyboard - virtual keyboard (mostly used for naming files during save)
- GIMP
- fvwm2
- rsync
- xsetwacom - makes rotation and mapping of the pen area hassle-free (rotation script)
- xdm
For the most part, I don’t have to flip out the keyboard unless I reboot the computer, after which I have to type in the password. One can put the virtual keyboard inside the xdm login screen, but I didn’t bother, since I usually just put the computer to sleep.
Everything I need I put inside an fvwm pop-up menu, which is accessed by clicking the corner of any titlebar.
The workflow
Poor man’s dropbox
I sketch and ink the pictures on the x380, then rsync them to the OpenBSD and continue there. I don’t want any daemons or directory monitoring, so I just use two rsync scripts. One sends files into the OpenBSD machine, the other syncs it back to the Alpine. This way I can have the seemingly same file open on both machines and edit it back and forth just by running the rsync script and reloading the file in GIMP. The rsync code is ran only on the Alpine computer, where it’s easily accessible from a fvwm menu.
#sync-out
rsync -r ~/work/ fish@linux:work/
#sync-in
rsync -r fish@linux:work/ ~/work/
To reload the file in GIMP after sync: File - Revert
- Open file in Alpine GIMP
- Draw something and save in ~/work/
- Sync out
- Open file in OpenBSD
- Edit the file in OpenBSD and save
- Sync in
- Reload file in Alpine GIMP
- Repeat
The artist’s keyboard
You can get a $3 Numpad and bind GIMP shortcuts to the various keys on it. Since I use a very limited set of tools in GIMP, this is plenty. Funnily enough, some of the professional external art-tablet keyboards have the exact same layout as a numpad. If you’re into this, you can save a lot of money.
Most things can be bound directly inside GIMP’s Edit - Keyboard Shortcuts. Panning (Spacebar) and Escape has to be bound with xmodmap ala:
# in .xsession
xmodmap -e "keycode 63 = space"
xmodmap -e "keycode 90 = Escape"
Find the keycode of the key on the numpad in xev.
My setup:
/ - Escape (xmodmapped Escape)
* - Show/hide docks
-+ - Zoom
7 - Undo
8 - Pencil tool
9 - Redo
4 - Bucket tool
5 - Swap fg,bg colors (Eraser)
6 - Nothing!
1 - Cut
2 - Free select tool
3 - Paste in place
0 - Panning (xmodmapped Spacebar)
Del - Move tool
Enter - Select none (Deselect after pasting, etc)
Backspace - Backspace
Because I only use black and white, I use 5 as an eraser.
Pens
The x380 screen digitizer uses the AES1.0 protocol. so if you get this computer and want a new pen for it, you need one that’s compatible with AES1.0. This information was almost impossible to find. Thanks, kfx. Of the ones I own, here’s a list of a few that work.
- The pen the computer came with
- Wacom Bamboo Ink
- Lenovo Digital Pen 3
- Wacom Bamboo Ink Plus
I do not recommend the Ink Plus. Of the three, it has the worst responsiveness. The regular Bamboo Ink and Digital Pen have interchangeable nibs.
Why?
I don’t run OpenBSD on the x380 directly, because I want pressure sensitivity and xsetwacom.