Let’s clear something up right away: you don’t need to be good at digital art to make a digital comic. You just need to not hate the process of learning the tools.
Here’s the thing — digital art is weird at first. If you’re used to pencils or paint, drawing on a screen feels slippery and disconnected, kind of like writing with your non-dominant hand.
But once you’re past the awkward phase, it’s absurdly freeing. You can undo anything. You can try a hundred different colors without committing to any of them. You can mess up without wasting a single sheet of paper.
It’s not better than traditional art. It’s just different — and if you’ve been curious about making comics but intimidated by how polished everyone’s webtoon looks, this is your starting point.
what you actually need (and what you don’t)
What you need:
- A device (iPad, tablet, or computer)
- A stylus or drawing tablet (old Wacoms are a steal on Mercari if you go the desktop route)
- Free or affordable software (Procreate for iPad, Krita for computer, Clip Studio Paint on both, for when you are more comfortable with it)
What you don’t need:
- Expensive equipment
- Formal training
- Natural talent (whatever that means)
- A reason or a goal
You’re learning this because you want to, not because you need to monetize it or build a portfolio. Protect that. It’s the one advantage you have over anyone doing this professionally. Monetary pressure can kill creativity.
getting comfortable with the tools
The hardest part about making a digital comic isn’t the drawing. It’s getting used to the tools.
Everything has layers and brushes and opacity settings and blend modes, and it all feels overwhelming until suddenly it doesn’t.
Layers are your best friend. Think of them like transparent sheets stacked on top of each other — sketch on one, color on another, letter on a third. Hate the coloring? Delete that layer. Everything else stays intact. (This is also how you keep your line art separate from your speech bubbles, which matters more than you’d think.)
Brushes behave differently than real ones. Digital brushes can replicate pencil texture, fake watercolor without the mess, or do things no physical brush ever could. Don’t get precious about finding the “right” one out of 800 options. Just grab one and draw.
Undo means mistakes stop being permanent. In traditional art, a bad line is a bad line forever. In digital art, it’s one tap from never having happened — which is both a gift and a trap. You’ll be tempted to undo every imperfect line. Resist that. Let some mistakes stay. They’re what make a panel look like a person drew it instead of a printer.
What actually makes a good digital comic
So what makes a comic good — digitally or otherwise?
Not the art. That’s the good news.
A good comic is about what happens between the panels almost as much as what’s in them. The gutter — the gap between one box and the next — is doing half the storytelling. Your reader’s brain fills in what happened in that white space. You don’t have to draw every second. You just have to draw the moments that matter and trust the reader to connect them. To get more into that, check out Scott McCloud’s book Understanding Comics on this very concept.
A few things that matter more than clean linework:
- Panel flow. Your eye should know where to go next without thinking about it. One clear path through the page.
- Legible lettering. If someone can’t read your speech bubble, the best art in the world won’t save the panel. Keep the text simple, keep it big enough, and don’t cram six sentences into one bubble.
- Consistency over polish. Your character doesn’t need to be beautifully rendered. They need to look like the same person from panel one to panel ten.
- Honesty. The comics that actually stick with people — the ones you go back to — usually aren’t the technically impressive ones. They’re the ones that told the truth about something specific and didn’t flinch.
If you’ve read Comics That Helped Me Process (Relatable Difficult Thing), this is the same idea from the other side. Those comics worked because the artists let things stay messy, not because the brushwork was flawless. Now you’re the one holding the pen.
your first digital comic (no pressure)
Forget about making something good. Just make something that’s three panels long.
Step one: Open your software and create a new canvas. A medium size works fine — 2000×2000 pixels, or whatever your software defaults to. Don’t overthink it.
Step two: Sketch three boxes. That’s your whole comic. Three panels, one page.
Step three: Fill them with something true. Panel one: you, before. Panel two: the thing that happened. Panel three: you, after. It doesn’t have to be complicated or about anything huge. A three-panel comic about your coffee going cold while you doom-scrolled counts.
Step four: Add lettering if you need it. Keep it short — a caption, one line of dialogue, or nothing at all. Silence reads fine in a comic.
Step five: Mess around after. Try a textured brush instead of a smooth one. Adjust the opacity. See what changes. There’s no goal here except getting comfortable holding the pen.
common beginner struggles (and how to deal)
“My lines look shaky and weird.” Normal. Digital pens don’t have the same friction as paper. Turn on stabilization if it bothers you, or let the shake stay — plenty of your favorite indie comics have it too.
“Everything I draw looks flat.” Add shadow and highlight, even small ones. New layer, set it to multiply for shadow or overlay for highlight, soft brush, done. Five minutes, huge difference.
“I don’t know what to put in each panel.” Draw the moment right before something and the moment right after. Skip the middle. Your reader’s brain will fill it in — that’s the gutter doing its job again.
“Everyone else’s comic looks better than mine.” Because they’ve made 500 of them and you’ve made one. You’re comparing your first attempt to someone’s five-hundredth. Stop it. Make the bad one anyway.
where to actually put this thing
You don’t need a publisher, a following, or a plan to put a comic online.
Webtoons and Tapas are built for exactly this — free platforms, panel-friendly formats, and an actual audience of people scrolling for something to read. No pitch required, no gatekeeper between you and posting.
A plain, ugly, free blog works too. Allie Brosh didn’t start with a book deal. Hyperbole and a Half was a blog first — MS Paint drawings and long, honest posts, no polish, no plan, until enough people were reading that a publisher noticed. The comic came first. The professionalism came later, if it came at all.
Post it somewhere. Tumblr, a free blog, a webtoon account, wherever. The point isn’t the platform. The point is that the comic exists somewhere other than your camera roll.
That’s the whole point of a first digital comic. Not to make something that sells, or something that’s good. Just to make something that didn’t exist an hour ago — and to keep making them anyway, even when they suck.
